Both Toronto FC and Nashville SC feature an American defender with previous ties to the opponent during their MLS careers. Walker Zimmerman, who joined TFC in January, previously spent six seasons with Nashville SC (2020-25), recording 16 goals and seven assists in 172 combined appearances. The Lawrenceville, Georgia native scored Nashville\u2019s first-ever MLS goal in the club\u2019s inaugural league match, a 2-1 win over Atlanta United on February 29, 2020. Zimmerman went on to captain the Boys in Gold to their first-ever trophy, lifting the 2025 Lamar Hunt U.S. Open Cup. During his time in Nashville, the U.S. international was named MLS Defender of the Year twice (2020, 2021), an MLS All-Star three times (2021, 2022, 2023) and an MLS Best XI honouree four times (2020, 2021, 2022, 2023). Zimmerman will miss Saturday\u2019s clash at GEODIS Park through yellow card accumulation after picking up his fifth caution of the season against St. Louis CITY SC on Saturday.<\/p>\n
On the other side, Daniel Lovitz was selected 24th overall (second round) by TFC in the 2014 MLS SuperDraft out of Elon University. The Wyndmoor, Pennsylvania native registered four assists in 47 combined appearances during his three seasons with the Reds (2014-16). Now in his seventh season with the Boys in Gold, Lovitz has registered two assists in 26 appearances, including 18 starts, during the 2026 MLS campaign.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Both Toronto FC and Nashville SC feature an American defender with previous ties to the opponent during their…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":909622,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[194291],"tags":[49,48,3302,16526],"class_list":["post-909621","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-toronto","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-toronto","tag-toronto-fc"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/909621","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=909621"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/909621\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/909622"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=909621"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=909621"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=909621"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}