First, there was Danny Dichio’s looping volley which gave Toronto FC a last-minute equalizer against the New England Revolution. Then, Rohan Ricketts scored an impressive brace in a 3-2 win over the Chicago Fire in an entertaining, if futile effort to save the year. After that we had that 5-0 implosion away against the New York Red Bulls with everything on the line, and the next year, the season ended with a headline-generating housecleaning, with Preki and Mo Johnston fired in dramatic fashion.
This year? A limp, predictable collapse to the finish line. No moral victories, just the lame hope the CONCACAF Champions League will offer some glimmer of glory, and the bittersweet consolation that their fellow Canadian MLS franchise has fared no better. And, of course, the promise that we will see 2012 transform Aron Winter into Guus Hiddink and Toronto FC into a 1970s Ajax (a 2011 Ajax would do just fine).
Yes, Toronto fans have now taken for granted the Reds will, for the fifth year in a row, not participate in the MLS post-season.
Canada’s soccer intelligentsia has been looking for the lodestone of blame for the last five years with little luck. Few want to say it’s Toronto sports Super Villain MLSE, because that’s the fan whipping boy of choice and we are, after all, professionals. So, we look at management, and Aron Winter is it.
The thought that after such a dramatic shift in managerial thinking from the front office would end in another season of terrible football is too hard for many to bear. Here came our Dutch dream Winter bearing the promise of an slow-growth Orange miracle in our own backyard. Visions of Jedi-like eight year olds working on the Coerver method at a state-of-the-art facility at Downsview have silenced some of the press criticism this season. No one however will wait beyond 2012 before yielding their final verdict on the Winter regime.
Yet the sad fact is it’s still well within the realm of possibility that Aron Winter isn’t up to the task at hand. Major League Soccer is built on the old American liberal ideal that as long as we’re all given the same start position, talent and hard work can take you to the top. This is a single-entity league immune to Euro-style financial doping. The old “blame the spendthrift chairman” excuse won’t fly in this league because all the chairman are spendthrifts, and all roads lead to Don Garber anyway.
Which means success in this league very much comes down to management, whether the role is split in two between player selection and coaching or not. This is a point well-illustrated by Sigi Schmid’s MLS career, epitomized now in his current season with the Seattle Sounders. This is a team Toronto should very much want to be; still alive in three competitions, dealing the cards that are dealt to them without scattering the pack all over the poker table.
So why aren’t we? Well, Sigi Schmid is taken, for one. But there is another problem, which comes down to an obsession with “vision” from the people doing the hiring. First we had the brutish English mid-table approach with Mo Johnston and then John Carver. I have no evidence for it but it often seemed as if the club wanted to exude a “pwopah” old fashioned First Division approach in a league that had almost nothing in common with the Charles Reep eighties, if it ever did.
Then there was the Preki appointment, which seemed like a brief attempt to Major League Soccer-ize TFC, and was an abject failure. Then Winter, Bob de Klerk and Paul Mariner arrived with talk of 4-3-3, possession, Barcelona, Ajax, Johann Cruyff, youth set-up, the works. Wiping the long-ball slate clean, music to a football aficionado’s ear, perhaps. But the question of whether a grand vision for a long, triumphant future of technically elite football was necessary in a league where the financial sky is almost certainly not the limit is still unanswered.
Or rather it has been answered, by Schmid. And by Real Salt Lake’s Jason Kreis. And Bruce Arena. No one talks about an “American vision” with regard to these coaches. They talk about the more banal but immediately-satisfying concept of winning. And you don’t need bells and whistles to win in MLS. You need leadership, the ability to get the best out of the players you have at the right time, luck, and belief. Whether Aron Winter has those in his pocket for 2012 is for next year; but we saw scant evidence of them in the here and now.
It’s still very unclear as to whether WInter is on track. There may have been glimpses of this in the past 2months (ie Columbus win) but nothing says conclusively that they have turned a corner.
Truthfully I’m not sure how these things are supposed to happen. Should it be a very gradual build leading to a dynasty that begins in 2017? Or should it all of a sudden click sometime next season and we never lose again?
I’ve liked some of what I’ve seen but we still seem like a flimsy team without the “steel” or composure of a true winner.
“You need leadership, the ability to get the best out of the players you have at the right time, luck, and belief. ”
That and quality goalkeeping, a decent backline, a solid creative midfielder and a striker that actually knows how to put the ball in the back of the goal. By my count TFC had one of those at the start of the season – now I’d say they have three of the four and the play since the end of July has reflected that.
