With Julian de Guzman there are three main questions that have to be addressed. Those are:
1) – Is he worth a DP slot?
2) – If not, is he worth re-signing and, if so, at what price point should TFC bring him back?
3) – Is he any good at all?
With the latter two questions we can have a debate using statistics and logic. The DP question, however, does not require any supporting data.
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A DP in MLS has to do several things. It has to inspire fans. It has to act as a marketing arm of the team and it has to actually make the team better. Of those three requirements the last one might be the least important. There were long stretches of David Beckham’s time in LA where he absolutely did not make the Galaxy better. However, there has never been a time when he wasn’t a very valuable DP player for the club and the league.
With de Guzman, there was a time when he lived up to the marketing side of the equation -- a brief time that mostly came before he played a game.
When TFC signed de Guzman they were in the middle of its first real crisis of trust with the supporter’s groups. Amongst that group there was a clamoring for then Director of Soccer Mo Johnston to sign any and all Canadian Internationals. The problem with that was that to get Canadians to play for TFC – quality Canadians – you had to pay a premium.
With de Guzman you had a player that had excelled in La Liga and for Canada in the Gold Cup. He was arguably the most accomplished Canadian player of all time at a club level (at least among those that decided to play for Canada internationally) and was very popular with the biggest and loudest TFC fans at BMO Field.
He was also out of contract and involved in a nasty contract dispute with his Spanish club. See, they didn’t pay him or any other players for long stretches of the year. When de Guzman has the gall to call them out on it, they reacted by blackballing him. No one would offer him a contract in Spain. Suddenly the TFC offer he kept getting, which paid him like a global superstar rather than a very good role player, was too good to turn down.
He was always reluctant. It’s likely that he understood that the contract was setting himself up for failure. As an undersized player playing a highly nuanced role surrounded by very skilled players he could excel in Spain, but in the brutal reality of MLS...
Well, that didn’t seem like a great fit.
It wasn’t. And it wasn’t long before most of the same fans that demanded that he be brought in were calling for his head.
It didn’t help that he was carrying an injury when he came, or that he was being played completely out of position.
The fans didn’t know and didn’t care. Toronto is not a patient sports town – it likes to think it is, but it really isn’t – and de Guzman’s dismissed as a failure before he was a quarter of the way into his time here. There was very little that he could do to appease fans that had already made their mind up.
Flash-forward to today and you see a level of irrational hostility directed at him that in no way matches his current form. Fans have pinned their frustration on him and there is literally nothing anyone can do to reverse that.
He’s failed to be an inspiration to the fans and, as such, he’s become a lightning rod for criticism. Actually, he’s becomes an anti-DP, hurting the club from a fan relationship perspective.
Even if bringing de Guzman back as a DP made sense from a competitive standpoint – and it probably doesn’t. The club needs the slot for an upgrade elsewhere -- it would be unfair to the player to hang the label around him again.
Bluntly, both the club and the player would be insane to want to continue the same arrangement next year. It works for neither party. So, the answer to question No 1 is a clear and undeniable no.
As for question No 2, we will need to look at some more data. Actually, we’ll need to look at question No 3 first before we can decide whether TFC should be looking to bring him back at a lower price.
We will do so in the next part of the Julian de Guzman debate.