Pizarro was simply wonderful on the night; the best player on the pitch. He looked to be playing in a variety of positions, tirelessly running to help out the back line when needed, going out onto the wing when needed, and supporting the attack when needed.

They’re at BMO field, in the lousy, blustery rainy weather. Before the game, at some point, you'd think manager Miguel Herrera and his staff would have looked at some video of Toronto FC in action, and thought to themselves, “wow, Jozy Altidore and Sebastian Giovinco can really burn you on the counter.”

After nearly a decade of suffering, I have come to the conclusion that there’s a TFC fan who watched Tuesday’s game knowing full well that (s)he has made a deal with the devil.

The Rapids played probably as well as they could at BMO Field, Toronto FC was as indifferent as it could be. Still, the Reds had little difficulty protecting the 2-0 advantage it held from the first leg.

To say that the first leg of the Eastern Conference semifinal was an ugly affair would be an insult to the word ugly. No, it wasn’t quite 2016 MLS Cup bad in terms of anti-football, but it definitely made you wonder why you weren’t spending Tuesday evening watching The Flash, instead.

So, what to do for an encore? The 2017 Canadian Championship final will go down as one of the best in the history of this tournament. And, for the second year in a row, Toronto FC won the championship on a last-gasp goal.

History has shown us that teams that get to championship games and lose, well, they tend to really struggle the year after that. Statistically speaking, Toronto FC’s season was doomed before it even began. So, how do the Reds buck the trend and make it back to MLS Cup — and win?

Because Designated Players take up such a large chunk of a team’s salary-capped budget, conventional thinking is that an MLS club can either spread the wealth and have depth, or invest in star players but accept the consequences of having a thin roster. But, Toronto FC General Manager Tim Bezbatchenko is trying to prove that a team can have the best of both worlds

Gabriel Torres, whose rocket of a shot was the margin of difference in Colorado’s 3-2 win over Vancouver on Saturday, got the most first-place votes from the members of the North American Soccer Reporters.

Whenever a team can go into the Denver suburbs and steal a road win, it’s a positive. It doesn’t have to be pretty.