SEATTLE—Greg Vanney understands the demands of a Major League Soccer season.The 45-year-old former defender spent 11 seasons in the league as a player, reaching three finals with the Los Angeles Galaxy. And he’s leading Toronto FC to its third MLS Cup final in four years as a head coach. So it was saying something when Vanney recently said 2019 felt like a “really long year.” “Sometimes when I’ve sat back and thought about what transpired over the course of the pre-season, it doesn’t even seem like the same year,” Vanney said.The TFC team that reported for training camp in mid-January is, in Vanney’s mind, a different iteration of the squad that will face the Seattle Sounders at CenturyLink Field on Sunday. Gone are star attackers Sebastian Giovinco and Victor Vazquez, as well as Dutch international Gregory van der Wiel, who was reportedly sent home from a team training camp in California that month after an altercation with the coach and never played for the team again.In their places came striker Alejandro Pozuelo and centre back Omar Gonzalez, but not immediately. The team found itself in something of a holding pattern as it tried to put all the necessary pieces in place for a return to the top, especially after missing the playoffs in 2018. There were moments when Vanney seemed to be coaching for his job, like after team president Bill Manning told TSN in June that he was in the biggest skid of his TFC tenure. A subsection of dissenting Reds fans reignited a familiar “Vanney Out” hashtag on social media. If the coach was fazed, he didn’t show it.“I put more expectation on myself than anyone can put on me from external places,” he said this week.“I’ve felt a lot like I’ve had to adjust, adapt, be reactive to certain situations and come up with solutions. And it wasn’t until we started to get all the pieces together — and guys back from the Gold Cu ...
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