De Rosario narrowly beats 10-man expansion team

With all the player changes in and out of BMO Field it became painfully obvious tonight that only one player is truly indispensable on this club. The captain Dwayne De Rosario was the catalyst of the narrowest of victories as TFC slipped past Philadelphia 2-1 at tonight's home opener. For long stretches, De Ro was TFC's only source of offence and creativity on a club that is still struggling badly going forward.

De Rosario scored the first of his two goals soon after Philadelphia went down to 10 men in the first half. Danny Califf's rash challenge on Julian De Guzman led to the Union defender's dismissal and De Ro scored from the ensuing free kick. Despite being down a man, Philadelphia was the better offensive club and managed to pull one back late in the first half. It wasn't until late in the second half when O'Brian White was pulled down in the box by Philly's keeper Chris Seitz that TFC got the chance to retake the lead. Once again, De Ro stepped up and calmly put away the spotkick to make it 2-1 which is how the match ended.

TFC has a great distance to go in creating offence and can't take too much solace from this match considering the opponents and the fact they had a man advantage for 3/4 of the match. A positive of note was the solid play of new defender Adrian Cann who didn't put a foot wrong for most of the night. Lastly, Chad Barrett (nice haircut) made an appearance: 2 missed headers from short range and he also injured Amadou Sanyang's face - HAT TRICK!

STAY TUNED FOR "THE SOUTH STAND REPORT" LATER TONIGHT FOR A DETAILED MATCH REPORT...

----------------------Barrett: Nice haircut gooey Neo