Eight to five. If success in football were measured in numbers of head coaches Toronto FC would be leading the Columbus Crew by a baseball score. (Granted, being TFC, they’d surely find a way to lose in the bottom of the ninth to a walk-off grand slam – “Tobiiiiaaaasss!” - but that’s another story!)
Since Robert Warzycha succeeded Sigi Schmid in 2009 for a second spell in charge, after the Crew’s league and MLS Cup double of 2008, Toronto FC has managed to burn through six of the seven men tasked with leading them in that same time. Carver, Cummins, Preki, Dasovic, Winter, Mariner, and now Nelsen; as of Saturday evening, Warzycha will have faced all of them.[PRBREAK][/PRBREAK]
It hasn’t all been sunshine and roses in Columbus either. Warzycha took over the strongest team in the league in 2009 and while he was successful in securing a second consecutive Supporter’s Shield title the Crew are yet to win a playoff series under his direction. Last season they missed the playoffs for the first time since 2008 and Warzycha has taken a fair share of derision, over tactics and selection, from a faction of Crew fans over nearly his entire time in charge.
Through it all the Crew’s ownership has stuck with him. Some might call that a lack of ambition and others pure stubbornness. Certainly, in Toronto, the cries for regime change and accusations of malfeasance from ownership would have been more pronounced. On the whole however it’s hard to argue that the Crew haven’t benefitted from the stability and, since TFC’s inception, they have never finished behind the club from the north shore of Lake Ontario. Even poor Crew teams have been better than their Toronto competitors.
Of course, Toronto FC doesn’t just turnover coaches. They, like Columbus, like all teams in global football, turnover players as well.
Just the Reds manage to do it at a record setting pace.
Since the days of Mo Johnston trading what felt like half of TFC’s picks in their original expansion draft before they’d had 24 hours as a Red the most regular constant at Toronto FC has been the revolving door of playing staff. Even when leadership has had periods that begin to approach, in the universe inhabited by Toronto, something like stability the player carousel has never stopped turning. Aron Winter took the cake on that score when he managed to play 38 different players in league games in 2011 all to hone his squad for a 1W-0D-9L start to 2012.
The excuse that each new head coach needed the opportunity to shape the squad into one that he was comfortable with might have been valid at one point but, getting closer to a decade of churn with each passing season, it should be apparent that eventually someone will have to largely make do with what they’ve been given.
Whether or not Ryan Nelsen and Kevin Payne accept that premise is another question. A little of it started before and a lot would have undoubtedly happened regardless but, mired in an eight game league winless run and a four game losing streak, the preference for a chop-and-change approach to management has once again reared its head.
Julio Cesar never made the field and Aston Bennett and Taylor Morgan never made an impression. Scottish defender Steven Caldwell and Kiwi forward Jamie Brockie have been brought in on loan while negotiations with Tal Ben Haim allegedly continue. Bobby Convey has joined the squad and seems to have made Hogan Ephraim’s loan superfluous. Matias Laba, set to make his home debut, was a signature signing with an eye to the future yet both Payne and Nelsen continue to drop hints of more big summer signings to come. Max Urruti might be the one who got away but talk of another forward or creative player continues ahead of Robert Earnshaw’s deal expiring and possibly not being extended.
So the Reds who take the field late Saturday afternoon will already be a quite different team from the one that started play in March, earning the team’s only league win to date, at the Rogers Centre. Almost certainly another new combination in the back, another familiar constant of TFC’s season if not existence, will be tried.
Yet, for all that, Columbus is more than vulnerable. Coming off a home loss to the Colorado Rapids they’ve caught the injury bug and the absence of their veteran defender Chad Marshall, lost to a hamstring strain, could be vital. Regular starters Danny O’Rourke and Agustin Vianna are also both unlikely to be available to Warzycha as they are currently listed on the official MLS Injury Report while Costa Rican forward Jairo Arrieta has been suspended by the MLS Disciplinary Committee after punching the Rapids’ Drew Moor in the Crew’s last match.
Toronto FC has never had much luck in beating the Columbus Crew and has never completed the task at BMO Field in front their own supporters. If the Reds can remember each others’ names, keep Federico Higuain from feeding Dominic Oduro, and find some offense to test a makeshift Columbus back line there’s no reason they couldn’t change that record.
If they’re successful hopefully they savour the history and the moment because, most likely, most of them won’t be around the next time it happens.