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.

Toronto FC 2-1 FC Cincinnati: My Ongoing Allan Cruz Obsession

This is on the ceiling above my bed, and in 3 other rooms. No, 4.

To start with the good news, FC Cincinnati gave fans a couple things to chew on last night. And, for those who know how this schtick works, the bad news is that the game ended in (yet) another loss for FC Cincy, 2-1 at Toronto FC this time. Moving on now to ambiguous news, what does pushing this current iteration of Toronto FC to within one header of coughing up a point actually mean at this point?

First and foremost, this game recalled the home loss to the Los Angeles Galaxy as much as any recent game. It took Cincinnati too long to come into the game - during which dry spell they gave up a goal they can ill afford – but, once they did, they generally passed the eye test, looked the part of team in North American soccer’s top flight, and so on. In something that may or may not come as a surprise, Cincinnati wound up creating more/better shots by the end of the game – and that’s without some (“alleged”) stars missing. I’ll get to that, but the sad, blunt truth is that Jozy Altidore’s goal for Toronto put the game beyond realistic reach for the Ohioans.

Before focusing on Cincinnati, I want to say, this win should scare the crap out of Toronto and their fans. I think as highly as the next guy of Altidore, but that’s not a goal he scores every week; what’s more, he benefitted (a little) from the pass coming in slightly behind him, in that his touch backwards widened the space for that shot between him and the nearest defender (Hoyte, whose momentum carried him deeper toward Cincinnati’s goal). You can quibble with that – I mean, Wonderwheel (that’s Mikael van der Werff) had the angle to step harder to close down the shot – but, as the broadcast booth kept repeating down the stretch, all it takes is a moment, and Jozy fired that shot pretty goddamn fast.

TFC had a moment or two after that, but nothing remarkable – and certainly not anything like the unrelenting frequency of what Nick DeLeon and Richie Laryea did to Mathieu Deplagne’s flank during the first half. Had you watched only the first half of that game – or even if you shut it off after Jozy’s goal – you probably would have expected the gradual withering of FC Cincy’s resistance until TFC knocked in another goal or two to labor the point about which was the better team. That didn’t happen, and that’s how Cincinnati replicated and, as I see it, improved on that earlier performance against LA. And, Toronto, one of the most expensive teams in MLS, almost let that happen, at home and against the worst team in the league. These are not TFC's finest days...

Toronto FC 3-1 Chicago Fire: Art and Scaffolding

Yep. Down to the visage of grim concentration.

After watching Toronto FC knock off the Chicago Fire 3-1 in Toronto, I logged out of MLS Live confident that the first headlines I read would hail the return of Sebastian Giovinco. And, yep. That’s entirely understandable because goals win games, after all, and Giovinco played like a man seeking to make whole his wounded professional pride…

…and, side bar, I think that’s what MLS really needs when it comes to foreign players; guys who play as if the stumbles they encounter in MLS somehow invalidates their accomplishments elsewhere. (Another sidebar: or guys like Diego Valeri, who feels a like an orphan who found a home.)

I’m going to lean into another cliché to explain this win: Toronto won this game in the middle of the field. Toronto’s trio – which put Michael Bradley in the hole behind Victor Vazquez and Marky Delgado – simply overwhelmed Chicago’s duo of Dax McCarty and Juninho, with Bastian Schweinsteiger in front of them; congrats to Toronto, too, for being the first MLS team to contain Schweinsteiger…proves it can happen. In recent weeks, Chicago has been able to get the ball in, near, and around the top of a team’s defensive third and keep the ball in there; they worked combinations from there (like this) that led to goals. Toronto’s midfield – and especially its back three – stepped aggressively to keep that area clear; any time it got in there, their defense swarmed to either pick the ball clean or force a bad pass.

Chicago couldn’t get a damn thing going as a result. The broadcast threw up another cliché – e.g., that Chicago was “having trouble getting hold of the ball” – and I landed on a more nuanced connotation for that concept, one broader than possession. Think of it as “handle” in basketball, something closer to a lack of control; Toronto basically strangled off Chicago’s preferred paths to goal and that killed them. A moment came around the 60th minute when Schweinsteiger made a clear attempt to haul the game onto his shoulders, but Toronto swallowed that up too. Pretty impressive outing.

MLS Cup Review: Darkness and Light

Just google "shitty trophy." This masterpiece shows up surprisingly early.

[Yes, Jesus, the title is tongue and cheek.]

