Cause and effect is a basic tenet of science that is easily understood by most people. If a rock falls on your head you get a headache. If you forget to feed the cat for a month you have a dead cat. And if you play for the Toronto Maple Leafs your golf handicap improves.
It isn’t always that straight forward, however.
For instance when the United States failed to qualify for the Olympics it set off a debate within US soccer circles that has relevance to Toronto FC. Not quite a straight line, eh?
The debate in question centres around the question of whether the 4-3-3 formation, which the US u23s used without success, can work when you have a bunch of soccer players on your team (as opposed to footballers). The thinking is that it’s a fine way to go about your business if you have the talent of the 1995 Ajax side, but when you have Nick Soolsma on the wing, or Brek Shea as your star player, you might want to re-think things.
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Put less flippantly: The 4-3-3 is a demanding formation that requires all 11 players on the pitch to have a tactical understanding and a technical skill that most players trained in the United States or Canada do not possess.
In MLS, where you are restricted by a $2.81 million salary cap, it is next to impossible to find 11 guys that good. Successful teams in the league have traditionally featured two to three stars that can put the ball into the net and a bunch of cheap and interchangeable plumbers that are athletic, organized and effective at booting the ball the hell out of trouble in the general direction of the guys that might be able to do something worthwhile with it.
In Toronto’s case you can only sign so many Torsten Frings. You need to have a couple Logan Emorys on the side.
The conclusion most in the US are arriving at in the u23 fall-out debate is, to use an old adage, you can’t force a square peg into a round hole. It’s not the formation. It’s the players, stupid. You need to work a formation around the talent you have, rather than try and force a formation onto players that are not equipped to play it.
It seems unlikely that Aron Winter is going to be hired by the USSF anytime soon. The Dutchman has been entrusted to bring the 4-3-3 to TFC and that’s what he’s going to do, 0-4 starts be damned.
That thinking was at the root of his controversial and, to many, baffling comments in January that he would not measure the success of 2012 on whether Toronto FC made the playoffs. As I wrote at the time, those comments weren’t all that shocking when you understand the mandate Winter believes he’s been hired to implement.
There is a reason TFC is the second youngest MLS team by average and has the youngest median age. Winter’s focus is long-term, not pragmatically focused on the here and now. He believes that he is putting the pieces in place to make TFC a great 4-3-3 team in 2013, 2014 and beyond. That’s why the overall development of the academy side
and of younger players like Ashtone Morgan are far more important milestones to him than a 2-1 loss to Montreal is, no matter how frustrating it was to the fans.
Pejoratively his critics call him stubborn. His allies would say he’s patient.
Fans just see that he’s not winning. And therein lies the other square peg, round hole aspect to this – fans that have endured five terrible seasons being asked to wait just a little bit longer. The empty seats at BMO Field for the first three games suggest that it’s a big ask. Maybe too big.
Whispers of a TFC front office power struggle between 4-3-3 idealists and MLS pragmatists are growing stronger...