Unrealistic expectation to turn around five years of “wandering in the wilderness” in nine months. If by the end of next season there have been significant changes and progress moving forward then I think you could judge but after 270 days? Surely anyone deserves more time than that to turn this ship around.
Not to nitpick, but I don’t recall reading or hearing anyone making a promise “that we will see 2012 transform Aron Winter into Guus Hiddink and Toronto FC into a 1970s Ajax.”
That was an ironic extrapolation. Although if you can find this in writing I’d be impressed!
I would just be careful of doing that because it sounds like you’re reporting that as fact.
I politely disagree.
Maybe I’ve been brainwashed again, but they have shown me enough in the last couple of months to feel optimistic about next year.
While we’re holding up Arena and Kreis as the standard to be judged by, take a closer look at their respective first seasons with their current club.
Kreis took over an awful RSL in 2007 and had a terrible first year. Arena grabbed the reigns of the major league joke that was the LA Galaxy and also had a very poor first year while he undid the mess.
It’s only fair, then, to give Winter the same kind of leeway. He may or may not be the right man for the job, but if we’re going to use Arena and Kreis as the standard, then we need to give Winter the same benefit of the doubt that they were afforded.
Schmid’s situation is different as he literally had a clean slate to work with when he joined Seattle. There were no terrible contracts or entrenched malcontents to deal with.
That being said, he, too, had a very rough go in his first two years with a sad-sack Columbus before turning that team into a relative MLS powerhouse.
I should say I’m open ended on the question of Winter and next year, I’m just not convinced yet despite the various extrapolations you can make from the latter half of the season. I’m cautiously cautious.
It’s fine to be cautiously cautious, but remember your history: as Rudi says, it’s actually quite rare for coaches to walk in and turn teams around convincingly in half a season.
Another example: Check out Sigi Schmidt’s record during his time in Columbus. Two awful seasons without making the playoffs before it clicked. His team actually got slightly worse when he took over, in points, than the year previous.
Another example is Gary Smith. Now he’s an “MLS Cup Winner” but he took a few seasons to get to the playoffs.
Arena’s time in NY was also a failure…. (he was fired, after all). And he had a worse record than Ruud after about a season’s worth of games with LA (last part of the season he took over, first part of the following season after he made massive changes).
I think that to expect to be “convinced” by just about any coach this soon is probably expecting too much.
Waaaaay too soon to throw Winter & Co under the bus, I always knew that 2011 would turn out the way it did, as long as green shoots could be seen by the end of the season then the hardship would be worthwhile, & there are, so it has been. He more than deserves another season
Aron Winter said himself before the season that it was going to be a wash. As Rudi stated above, it’s very rare for a coach to come in and turn a team around right away. They’ve been bad this year, but they’ve shown improvement in the past couple of months, and I have no doubt there will be new players coming in to this team next year, especially in the back line.
Total horesplop article. Comme d’habitude.
And, as usual,once readers begin to set the record straight, you wimp out on the tough-guy tone.
A 95%-plus season ticket renewal rate suggests most TFC fans don’t agree with you.
Well set for next year on the wings, both in defence and midfield. Can only improve defensively when Cann and Williams return from injuries, letting Frings play where he belongs. Lively, energetic youngsters – Avila, Stinson, Gold – emerging in midfield, beginning to let skill emerge. Could make De Guzman expendable.
Have bought well with DPs and, with Kocic beginning to hog GK duties, could see Frei moved to add strength and balance elsewhere.
And beginning to introduce TFC academy grads with good results – Morgan for Canada, Henry showing great potential to be a defensive stud. Stinson and Cordon getting favorable reviews, as well.
Only Ryan Johnson looks to be weak addition, but Koevermans largely corrects that flaw.
The Footy Blogs used to fe full of good info and insight. Now we’re subjected to this garbage every day. Please stop.
Please leave.
Ah flashman. You smell blood and then attempt to trash me whilst at the same time proving your football bona fides by way of some crammed in bits, “comme d’habitude.”
Didn’t you say you were going to stop coming back? And yet here you are. Again, I don’t know how to make this any more clear for you. I realize you don’t like my writing. Fine. But like I said the last time, there are several other contributors here. No one in fact has gone away. We’ve got Paolo Bandini, Ben Lyttleton, Brendan Dunlop, Jerrad Peters, and many others besides.
The Footy Blog has a handy RSS feed, which indicates who has authored which article. Might I suggest you keep it handy?
Haha is this guy for real? Written like a true 13-year old! (in french immersion, of course)