Darkness

Today, I sat through the MLS Live’s condensed replay of MLS Cup 2016…and, for the record, my minimum charge for re-watching that one-night revival of soccer-as-rugby in full starts at $50. The face-off between MLS Cup debutantes, Toronto FC and the Seattle Sounders, featured two teams desperate not to fuck up and, as such, it heavily favored labor over artistry. (NOTE to author: Overwritten narrative? One that you will never pick up again?) If teams won games by getting in each other’s way, this would have been a final for the ages. In soccer, though, teams win games by scoring goals - whenever and however they score them – and Seattle dragged the game to penalty kicks, where they scored five goals to Toronto’s four. That’s more goals.

And that’s also how Stefan Frei’s bear-paw save became the game’s biggest talking point…

I took the time to read other people’s articles this morning (busy as hell this afternoon; goddamn Christmas), and most sing the same notes – e.g. Seattle never managed a shot on goal, Frei’s save, and the broad argument that there’s not a lot to say beyond that. The “advanced course” of articles offer details that make sense only to those more finely-tuned to some sub-plots – e.g., that this was a particularly shitty final to present to a broadcast TV audience after years out of the spotlight; that Seattle’s Osvaldo Alonso would juice the holy shit out of his knee before missing this one; and that, of course, Toronto’s Jonathan Osorio would get emotional after the loss.

After reliving the final (in condensed fashion), I’ll only say I found a couple strings to pull out a little further. One thing that didn’t show in the mini-game is something only one article (by Sports Illustrated’s Grant Wahl) flagged. For me, this was one thought I kept coming back to, especially on Toronto’s side of the ball

The Late Tackle, 12 09 2016: All MLS Cup Preview, and Nothing But

Sweet Jesus. That is Chatty Cathy and she is terrifying!

So, the 2016 Major League Soccer season reaches its long-delayed climax (srsly, entire month of November was pure whiskey-dick) tomorrow afternoon when the Seattle Sounders visit Toronto FC to vie for MLS Cup. My plans for the day include pulling on some loose fitting clothing and burying myself in blankets on a couch and challenging my body to stay awake despite all the depressants I no doubt will dump into my system in order to cope with what has potential to be, the final insult of 2016. By that I mean Seattle might win the damn game, which would be awful, while also putting an end to my dream of buying a Sounders jersey (nah, I’ll steal one; no money for them) just so I can put [___] over the crest – e.g. where the star goes after your team wins.

It’s not like it’s hard to find write-ups and predictions for tomorrow’s game – the official preview post on MLSSoccer.com has about 20 of the things – because it’s the event of the annual soccer calendar. I’d still like to offer up some final thoughts, for am I a Chatty Cathy Doll, one that talks even without someone pulling the string. Hope I can touch on something novel.

I touched on this thought a couple times over the past week, but when it comes to framing the Cup, I think it’s important to understand it as something other than just the next game for either Seattle or Toronto. “Form” matters, of course, but, in a rough and real way, Seattle is a different team from the Montreal Impact (for Toronto) and Toronto is a different team than the Colorado Rapids (for Seattle). And it goes even deeper than that. Basically, Toronto confronts Seattle with entirely new problems to solve and situations to exploit and vice versa. Here, an honest man acknowledges that there’s not much hard data to work with here, because the teams met only once in 2016 (and under pretty different circumstances). With that, let’s start with what we do know…says, the guy who just gave “form” the side-eye not 100 words before. And, in another nice touch irony/self-flagellation, wherever did I leave that “how they got here” post that I gently mocked yesterday? Ah, there it is. So, fuck me from two days ago, that’s worth reading. Now, let’s take a step further back…

The Late Tackle, 12 08 2016: Still More MLS Cup Crap, Players Moving, Players Departing, and an Understudy Rising?

Looks like he's been crying. Or he's just drunk.

You know the drill: MLS Cup dominates, while the 18 (or 20) other Major League Soccer teams quietly start figuring out how they’ll knock the eventual champion off its pedestal. Circle of life, etc.

More MLS Cup Crap

For all that it might not come through, I’m actually pretty excited about this year’s MLS Cup. I’ve got a clear, strong voter interest (which, my luck, spells a Seattle Sounders win, goddammit). Whatever happened with them all season long (e.g. Seattle sucking for 2/3 of it), both teams hit the final playing well and, on top of that, each team’s stars are shining. That goes for the attacking players as much as anybody, which could explain why Goal.com’s predictions post sees goals, goals, goals in MLS fans’ future (to be fair, one prediction only gets to “goal, goal” and, also of interest, gives both to Seattle). A related article, this one a compare/contrast between Jozy Altidore and Jordan Morris, sticks with a similar focus.

