Like some kind of bad horoscope newsletter email – which lands in your inbox each morning to chart your stars – I’ve been getting near daily requests to read the tea leaves and answer the question: why hasn’t MLSE fired Aron Winter?
Even with a Voyageurs Cup secured, at a MLS record of 0-9, it’s easy to understand how those who don’t live here, or cover teams in other cities, are so befuddled by the scenario playing out at BMO Field these days.
I say it’s easy to understand because few here, either, have any answers.
Theories of a Champions League success saving him ring hollow. Ideas about an organization looking for stability do too. And, of course, there is always the tin foil hat wearing crowd who like to posit that MLSE wants soccer to fail and for that matter, all their teams.
But none of those theories on Toronto FC’s purgatory consider that the failure to act on removing Aron Winter may have nothing at all to do with football.
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Currently, MLSE is in its own kind of purgatory - moving from a single, monolithic entity into one owned by two much larger media conglomerates. The sale of MLSE to telecom giants Bell and Rogers last year is in the final stages of being completed and has frozen nearly all internal actions. They have passed CRTC inspection – which was nothing if not just a rubber stamping – and are currently in the process of lining up for inspection before their new masters. It’s expected that all the eyes will be dotted and crosses come to bare by July.
Forgotten in the process is the power vacuum that was created when Richard Peddie – President and CEO of MLSE – announced his retirement last year. Peddie was and is MLSE. He built a brand that in just over a decade went from merging a pair of sports franchises, to a sport media empire that now includes four teams, their own sports channels, a venture into condos and throw in some restaurants for dessert. To say they haven’t rushed the transition from an era of unprecedented sports business success would be an understatement.
But that’s not to say there aren’t some early favorites. The most obvious of which, to succeed the Peddie era, is current executive vice president and chief operating officer Tom Anselmi. As the man seen to be the defacto president of Toronto FC, he may not be a popular man with supporters these days but with 16 years of service, in a company with a history of promoting from within, Anselmi is the odds on favourite to assume the president and CEO’s chair.
So, what does any of this have to do with Aron Winter and his club’s 0-9 record? Lots actually.
Despite bringing in Jurgen Klinnsman to help the soccer naïve Maple Leaf Sports make some of those soccer decisions, the man who ultimately hired Aron Winter and the Dutch Experience (new band name alert) is Tom Anselmi. And he’ll be the man who sits at the press conference table at some point this year and solemnly announces Aron Winter’s firing.
It will be declared another in a long list – in a short time – of failures at Toronto FC. And that’s the type of blemish that a soon-to-be president doesn’t want on his record – especially before making his case to the new owners about why he deserves to be crowned.
At some point this year Aron Winter will be relieved of his duties at Toronto FC. Given the recent shuffling of the deck chairs with the coaching staff, it likely won’t be wholesale changes. But whether it’s after they miss the playoffs for a sixth consecutive year, or if they are bounced from the Champions League, there is little doubt the end will come.
Just don’t count on the axe falling before Peddie’s replacement is named.