It didn't take long for experts and keyboard warriors alike to tell TFC fans why Gilberto wouldn't work out.
The Reds were buying off the basis of a single hot month, he wouldn't respond well to the physical nature of MLS and, oddly considering MLS plays in the summer, that he doesn't like playing in the cold.
There were also a few voices -- most from outside Toronto, it must be said -- that were alarmingly positive. The cult of the young South American as the key to success in MLS is strong.
It seems that there are very few people willing to admit the truth when it comes to a player like Gilberto -- a player few of us have seen and none of us have seen in a MLS environment.
See, "I don't have a damn clue" is not acceptable in today's football reporting environment. Even when you don't.
Well, I don't have a damn clue whether Gilberto will be successful. All I can do is look at the type of player that he is and look to see whether that type has done well when transferred into MLS.
Even then you are just using data to speculate. It should go without saying that no transfer is 100% good or bad, pass or fail.
That said, how have signings like Gilberto worked out in MLS over the past couple years?
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Well, that depends on what you consider what a type of signing Gilberto to be. If you restrict it to young strikers from Brazilian football coming off a 14-goal season then you would be looking at a n of 1 -- Gilberto. If you expanded it out to all South Americans then you get too big a sample. So, we just looked at Brazilians that have come into MLS from the end of 2010 until July 2013.
There we find 22 players. From there we decided that a successful signing would be represented by the player having appeared in 75% of the team's games. Using that number we find that an astounding 17 of the signings have been duds.
They are: Marcos Paullo, Ricardo Villar, Jeferson, Davis Lopes, Luiz Camargo, Marcelo Saragosa, Leanardo, Paulo Jr, Edu, Raphael Augusto, Tiago Ulisses, Digao, Juninho, Pipico, Rafael, Glauber and Kleberson.
It seems absurd to have to point it out, but not all Brazilians are the same. Some MLS observers need to be reminded of that as South Americans in general and Brazilians specifically tend to get a much longer leash than Europeans or, especially, North Americans when signed.
The cult of MUST ONLY SIGN SOUTH AMERICANS is strong in MLS circles, despite those type of players having a pretty dreadful success rate.
Some do succeed though. So, who were the five Brazilians that did well?
Camilo, Marcelo Sarvas, Felipe, Alex and Michel.
Let's take a closer look at those five players.
They ranged in age from 21 to 31, with an average age of 25.8. Three were midfielders, with one forward and one fullback.
Most interesting of all, none came directly from Brazil to MLS. Rather, they were players that had already demonstrated that they had the skill-set needed to thrive outside of Brazil. That's important as not all Brazilians can take success in Brazil and apply it elsewhere.
However, the less than sexy nature of the pathway our five success stories came through -- two from Switzerland, Korea, Costa Rica and Greece -- should illustrate that concerns that Gilberto isn't coming from an elite Brazilian side are overstated. Camilo lead the league in goals coming from the K-League. Talent is talent and Brazil has lots.
Should TFC fans be worried that there is no examples of a successful transfer directly from Brazil to MLS? Maybe, TFC fans worry about everything anyway so it hardly matters. The bigger lesson is the 77.2% failure rate of all Brazilian transfers in. It's slightly above the average for discovery signing transfers, regardless of nationality.
The bottom line is that all discovery signings have an element of risk and that most fail. It's why it's a fool's game to try and build a MLS team around internationals (something TFC fans should understand after 7-years of searching for Al O'Cation to arrive to save the day). The moves the club make to bring in established MLS players will be 10 times less sexy and 100 times more important.
Not that Gilberto isn't important. As a DP, he is Tim Bezbatchenko's signature. For better or worse, his reputation is hanging on a player the vast majority of TFC fans couldn't yet pick out of a police line-up. If a Defoe-type DP fails the blame mostly falls on the player. Fans would assume that he failed because of attitude and effort. They saw him succeed at a higher level after all.
But, If Gilberto fails fans will think it's because management picked the wrong guy and any faith they might be willing to give new management will be flushed away.