What now?
It's a question that's been asked six times. The answer has been the same each time. The club has yet to listen.
How does TFC drag itself out of the hole it's in? By looking at the rest of the league, stop thinking it knows better and do what every successful MLS team has done in the past.
Create stability, identify a core group, understand the vital importance of economical, domestic grunts and stop looking for shortcuts.
Shortcuts like a hopeless addiction to magic beans and home run signings. There is a role for both allocation money and DPs, but no successful club is built on that foundation.
This isn't complicated.
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What is trickier is getting the right grunts to build around. For that you need to trust that those in charge know what they are doing. And, this is where things get depressing.
There is little evidence that the newest group of decision makers is any more competent than the last bunch. Yes, Tim Leiweke signed David Beckham, but the importance of Beckham to winning the MLS Cup was overstated and he was the type of big name signing that was as much aimed at selling tickets as it was at winning.
In fact, there wasn't much winning until Bruce Arena was brought in to chase the less sexy grunts mentioned above. Before that it was an expensive European getting frustrated at bad college players.
So, that leaves fans that want to believe with just one option: hope that Ryan Nelsen can become as good as Bruce Arena. Or, at least, that the Nelsen/Bez team can become close to as good.
It's possible. Unlikely, but possible.
You can reasonably believe that Leiweke will find someone to spend MLSE's money on. And, it's possible that they might be good enough to drag TFC up to the level of mediocracy. Like Montreal they could get themselves into the play-in game. They really aren't that far behind that level.
If you're happy with that then God bless.
But, to be truly elite the icing signed by Leiweke must go on top of a much, much, much, much, much better cake.
I wish I could tell you that I believe that will happen. But, I've followed the team for too long to be that naive.
Until comments are back on feedback can be sent to @24thminute or duanegrollins (at) gmail.