“There wasn’t a lot missing today,” he continued. “A centimetre’s difference here or there and things might have been different but the game's like that. Even though we came away empty-handed today we are still on track to achieve the objectives we set at the beginning of the season.”

But, when it came to the player of the week vote, Robbie Keane stood apart from the crowd.

“I think all the boys would probably say it, there weren’t very many that played well today,” added Nelsen. “We are not good enough where we can have an off day and get away with it. Hopefully, we’ll be in a situation where we will be one day. But when we’re not all guns blazing, it can get a bit ugly.”

“We were second best the first 20 minutes,” said captain Patrice Bernier. “We played with fire. It’s uncharacteristic of our team. Normally, we’re very hard to play against and today, we seemed to be spread out and not be the same team from the last few games.”

With the MLS season moved up to its earliest start ever, forgive us if we don’t feel 100 per cent totally prepared for First Kick. Judging by the way many MLS teams finished preseason, with tentative matches and still looking at trialists with a week to go before the games count in the standings, a lot of coaches aren’t quite ready for the early start, either.

The games from the Walt Disney World Classic are archived on YouTube, so that offers the chance to not have to spend a prime Saturday afternoon watching any Toronto FC and Montreal’s preseason matches.

The last time the Reds won an MLS game, July 18 over Colorado, Canada was still in control of its World Cup destiny, Mitt Romney still hadn’t become the official GOP candidate, Robin Van Persie was still an Arsenal player and Lance Armstrong had seven Tour De France titles.

The Argentine forward was named NASL Player of the Week for the second consecutive time on Monday. He got 17 of the 19 first-place votes from the members of the North American Soccer Reporters.

Renteria was left wide open in the penalty area to direct Higuain's cross over Impact keeper Troy Perkins in the 92nd minute. And Higuain was given acres of space down the left side in which to engineer a cross, as veteran Alessandro Nesta inexplicably decided to lay off rather than take away the Argentine's space on the wing. It

But, for 60 minutes of Wednesday’s 2-1 loss in Columbus, TFC looked like a team that was going through the motions, even though coach Paul Mariner handed keeper Freddy Hall his MLS debut and centre back Dicoy Williams his first MLS start of the season.