The revised schedule will see each team will play an additional 18 regular-season games, in a phased approach. The first phase will consist of most teams playing six matches against regional opponents through Sept. 14. The exception to this is FC Dallas and Nashville SC: They will play an additional three games to make up for those missed after they were withdrawn from the MLS is Back Tournament.

Due to travel restrictions between the U.S. and Canada, Major League Soccer is working with the league’s three Canadian clubs regarding plans to continue the regular season. More details on schedules for the Canadian teams will be announced in the near future. 

The regular season will culminate on Decision Day on Nov. 8, and the league aims to release the remainder of the schedule in early September.

We have two of the Canadian teams playing each other today and my interest was piqued when I looked at their respective numbers for the six games played so far, each has played two regular season fixtures and four at the MIB event (one knockout stage), with the three group games counting towards the league standings, which is why you will see five games as having been played.......simple !

Toronto are the bigger and better club and are used to contending for honours, they have won the Canadian Championship in 3 of the last 4 seasons and won the MLS Cup in 2017 and finished runner up last year, in between (2018) they finished runner up in the CONCACAF Champions League. To give that some context, since the competition was renamed, the 11 Champions League titles have all been won by Mexican teams and there have been eight all Mexico finals. Teams from Mexico have actually made up all four semi finalists twice and they have a cartel like stranglehold on the competition.

Anyway, through these "official" five games TFC have nine points and are unbeaten(2-3-0), Whitecaps have six points and have lost three times. But it is the numbers, especially for the most recent starts which speak in favour of TFC , for the season they are 53-36 ITB, 16-13 for BC's, Vancouver are 27-73 and 8-15 respectively. Giving TFC a net +63 ITB which is huge through six starts and +10 ITB.

However, Whitecaps are 13- 63 ITB for the last four starts alone . They had some real issues last season, overperforming to pick up 34 points which still placed them last in the Western Conference, Vancouver had the fewest attempts on goal in the MLS and gave up the most by a country mile, 168 more than second worst ,FC Cincinnati, who picked up 10 points less. That means they were allowing 20 attempts on average per game and their xGD was -0.75 pg .

TFC won that 3-0, beat Whitecaps again 1-0 a few days later, should have probably scored at least three goals again and then went to Montreal and beat Impact 1-0, all seemed great, three wins, three clean sheets, five goals ( should have been several more ) and TFC were unbeaten in 18 games. They then lost 1-0 at home to Montreal and 3-2 away to Vancouver , head coach Greg Vanney said his team dictated the run of play in both games , but left the pitch without a point .

“In terms of our possession and movement, our ability to get into the final third, good, but games aren't won between the 18s, games are won in the 18-yard boxes,” he continued. “We've got to turn some of this good play into more goals.  “They (Vancouver) had maybe four shots (three, according to the stat sheet) in which we give up three goals, two of them off of set-pieces or second phase stuff, which is a bit infuriating because they weren't able to get much going, other than the set pieces that we don't deal with. Captain Jonathan Osorio spoke on the same theme : “It's frustrating to dominate a game like that, where we created a lot of chances, score on two, probably should have scored on a few others and to give up so few chances and then to concede on those... it hurts.”

“Defensively, as a collective, it wasn't good enough,” he admitted. “It's something that we have to correct. When we go back to training, we'll talk about those things, we will correct them and now we have to look forward to a very, very big game on Wednesday.”

Also at stake today is the Canadian Championship which carries with it a Champions League spot. The format has changed due to COVID-19 and the spot will be decided by a playoff between the winner of this series of games between the Canadian MLS teams and a Canadian Premier League team, standings for the former are .............

Toronto 3-0-2 9 pts +3 goals

Montreal 2-0-1 6 pts +2 goals

Vancouver 1-0-3  3 pts -5 goals

Rules for classification: 1) points; 2) total wins; 3) goal differential; 4) goals for; 5) away goal differential; 6) away goals for; 7) home goal differential; 8) home goals for 9) coin toss or drawing of lots.

This is TFC's final game and it will be very tough for them to finish top without the win, three points gives them a good chance and a 2-3 goal win would go a long way to sealing the deal. Regardless of which there is a rivalry and MLS points at stake in all these games. Across the two recent h2h meetings TFC were a combined 8-2 for BC's (3-0 in Montreal) and just need to be a little ruthless in front of goal.

2 units Toronto FC -1 ball 2.55 asian line/Sportmarket.