Greg Vanney admitted after Toronto FC's heartbreaking MLS Cup penalty shootout loss to the Seattle Sounders that he thought a late Jozy Altidore header was the winner.
Vanney's Toronto team dominated much of the proceedings through 120 minutes of regular and extra time on a frigid night at BMO field, but were denied repeatedly by Sounders goalkeeper Stefan Frei in the 5-4 shootout loss.
Toronto held Seattle without a shot on goal for the match and looked to have the winner in extra time when Altidore rose to meet a Tosaint Ricketts cross in the 108th minute only to have Frei parry it away from the top right corner of the goal.
Vanney said after the match: "Yeah, I thought the ball had eyes for that corner it was headed towards and I thought [Frei] was caught in the middle of the goal maybe a little bit and wasn't going to get there.
"Just because it was kind of looping and didn't have a lot of gas behind it, it gave him enough time to set his feet and get back across the goal and it seemed like he almost pulled it out from behind him.
"It was one of the great saves I've seen in a big moment. He saved the game for them, so congratulations to him. He won himself a championship, he's the MVP."
Vanney said the loss was a bitter one for Toronto and that the players in the locker room were feeling the sting and would be for a long time.
But the third-year coach was upbeat about what his team had accomplished during the season -- making the playoffs for just the second straight year and reaching a first-ever MLS Cup title game in club history.
"I think we've energized the city. I feel like there's a real belief in our team, our club, the direction we're going," Vanney said. "I think there's genuine excitement about how this team goes about doing things and how we play.
"And I think we've brought about some belief that this is a group that can get there time and time again. So maybe fans who didn't know much about soccer, now they've tuned in to one of the best all-time series ever, which was us against Montreal, and then one of the most hard-fought finals ever, which was us and Seattle.
"There are a lot of people tuning in and a lot of people, a lot of Canadians for sure, that experienced this trip with us."
Even in the hours after the finals loss, Vanney was already looking to next season and talking about what the club can do to build on the historic strides the once moribund franchise could do to improve.
The coach talked about the impact of Designated Players like Altidore, Michael Bradley and Sebastian Giovinco and where the team would go from here.
"I think one of our key moves in the last couple years is we picked up designated players who are in their prime, not designated players who are at the end of their game," Vanney said. "We can build and work around those guys as a foundation.
"Over the last offseason, we've been able to add pieces to grow and be stronger on the defensive side and give us more depth. We've got a very good team, probably deeper than some people actually know, and we have some young players coming through.
"We're going to build up this core and keep getting stronger, that's our objective. We're just getting started."