As we prepare for the launch of Toronto FC’s latest – and most crucial – rebuild, it’s time to flag something I want very, very much to be wrong about.
The question: How damaging is Maple Leaf Sports and Entertainment to Toronto FC’s actual ability to play soccer?
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As my colleague Duane Rollins pointed out the other day, come Wednesday night over 100 players will have suited up and played for TFC in all competitions. That’s in just four-and-a-half seasons. So let me ask you – how many of those have dozens and dozens of professional footballers have actually played their best ball at BMO Field?
We do have to narrow this down a bit. For anyone playing for their first professional club, there’s no previous track record for comparison purposes. Goaltender Stefan Frei, for example. To me, he’s clearly been the best and steadiest contributor the Reds have ever had.
But how hard is it to imagine him being even better with a competent professional defence in front of him? Not hard at all – but unfair because we’d be speculating.
And in this area, we certainly don’t have to speculate.
How many players have come here, disappointed, and then rebounded to do better work with their next club? I’m going to say dozens.
Soccer doesn’t serve up a lot of useful stats, but the significant majority of players who ever played striker for Toronto FC went into a trough when they were here, and instantly regained their scoring touch after they were cut/dealt/dropped/disposed of.
Jeff Cunningham is the most shining example – a golden boot for FC Dallas after a paltry six goals for Toronto. You can also lob in such names as Ali Gerba, Carlos Ruiz and Collin Samuel. Recent departures such as Chad Barrett and O’Brien White may not be as obvious, but both are clearly feeling better about themselves – and their game – since leaving Toronto. And, as Cunningham tellingly told “It’s Called Football” a while ago, striker is a position that is all about confidence.
The case isn’t as clear in other positions.
Dwayne de Rosario scored a lot of goals from the midfield, and hasn’t even remotely replicated that since being dealt twice, to New York Energy Drink and D.C. United. But DeRo clearly succumbed, in his Toronto time, to the competition this club has always excelled at behind the scenes – head games.
Julian de Guzman has not excelled here, and I don’t think Amado Guevara or Laurent Robert are particularly missing Toronto right now. And Toronto has excelled in breaking defensive players’ confidence since day one.
There’s one guy I can think of who has clearly outdone himself in TFC red – Adrian Cann. Yes, he was a Vancouver Whitecap longer than he’s been a Red, but the 30-year-old centreback clearly found both poise and purpose when he was paired with Nana Attakora in the centre of Toronto’s defence throughout the 2010 season.
Cann’s injured now, which is unfortunate. Attakora, of course, never found favour with the new regime, and has been dealt west to San Jose, where he reunites with Sam Cronin, the sharp, promising young midfielder ex-TFC coach Preki couldn’t freaking stand.
I fully expect both those lads to haunt Toronto FC for years to come.
Now – of course – a lot of the blame for all of this still falls dead across the desk of former TFC scoundrel-in-chief Mo Johnston. When you start looking for MLSE’s culpability, the two biggest crimes are hiring Mo in the first place, and – unforgivably – bringing him back for a fourth season in 2010.
That’s four years of toxic workplace for the players. No wonder performance and production took a roster-wide swoon.
But what about now? Johnston was basically the first guy with a name and a resume who came along. Not wanting to repeat that mistake, MLSE hired German great Jurgen Klinsmann as a high-powered “consultant,” which led directly to the hiring of new Toronto head man Aron Winter.
But was that a reach too far in the other direction? What if all they really had to do was just go out and get a veteran MLS coach with strong European connections – someone like Paul Mariner? And, of course, they did hire Mariner – as an assistant to Winter, who has already shown naiveté in the face of the oft-baffling realities of Major League Soccer.
I’m not knocking the current mid-season rebuild. That old team was one face-plant in Nicaragua from a totally lost season – and clearly wasn’t going anywhere. But what happens now?
Incoming Designated Players Torsten Frings and Danny Koevermans are clearly not going to play the best football of their careers for Toronto FC. But they have to help – if they want to actually play. All eyes will be on them, of course, but mine will also be on the guys that got away – Alan Gordon, Jacob Peterson, Tony Tchani, Nana Attakora. I wouldn’t be the least bit surprised to see solid seasons from all of them the rest of the way.
My fear is that the Winter circus – while not as obviously doomed and hopeless and the Johnston one – may still be a dreadfully misguided approach to solving the various multi-headed problems of contending in MLS.
I’m also concerned that MLSE, in general, is such a strange and unknowable organization, it leaves its soccer players thinking about all sorts of distracting things that have nothing at all to do with who the next opponent is, and how to play the next ball at their feet.
Four and a half years in, Toronto FC is clearly and presently the least-successful franchise in the history of Major League Soccer. They are the only side ever to miss the playoffs four years on the trot, and have one of the drabbest, dullest, most pointless records in the league so far this season.
Here’s the fear – and now will be the perfect time to find out for sure:
Does the simple act of working for Maple Leaf Sports and Entertainment knock the top ten percent off of almost every Toronto FC player’s talent?
Remember, in a tough, gritty, competitive league like this, players live and die with the tops of their game. If you don’t have it, you don’t produce. And the team, on and on and over and over, doesn’t win.
If the current mess continues on from here, it ain’t Mo Johnston’s fault. And any extent to which it’s Winter’s can, I submit, be laid squarely in the boardroom of those who hired … both of them.
As I said, I want very much to be wrong about this.
But the time has come to ask tough questions of those in the owner’s box. The final answers will begin taking shape on Wednesday night.
Onward!