“Everyone’s just happy. That’s the most important thing. But the coaches told us we can’t get overconfident,” said captain Nana Attakora. “We still have a game on Monday and if we lose that game, this game is meaningless.”

“In tournaments like this it’s important for a team to start well,” said Canadian head coach Tony Fonseca. “I think the way they faced this game was a certain level of stress coming into the first game. I think they faced it with being a little bit nervous for our taste.”

Aron Winter outmanaged and outcoached Arena in the second leg. Winter made the right decisions, while Arena struggled to adjust. And the coaching decisions could very well have been the deciding factors in the quarters.

If, last July, someone was to predict that Toronto FC would be the last MLS team standing in the CONCACAF Champions League, they’d have been offered some pretty sweet odds.

The Canadian women got two goals each from Jenna Richardson and Christabel Oduro as they easily dispatched the host Panamanians by a 6-0 count in the semifinals of the CONCACAF women’s U-20 Championship.

"The city definitely delivered tonight and they felt like a 12th man," said midfielder Terry Dunfield. "It's too bad, the script was waiting for us to hold on and take that 2-1 score to L.A."

“It’s OK. It’s not desirable,” said Galaxy Head Coach Bruce Arena. “Obviously, neither team would prefer to be on this surface but they’ve done a good job getting it ready.”

Danny Koevermans: “We’re underdogs. We’ve got everything to win and they have everything to lose. They are the champions. They won it all last season so it’s a nice game for us to see where we stand.”

And that means Canadian midfielders Terry Dunfield and Julian de Guzman, who had a yellow each from the previous round of qualifying, will enter the next phase of World Cup qualifying with clean slates.

ut the expected “news” that was to be announced at the town hall proceedings beforehand simply confirmed what The 11 had already reported earlier in the week – Canada will play all three of its CONCACAF World Cup qualifying matches at BMO Field.