Big Winter Ahead For Reds
Lots to accomplish in offseason for Toronto FC
When a team just barely misses that goal, however, it isn't so easy to just tear everything down and build it back up again. This is the challenge facing Toronto FC over the winter as the club tries to find the missing ingredient that will finally push the Reds into the MLS Cup Playoffs.
"We have 13 or 14 younger guys and have the nucleus of a good squad," said Mo Johnston, TFC's manager and director of soccer. "We don't need to tinker a lot with the squad. We have three or four guys we're looking at and we'll go from there."
Toronto's quest to finally reach the postseason in its third MLS season came to a sudden end last Saturday when the Reds suffered a 5-0 thrashing at the hands of the last-place New York Red Bulls. Not only was TFC humiliated to absorb its most lopsided defeat in what was such a critical game, but the pain got even worse when the rest of the weekend's results came in and the Reds saw just how close they came to making their playoff dreams a reality.
Had TFC managed just one more point over the course of the season, they would have tied Real Salt Lake, Colorado and D.C. United at 40 points and won the head-to-head tiebreaker between the four clubs. Then it would have been the Reds, not Real, who would have claimed that final postseason berth.
It was a bitter pill to swallow for a Toronto side that, at times, looked like they could compete with any team in the league.
"This year we were very, very close," Johnston said. "We missed out by one point. Three wins and you're top of the division, top of the league. We're close but we failed at the last minute."
The reloading process has already begun at BMO Field, as the club and interim head coach Chris Cummins officially parted ways last Tuesday. Johnston wants to have a new coach in place before the MLS Player Combine and the 2010 SuperDraft, and he stressed that experience coaching in MLS would be a crucial aspect of any new hire's resume.
Whomever takes the job will become Toronto's fourth head coach in as many seasons, but Johnston (who coached the team himself in its inaugural year) doesn't believe that this revolving door on the sidelines has made the club any less attractive to potential new field bosses.
"When you look at other coaching candidates, they'll jump at the chance to come to Toronto knowing we're a big organization, knowing we've got great fans," Johnston said. "We've got the grass, we've got a designated player [Julian de Guzman] in, we're looking to strengthen the team and move on. We're gradually getting better and better and hopefully next year will take care of itself."
As Johnston noted, BMO Field will have a new grass field ready for the start of the 2010 season, thus eliminating the players' long-standing issue with playing and training on the unforgiving artificial surface. With a grass field and a big-name talent like de Guzman in the fold for 2010, however, Johnston knows that if the team comes up short of the postseason again, then he himself will likely be the first to suffer the consequences.
"Obviously, [after] not making the playoffs three years in a row, it stops with me," Johnston said. "If it happens again in the fourth year, of course I won't be here. It's as simple as that. I'm a big boy, I can take it on the chin and I know what's expected."
Roster-wise, Johnson said the Reds will look to add a "a striker that can get us 20 goals a season," a left-footed midfielder, and a center back. The latter position may be the most important, given how many late-game breakdowns TFC suffered during the season. Current central defender Adrian Serioux is one of only a few Reds who will be free agents, and Johnston said he would be speaking to Serioux and his representatives to see if the Toronto native is interested in returning to his hometown club.
While Johnston might intend to just tinker with his roster, some larger changes could need to be made in order to break the tension that apparently exists within the Reds locker room. Dwayne De Rosario and Sam Cronin questioned the desire of a few unnamed teammates in the wake of the New York loss, with Cronin saying that the team needs to "change the culture" in order to be successful.
While nobody on the team was willing to publicly bash anyone else, the root of the matter seems to be that certain players weren't willing or able to consistently work hard in training or in games, and then pointed fingers at others when things didn't go well.
"I would've liked to have seen a bit more heart, a few more players wanting to make a difference and to show up every day in training and compete in every game," De Rosario said. "Once we have everyone with that kind of mentality, we'll have a team that will be very difficult to beat.
"There's bad apples on a lot of teams, but the bottom line is that at the end of the day when you go on the field, you all wear the jerseys. You're all part of the same team. If there's bad apples, they have to look at themselves in the mirror. Most players are trying to be progressive and trying to accomplish stuff here ... those who are trying to disrupt that off the field, they have to deal with their own conscience."
Cummins, in his departing interview with the media, said he wished the best to "95 percent" of the TFC players, but admitted that he could have taken a harder line with the troublemakers.
"There will always be players who aren't in the team will say 'he's rubbish,' you'll always get that," Cummins said. "What I didn't like was, at times, people putting the knife in, backstabbing and talking about people. We're in this together. If there's bad apples in there I'll take responsibility for that because I'm the one that puts the team out there."
If nothing else, though, that 5-0 loss was a wakeup call to the team and will certainly be remembered for motivation heading into 2010. That single point between RSL and TFC will look like a yawning chasm by February's training camp, and team captain Jim Brennan seems determined to make that big leap into next season's MLS Cup tournament.
"We have some good players here, but we just need to get things right," Brennan said. "Nobody can really put their finger on it right now since if we could, we'd be in the playoffs. ... The club deserves better, the fans deserve better and we need to produce."
