Michael Bradley: 'Every single person' at Toronto FC failed to understand challenges

• by Paul Kennedy  @pkedit, Sep 2, 2018

Toronto FC's MLS title defense isn't over yet, but after the 4-2 loss to LAFC at BMO Field on Saturday, it is hard to see how the Reds will make the playoffs.

The loss coupled with sixth-place Montreal's 3-0 win over the New York Red Bulls dropped TFC nine points behind the Impact with seven games to play.

"The margin for error is gone," said Toronto FC star Michael Bradley. "We've got two weeks now to see if we can regroup for the hundredth time this year and try to go after seven more games and see if we can tilt the bar in our favor."

TFC fell behind on a Carlos Vela goal in the 23rd minute, and trailed 3-0 before Jozy Altidore scored two goals to reduce the deficit to 3-2 in stoppage time. But a second Vela ended any hope of even managing a draw for Toronto, which is 7-14-6 through 27 games.

“For me, it’s the same old story,” said Bradley. “Game starts, we do a lot of things pretty well, we’re not quite good enough and sharp enough to take advantage going forward. We can’t get the lead, give up a bad, soft, unfortunate -- choose your word -- goal, and things compound themselves from there. You run out of things to say.”

Bradley didn't sound optimistic, laying blame for the poor season on how TFC approached the year that began in February with the Concacaf Champions League in which it finished second to Guadalajara.

“Champions League aside this year," he said, "we have not had enough people in this club from the top all the way down to the bottom — and everybody’s included — we have not had enough people who have understood how hard it was going to be, what it was going to take to navigate through another season where we had to play every week like our lives depended on it."

Bradley said TFC was "no even close" to having the mentality it had in 2017.

“We weren’t going to let anything stop us," he said. "And we knew it was going to be hard, but we were ready to be harder. And this year, after a season when you will win everything, win everything the way we did, you have to know that the next year it’s going to be exponentially more difficult. And across the board every single person, every single person in this club has come up short in understanding what those challenges were going to be. So that part is disappointing.”