Dutch legend Johann Cruyff was the great psychologist of world soccer. He spent a lifetime persuading players to strive for a Zen state whereby they tried less and did more.
Cruyff summed the approach up this way: "You play football with your head, and your legs are there to help you."
This idea of the unimpeded mind-body connection is contained in the word "mentality," a very particular, yet also expansive, term of soccer art.
Toronto FC's Victor Vazquez was raised in the crucible of Cruyff's Barcelona way of doing things. He uses the word a lot. Depending on how he deploys it, it can variously mean the team's approach, its attitude, its tactics or its mood. Often, all those things at once.
Individuals may be very good at soccer, but it won't matter if the team's mentality is poor. That's the upshot.
In a lovely Spanglish turn, Vazquez identified on Tuesday what was required of his team in Wednesday's (they hope) penultimate game of the Major League Soccer season: "We have to be really strong on the brain."
Toronto FC coach Greg Vanney, an American, uses a different vocabulary. Where Cruyff and Vazquez would say mentality, Vanney says "principles."
Tactics change. Principles – the set of which Vanney never quite defines out loud in public – do not.
Right now, you would call Toronto FC's mentality unusually strong given recent events. The team cakewalked through most of the season. The playoffs have been a knottier climb – one impressive win, one grisly loss and one turgid draw.
The stop-start nature of the MLS postseason – one day on, 10 days off – haven't helped matters.
That has not seemed to bother them. At least, not too badly. Well, maybe a little.
When someone commented (fairly) to Michael Bradley on Tuesday that the team might have "focused too much on calmness" in last week's goalless encounter in Columbus, the team captain did not receive the critique open-heartedly.
After a pregnant pause during which his head slowly swivelled so that he could take hold of the questioner in his stare, Bradley said: "I don't think so. Why do you think that we did?"
Because one of his teammates had already said that.
Having given the warning and received a reasonable response, Bradley's rattle stopped shaking.
Every time he does something like this, which is more often than most pros, you think to yourself: If he can be this intimidating leaned up against a wall in tube socks and flip-flops, imagine how the people who have to go up against him in cleats feel?
It is in Bradley's nature – his mentality, you might say – to find both sides of every scenario and judge them equally applicable. A typical Bradley lesson in soccer hermeneutics will include: We have shown we are very good, but we could still improve a lot. We've set ourselves up nicely, but it can all go wrong in a hurry. We are calm, but not too calm or perhaps not even calm at all, if that's what the situation requires.
Vazquez is Bradley's temperamental opposite. He'll tell you what should happen, rather than all the things that could happen.
Toronto FC will get its two best offensive options – Sebastian Giovinco and Jozy Altidore – back from suspension on Wednesday evening.
"We will score, well, not many goals, but we will score two or three goals for sure," Vazquez said.
That's within the realm of possibility, but it's something more than optimism. Columbus hasn't given up three goals since July. A scold would say that a comment like that is creeping up close to overconfidence.
The pessimistic view would be that neither Altidore nor Giovinco have played a competitive minute in more than three weeks, and have one goal between them this postseason. No one on the Toronto team has scored in the past 200-or-so minutes of play, the longest drought of the year by some distance.
Columbus doesn't need to win to advance to the final. A 0-0 draw sends Wednesday's game to added extra time and, eventually, penalties. That's the only scoreline that could result in an extra period. Any other sort of draw sends Columbus through on the away-goals rule.
For its part, Toronto must win to advance. It sounds simple, but often isn't.
This is where things get nervy in soccer – when players start trying to do math and kick a ball at the same time.
During the regular season, a lead is a lead. In the playoffs, it's one goal the other way from a loss. Even when you're sailing along, you sense how close the boat is to flipping over.
It's at this point that weak-minded teams do silly things, like try to back up and absorb pressure too early or press too hard the other way trying to buy insurance and leave themselves open on the counter.
Again and again in soccer, often at the very highest levels, we've seen very good sides do very stupid things when they start thinking about elimination math.
Vanney has spent more than three years putting this team together and establishing its mentality/principles. Now we get to see it/them in action.
The one-game final, if TFC gets there, is a crap shoot (last year, Toronto rolled a seven). Nobody is thinking in that scenario. They're just playing.
Wednesday's game is the one they've had time to dwell on, to turn over in their minds, to regret chances missed in the first leg, and the mistakes that robbed them of their potency in the game before that. This one is the real mental test.
Toronto should win it, which isn't saying much. The better team should always win.
The result is not the thing that matters over 90 minutes. The mentality is. Play with your brain, and allow your legs to help.
Cathal Kelly