Indiana Vassilev knows the Union have themselves to blame for not beating Toronto

When Indiana Vassilev scored for the Union in the fourth minute Saturday, it was easy to believe the team with the best record in MLS would keep that title for the rest of the night.

Not only did Toronto FC come to town near the bottom of the standings, but the Reds played with a backup goalkeeper who’d given up 35 goals in his previous 18 first-team starts, and had made just one topflight appearance all year.

It did not take long for Vassilev to make it 36 in 19, and the Union seemed to be off and running. By the end, though, they were stuck in an ugly 1-1 tie, with the equalizing goal conceded at the start of 10 minutes of second-half stoppage time.

A team that had fired 30 shots at the Colorado Rapids in its previous league game mustered just 12 against the Reds, and none of them came after the equalizer.

Thus two points were lost in the standings in a game the Union (15-5-6, 51 points) knew they should not have let slip.

“I don’t think we were as good as we wanted to be in both halves,” Vassilev said afterward. “I guess that the positive going forward is that it’s not good, but we really weren’t at our best today, and we should have won the game. … It’s kind of one of those games where — I’ll say another one of those games where — we should have gotten three points. We didn’t, but you guys know it’s a long season.”

Asked how disappointed he personally was along with his players, Union manager Bradley Carnell said: “The guys are disappointed enough, so we don’t take it personally. We just have to take it on the chin and move on to the next one.”

» READ MORE: Union give up late goal in 1-1 tie with lowly Toronto FC

It was also natural to ask Carnell whether he felt his players got too complacent after the early opener.

“I don’t sense complacency,” he said. “I sense when it doesn’t work our way, we get frustrated that it doesn’t work in a certain way. And then when the game takes on emotional content, I feel we should try and stay — and I know it’s a game of emotions — as machine-like as possible.”

That did not happen in the second half, especially in the 56th minute. There was much anger among Union players and staff about referee Tori Penso’s decision to call off a goal by Tai Baribo after a video review. Baribo had seemingly gotten the last touch in a rather ugly free-kick sequence, but it was taken away because Baribo was offside when the free kick was initially taken.

Carnell claimed he was “still waiting for the clarification” on the reversal in his postgame news conference. Vassilev said, “I don’t even know what Tai does.”

» READ MORE: Milan Iloski is ready to jump right into the Union’s squad, and the playoff race

In fact, they all knew why the decision was made. As the broadcast replay clearly showed, Baribo was offside by a clear distance at the point of Kai Wagner’s service. It wasn’t called in the moment, and when play continued, Baribo was onside when he stuck the ball home from near the goal line.

You’re allowed to be in an offside position on a free kick if you’re judged to be not actively involved in the play. It’s a subjective call, and the Union believed that because Baribo didn’t touch the ball, he wasn’t actively involved.

Plenty of others who looked at the replay saw that even though Toronto’s Alonso Coello deflected the ball before it got to Baribo, the striker was right in the middle of the line of players from both teams who lined up to wait for the initial service. That countered the claim that he wasn’t involved.

There was much anger at Penso throughout the night, from the stands and the bench. Though the Union were whistled for 16 fouls to Toronto’s eight, they didn’t help themselves much on that count either with the way they played.

But as so often happens, it shouldn’t have come to that. This was a game the Union should have won without focusing everything on one play. Vassilev summed it up well when he backed himself out of incurring a fine for criticizing the refs.

“We’re a good enough team,” he said. “We have to be putting two or three goals in and not really leaving it up to the refs, because if we do that we’re putting ourselves in a bad spot already.”