It's intuitive that Toronto FC is a young team and that the youth is a contributing factor to the team's struggles at times this year.
But, how young are they? We ran some numbers to find out.
Rather than running a straight average age calculation, we sought to find the average player age on each team, weighted by the number of minutes each player has played so far in the season. The effect of this is to get the average age of a player in the "average lineup" of each team. Thus, this is not the average age of the roster, but rather the average age of the team that has been fielded so far in 2012.
Where did the Canadian MLS teams rank? Find out below the jump.
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1 - Whitecaps - 28.9
2 - Rapids - 28.4
3 - Chivas - 28.1
3 - Galaxy - 28.1
5 - Fire - 27.9
6 - Earthquakes - 27.7
6 - Impact - 27.7
8 - NYRB - 27.6
9 - RSL - 27.3
10 - FC Dallas - 27.1
League Average 27.1
11 - Dynamo - 26.8
12 - Revolution - 26.7
12 - Sounders - 26.7
12 - SKC - 26.7
15 - Crew - 26.5
16 - DCU - 26.2
17 - TFC - 25.9
17 - Timbers - 25.9
19 - Union – 24.9
The numbers confirmed the assumption – Toronto is considerably younger than the rest of the league. The above average age of Montreal and, especially, league-oldest Vancouver was a bit more surprising.
Age by itself is not predictive – you have to have the right guys in place. Just being young doesn't mean you are building right and being old isn't bad if you convert that experience into success.
It does, however, speak to a philosophy. The younger a line-up the more likely that club is aiming at success in the future as opposed to success today. Certainly, that was the thinking in Philadelphia where they club made itself temporarily worse with the goal of being much better down the road.
Conversely, older teams tend to have win-now thinking. The LA Galaxy aren't all that worried about 2016 when there is a MLS Cup to chase now (current struggles aside).
It's also probably fair to suggest that you would rather struggle young than old. Additionally a young movement generally requires patience by fans and it's increasingly becoming clear that many Toronto fans are not willing to extend any more patience.
Again, this does not demonstrate one way or another if Toronto, Montreal and Vancouver are going about things the correct way. It's just another thing to consider when evaluating the clubs' performance.