In the end, it appears Arnold Peralta will not be coming to TFC.
It wasn't exactly rumours that were swirling about the player's arrival in Toronto. Media in Honduras published reports last week quoting the owner of the Honduran club Vida de La Ceiba as saying a deal with TFC for the player had been done. But the Canadian franchise never commented publicly on the matter.
Yesterday, more reports came out of Honduras saying that the player himself had personally nixed the deal. Again, it was the owner of Vida, Carla Dip, making these claims. She said Peralta wasn't happy with certain details of the contract TFC offered him, but he hasn't said anything yet.
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The player reportedly pulled a similar move a couple years back, bailing out on a transfer to Motagua, one of the bigger clubs in Honduras. The background to all this is that Vida is in debt and hadn't been paying its players. Peralta aired his wage grievances publicly in December, and his sale was supposed to help shore up the club's finances.
Now Dip (Vida's owner) is angry over the entire situation and has called Peralta back from the Honduran national team. The Hondurans are preparing to play in the Central American Cup, which functions as something of a Gold Cup qualifying tournament for teams in the region.
Most of this information I culled from various online Honduran newspapers. There was also talk on Twitter of the proposed fee for Peralta being in the $350,000 range, but I was not able to find that reported anywhere by actual media.
No matter the precise definition of that hackneyed sportswriting phrase "baggage," it appears Peralta carries around at least some of it. That said, recent managerial changes at TFC may have played a role in these negotiations too.
Was Peralta the second coming of Amado Guevara? Who knows. But he was a starter on his nation's impressive U23 side at the Olympics and was receiving callups from the senior team. Clearly he was a young talent of some note. Either way, unless you're a fan of both TFC and the Honduran national team it doesn't really matter now.