Level Set 7, Toronto FC: Salad Days & a Fucking Lie

The best days don't always last so long...

What follows is a brief history of Toronto FC, plus more brief notes on whatever long-term tendencies they have. Their 2025 season gets weighed on both sides of that and the whole thing ends with where I see things with them in this very specific moment in time - i.e., before First Kick 2026. You should count on things happening between here and there.

The post ends with a scale I came up with to measure the long-term success of every team in Major League Soccer. It does some things well (e.g., count trophies/achievements), other things less well (capture recent trends). It's called the Joint Points Scale and you can find a link that explains what it does. I was really stoned when I came up with the scale and wrote the post. Caveat lector. With that...

Thumbnail History
With Toronto FC, we arrive at the first expansion team to join Major League Soccer with the Designated Player Rule in full, if budding effect – i.e., the league allowed just one per team. Toronto wouldn’t sign their first DP until 2009 and, bluntly, it took them another five seasons to get it right. As follows (in the short-term), their inaugural season roster has strong Expansion Draft vibes, plus some half-desperate swings at star players – e.g., Danny Dichio, Carl Robinson, Julian de Guzman and…I don’t know, Adam Braz? Marco Reda? Their front office had the right idea (spending big), but finding the right targets took a couple trash seasons, sometimes absolute trash (e.g., Wooden Spoon’s in 2007 and 2012); it took them eight seasons (2015) just to make the playoffs (it was a weirdly big deal). When success did come, it’s hard to say where it started – e.g., was it signing Michael Bradley (2014), Sebastian Giovinco (2015) and Jozy Altidore (2015), or did that team need Greg Vanney to pull them together? – but I do know that those moves built Tim Bezbatchenko’s reputation into something that still sells today. In a better universe, Toronto would have won their first MLS Cup in 2016 against the Seattle Sounders (Stefan Frei had a goddamn day in that one), but they made up for it with a clean sheet/clean win over the same team in MLS Cup 2017. With all that money spent (burned?), it bears noting that the player who made them more reliable - Spanish midfielder Victor Vazquez – wasn’t a DP. Blessed with one of the great, single-season teams in MLS history, and a legit talent in Giovinco, Toronto made the U.S. top flight’s third close run at winning CONCACAF Champions’ League in 2018 and, to their credit, they came as close as any of them. The overall focus(/obsession) over DPs aside, the thing that stands out most about that 2017 roster is the large number of role-playing ploggers that populate it – e.g., Eriq Zavaleta, Mark Delgado, even Jonathan Osorio and the now-forgotten Armando Cooper. For a time, one could hold up Toronto FC as proof of concept for the DP Rule, i.e., the idea that three great players in the right positions can win a title. That wasn’t their last hurrah – they fought Seattle (that tug-o-war went on a few seasons) in MLS Cup 2019 with another DP, Alejandro Pozeulo, leading the way – but the manner of that loss already hinted at a dynasty petering out. The trophy case in Canada’s largest city has collected dust since and that brings up something else about Toronto – i.e., the gambler’s ambition that defines the team that remains Canada’s best in the MLS era. I haven’t seen players get blessed as the Second Coming (of what, though?) the way Lorenzo Insigne and Federico Bernardeschi did when they signed for Toronto in 2022. Both players wouldn’t arrive until the middle of the season, but the mere thought that they'd finish the season with Toronto kept pundits yakking against an Italian-baked turnaround even after a long string of very bad results. Things never improved, Toronto finished 13th in the Eastern Conference that season, 27th overall. They got a sobering smack from the Wooden Spoon the very next season (2023) and I’ll be damned if that wasn’t the gods punishing hubris. And vaping.

2025, Briefly
One has to think Robin Fraser knew he signed upn for a challenge when he accepted the head coaching at Toronto last January, but I’d still love to know what he really thinks today. With Bernardeschi perking up (Insigne continued to piss away both money and a DP slot), the team failed less often in 2024, but remained a couple places and four points away from mediocrity and still further from success. 2025 looked like more of the same, all the way down to the struggling Italians (who checked in July, fwiw), until at least the middle of May. Three wins - including a blowout win at Montreal – made it possible for Toronto to talk about the playoffs without people straining to look anywhere but at their poor, deluded faces. After losses outweighed the wins through the middle of the summer and they couldn't turn draws into wins for the entire months of August and September, plus one week in October, Toronto sunk into irrelevance. Again. Roster instability played a role – just four outfield players reached 2,000 minutes and just three more managed over 1,500 – and while some of the most-fielded players aren’t terrible (e.g., Theo Corbeanu got a little hype), I doubt any of ‘em would make the bench of the bench to a best XI. Their highest scorer (Corbeanu) bagged just six goals, the departing Bernardeschi tied the assist lead with just four, but maybe that’s where the hopeful news begins: Djordje Mihailovic, who joined the team and re-joined Fraser with just 10 games left in the season, scored four goals and added as many assists over that stretch.

Long-Term Tendencies v Recent Trends
Goals Allowed: Bad, more often than not; Goals For: worse, and more often
Their best MLS seasons aside – and, even here, that means just 2016 and 2017 – Toronto has been pretty fucking terrible. Crap defenses, in particular, have plagued them: they’ve gone over in goals allowed most seasons (11 of 19), with some of the worst blows coming between 2022 and 2024. The opposite side of the same soiled token tells a similar tale: Toronto has scored above the league average a mere five over their 19-season existence. Again, this is a team that had four great seasons, but it has been fucking desolation on both sides of them. Things brightened a little last season, courtesy of that late, stingy defense, but they finished lower in the overall standings because the offense…still sucks.

Players I Still Like/Additions So Far
I don’t know enough about Toronto to judge the weight they dropped by letting go of guys like Derrick Etienne, Jr., Raoul Petretta, and Sigur Rosted. They clearly have plenty of work to do (because those last two where among the four who played 2,000+ minutes) – which they started by grabbing former Nashville CB/anchor Walker Zimmerman off the free agent list almost as soon as he hit. The additions stop so far with Brazilian(?) left back Matheus Pereira and that leaves…the rest of the current roster. With Insigne and Bernardeschi finally gone, one has to think (without actually knowing) that Toronto has two (right?) DP spots open in attacking positions. About that: trusting that would come easier had they not whiffed on their two last biggest swings at table-altering DPs. As such, the bigger question I have, especially after looking into the minutes played across the roster, turns on the amount of work they have left to do when it comes to fielding a reliable team.

Historical Success (/Hysterical Failure)
Total Joy Points: 12

How They Earned Them (& *How This Is Calculated, for Reference)
Supporters’ Shield: 2017
MLS Cup: 2017
MLS Cup Runner-Up: 2016, 2019
Wooden Spoon: 2007, 2012, 2023
CCL Runner-Up: 2018
CCL Semifinals: 2012
CCL Quarterfinals: 2021