Laurent Robert's low free kick through the wall in the 31st minute gave Toronto FC a 1-0 victory in its Major League Soccer home opener before a sellout crowd of 20,219 at BMO Field.

After TFC dominated the first half, RSL changed tactics but could not produce the equalizer despite holding a 5-1 second-half advantage in shots on goal. TFC held a 4-1 advantage in the first half.

"It was definitely a tale of two halves there," RSL coach Jason Kreis said. "I think we came out tactically and played that game a little bit wrong, to be honest. I think the coaching staff takes full responsibility for us sitting back, and perhaps we should have pressed them from minute one."

Kreis expected TFC would come out differently.

"I thought they would be all over us," Kreis said. "I thought that they would be high pressing us more, so I think that we maybe could have taken the initiative."

Instead, RSL allowed TFC to come at them in the first half and control the ball for long stretches. Both teams were coming off victories. TFC defeated the Los Angeles Galaxy 3-2 last week and RSL defeated D.C. United 4-0.

Robert's decisive free kick came after Matias Mantilla knocked down midfielder Amado Guevara at the edge of the penalty area.

TFC coach John Carver warned his players that he expected RSL would come out showing more initiative in the second half. He was right after Kreis made the adjustment at the half.

"I thought tactically, we had to go out and high press them as we would at home, treating it as if it was our game for the first 15 minutes." Kreis said. "I didn't expect we'd be able to do it for the whole half, but they did, credit to them. Our guys were giving the ball away a bit needlessly in the first half, I thought just the soccer needed to be better as well."

"This is a tough place to play so we dropped off a little bit and seemed to give them a lot of room and some space to play," goalkeeper Nick Rimando said.

"Second half, I think we turned things around and Jason told us to go at them, and you could tell by what happened. We had our chances, but didn't put [any] of them away."

Midfielder Nathan Sturgis came out of the match in the 27th minute with a hamstring injury and was replaced by Carey Talley. That limited the substitutions that RSL could make later.

"Carey came in and did a commendable job," Kreis said. "It was a little bit of a wasted sub. We would like to have been able to make three attacking subs in that match, but we weren't able to."

"We felt we battered them in the second half, which is something we just have to work on," midfielder Kyle Beckerman said. " We gave up a goal that could have been prevented; we'll just work for next week."

"We felt we got enough to tie it up and get something out of the game, but it just wasn't our day. All credit to them, they got the goal and held us out so we just need to keep working harder and hopefully we'll get some better luck."