In the opening minutes of Toronto FC’s home Voyageurs Cup leg against FC Edmonton the other night, some baffling questions emerged.
The visitors – game and scrappy as they certainly were – fielded a starting eleven featuring no fewer than nine lads who were playing amateur footy a year ago. Toronto FC, fresh off a humiliating lesson in applied MLS soccer just four days earlier in Seattle, sent out, essentially, the first team.
Settling into my high, windy perch to watch – winter coat, hat and gloves securely deployed – I eagerly awaited … the system.
[PRBREAK][/PRBREAK]
Aron Winter’s system. The software program he’s getting his hardware footballers to run.
What else could this be? Up three goals from the first leg, at home against the weakest opening lineup The Reds will face all year, this could only be a major tune-up.
Go out there, gentlemen, and play the system. Possess the ball, push the ball. Don’t even worry about goals so much. Don’t even need them. Just oil up the transition play, and see what kind of lovely set-ups this brilliant upgraded strategy pack can create.
So why, dear readers, did essentially-TFC’s-starting-eleven pass the ball back to goalie Stefan Frei damn-near-double-digit times in the opening ten minutes? Why were they even knocking it back to him from the Edmonton end of the field?
Whatever problems our Garrison Creek Redcoats have had in the first four-plus years of existence, they’ve always been able to go backwards.
By halftime, I found myself pondering a deeper question. Not what is the system? What is a system?
Simply put, it’s a connected series of strategies designed to deal with pretty much any situation that comes up on the pitch.
What should you do if you’ve got the ball on the left wing, and two defenders are angling you out? What should your teammates do to help you? When to give? When to go? How does the holding midfielder respond when one of the centrebacks goes to ground and misses a tackle?
I don’t have a fraction of Aron Winter’s soccer mind, but I’m having trouble seeing “Just over centre, unopposed, early in the game, you pass back to your goaltender” as part of a system.
But Winter was deeply committed to keeping his A-listers out there on Wednesday – to the point where he didn’t make any changes at halftime, and both striker Alan Gordon and drive-train Julian de Guzman eventually were forced out hobbled with knocks. Now we learn Gordon won't be able to dress against Houston tonight.
So – TFC didn’t really rest anybody, and TFC did basically bog-all to work the kinks out of the system.
That’s a head-scratcher, people. They won a two-leg tie they were going to win anyway, and two absolutely vital engine parts had to be – temporarily – replaced.
I loved the lineup when I saw it. Preki would have had TFC Academy reserves out there, bolstered with a 50-year-old trialist from Raging Jackass Falls.
It was obviously an exercise – except the players on the field, there to work and sharpen the system, didn’t seem to have much blessed clue what they were supposed to be doing out there.
Again – as I do – I asked Winter in the post-game presser to comment on Toronto’s movement away from the ball. Again, he said he wasn’t pleased. He also said he’s still on the hunt for new players.
Well and good and understood.
But is it really too much to ask that your best guys – playing against a deeply inexperienced second-tier side – at least know enough of the system by now to consistently go forward, and actually create chances?
Kudos, by the way, to Joao Plata, who managed to do exactly that – including a singing set-up to Gordon’s goal. The rest of the effort was baffling – the stats were basically dead-even – and could prove very expensive once tonight’s home match against Houston is in the books.
Thoughts?
Onward!