A year later and the smell is almost gone. As Ben Rycroft detailed earlier today, this is the one year anniversary of the firing of Mo Johnston and Preki.
A lot has changed since that faithful and overdue day. Not including academy graduates, only four players remain – Stefan Frei, Julian de Guzman, Ty Harden and Milos Kocic – from Mo’s time with the club. It seems likely that number may drop further in the off-season.
In a league that rewards teams that keep their core together for years, it’s a troubling statistic, but given Johnston’s spotty resume at talent evaluation and bizarre habit of paying players roughly ten times (give or take) what they were worth, it was likely required.
The question on most TFC fans a year later is, is the club better off now though?
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Undoubtedly.
And, that actually has little to do with the management team lead by Aron Winter. TFC is infinitely better off today because it no longer has a 210-ish lbs Scottish anchor hanging off it. Johnston might be the worst MLS manager of all time. No hyperbole. He lived off the reputation of one fluke draft pick - Jozy Altidore – with New York and that he didn’t screw up the first overall pick in the draft a couple times (when that pick was a consensus No 1). Combine that with his charm – he must have been an impressive figure for the soccer virgin MLSE management that hired him – and you can understand how he got hired in 2006.
What makes no sense is that he wasn’t fired at the end of 2009. Keeping Johnston around for that extra ¾ of a season has harmed this team in ways that cannot be overstated. That’s on MLSE.
That’s the biggest question of all. Has MLSE learned for the mistake of Johnston and put safeguards in place that will allow them to get rid of cancers before it’s too late? Who is evaluating Winter and what confidence do we have that they are qualified to do so?
I’m not sure it’s possible to answer that question.
So, maybe there is still some lingering odor after all.