Toronto FC draws LA Galaxy in Vanney's return to BMO Field

• Toronto FC 2 (Jiménez 62’; Bernardeschi 81’), LA Galaxy 2 (Costa 24’; Puig 89’)
• Bernardeschi scores his 6th goal in 8 MLS games this season
• Mavinga becomes 9th TFC player to make 150 appearances

TORONTO -- On Aug. 31, 2014, Toronto FC took the bold step of firing head coach Ryan Nelsen and naming an unproven Greg Vanney as his successor with only 10 games remaining in the MLS season.

Vanney, TFC’s youth academy director at the time, had never been a head coach, so the Reds were taking a bit of a gamble with what looked like yet another suspect appointment. But in the end, it proved to be one of the most important decisions in club history.

Vanney helped transform Toronto from a league laughingstock into an MLS superpower. The Reds won an MLS Cup (and reached two other finals), a Supporters’ Shield and three Canadians championships in a five-year period, while Vanney was named MLS coach of the year in 2017.

On Wednesday night, exactly eight years to the date that the course of the franchise was forever changed, Vanney returned to Toronto as head coach of the LA Galaxy, having previously parted ways with TFC in 2020.