Head coach Marko Milanovic says AFC Toronto needed some time away after its 2-1 loss to the Vancouver Rise in the Nov. 15 Northern Super League final.
"We had a couple of days drinking," he said.
The line came with a belly laugh, proving while Milanovic lost the NSL championship, his sense of humour is still intact.
And so is his team, which leaves Wednesday for Florida and the first-ever North American edition of the World Sevens Football seven-a-side tournament.
AFC Toronto, as the NSL regular-season leader, joins Mexico's Club America and Tigres Femenil, the NWSL's Kansas City Current and San Diego Wave, Brazil's Flamengo, Colombia's Deportivo Cali and Uruguay's Nacional with $5 million US in total prize money on the line.
Each game lasts 30 minutes on a pitch, about half to two-thirds the size of a normal field. The rules are slightly different, with unlimited rolling substitutions and no offsides. Teams can dress 16 players per game.
Milanovic, named the NSL coach of the year in its inaugural season, says it basically looks like an indoor soccer game, played outside.
"The biggest adjustment is no offsides, because our backline is used to having offsides, and that's something that helps [them] so much," he explained. "And you've trained your whole life to hold the line and not to track players that are clearly offside. But now you have to."
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While the defenders don't like forgoing offsides, it's good news for forwards like Toronto's Kaylee Hunter and Esther Okoronkwo.
“'Esther will love it, I'm sure," Milanovic said of the Nigerian international, who won the Women's Africa Cup of Nations in July.
The tournament runs Friday through Sunday at Beyond Bancard Field at
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