I’ll put up more thorough personal theories tomorrow (good lord willing), but part of me wonders how much faith in high scoring grows from a form of recency bias. Some articles talk about loosely about how either team attacks (great!) and defends, but without much discussion/acknowledgement of particular circumstances. For instance, how much of the “vulnerability” in Toronto FC’s defense grew from the Montreal Impact series alone? Isn’t it just as important, if not more important, to note that they shut out New York City FC in their first round series, while also allowing 19 fewer goals through the length of the regular season, as was noted in a write-up on Drew Moor’s move to/upgrading of Toronto’s “rugged” defense. (Alternately, is it rugged and vulnerable, y’know, like how Daniel Craig played James Bond in the last Bond flick?) The point could be right or wrong, but the basic assumption tracks a logic similar to writing up a “what happened to Lodeiro” piece based on Seattle’s series against the Colorado Rapids (related: Have you watched that tape, Toronto? Can you watch that? Please?).

Or, to crawl out of the other side of the rabbit hole, maybe Nick Hagglund will give away a cheap goal, as noted in a “young players to watch” post I read (Hagglund made the cut and, in fairness, he is genuinely of interest). By the same token, maybe he scores a goal and gets an assist, too. (Or maybe Montreal didn’t game-plan Hagglund fer shit?)

At any rate, yeah, looking forward to MLS Cup Saturday. Now, looking elsewhere…

The Late Tackle, 12 01 2016 - MLS Cup Finalists Finalized (Plus Everyone Else's Crappy Consolation Prize)

Like that, only with a couple consolation goals...

MLS Cup: Conference Champions...Revealed!

I never heard what Greg Vanney had to say just after halftime.

The 20-minute mini-game cut off the highlights right as Vanney, Toronto FC’s coach, was about to reveal his secrets – e.g. maybe that they’d channeled demons into Jozy Altidore (for he did play possessed), or that someone finally explained to Nick Hagglund, at long last, that he enjoys the freedom to score goals, as well as keep them out (or maybe that he was much bigger and faster than the Montreal Impact’s Marco Donadel). Vanney’s words could have explained everything, or nothing. What was clear from the start, though, was that Toronto hit the field turned up to 11 (shit, used a cliché). Nothing made that apparent quite like Michael Bradley’s slashing/manically-determined run into Montreal’s penalty area inside the first minute. (NOTE: Due to where and when I post, I only have the capacity to link to the match highlights; sorry for the inconvenience!)

Toronto simply never let up; if they ran over the Impact, they did it slowly. Or, rather than ran them over during the game, then backed over them in extra time. Count me among those shocked by Montreal’s set-piece defending (assuming such population exists). Hagglund got crazy-free twice (at least) and those lapses led to a panic/assist on (was it?) Toronto’s first, cleaned up by Armando Cooper (if memory serves), and the goal that forced extra time. At least Montreal had an excuse when it came to Hagglund – no one saw him coming – but, because they were warned about Altidore (see?), one has to ask just what the goofy fuck Montreal was thinking by letting Altidore run completely unmarked right before half; that was one hell of a tricky goal, but Jozy was good for it (again, possibly due to possession; there was no other word for how he approached the game all day, other than “surging”).

Montreal didn’t so much lie down, as protect its vitals for as long as it could while slipping in a couple pokes with a shiv. Dominic Oduro – who quietly put in a very credible year, as well as a rock-solid playoff run, which breaks his famous every-other-year pattern (congrats, kid!) – set himself up for the goal that could have won the series (against anything but a freight train) with the kind of touch he pulls off once every cycle of the moon. Piatti stuck in another one when he wrestled Montreal’s second goal over the goal-line. It was a brave performance, but Toronto was in what some folks call “a mood.”

The MLS Conference Finals, Phase One Review

The only apt metaphor for the MLS Playoffs.

Between both Major League Soccer Conference finals, I missed at least 1/3 of the total action and exactly 3/7 of the goals. For details, see my twitter feed (@JeffBull5) where I bitched and bitched and bitched.

All the same, both final results – each of which featured away goals – set up intriguing second legs for both series. Sure, the Seattle Sounders could fuck it all up right away with an early goal, and Toronto could very well ruin every last thing by doing the same, but they might not. I won’t dwell too much on what I think will happen, not least because that’s bit me on the ass again and again throughout 2016. Think that clichéd saying about the weather and sticking around…

Montreal 3-2 Toronto FC

How Much I Missed: Came in around the 29th minute for this one.

The note above means that I only saw Montreal’s first two goals in replays, not real time. As such, I have no clear sense of context – and ESPN’s halftime notes didn’t give me context; they gave me detailed breakdowns of what went wrong, but not a sense of Montreal blitzing at Toronto again and again and again. Montreal did do that later, certainly during the time I watched, even that dried up eventually, if not totally. On Montreal’s first goal, I’d say nothing went wrong in any pure sense beyond Patrice Bernier making the absolute most of a split-second to pivot and provide an inch-perfect pass to Dominic Oduro (seriously, that was a helluva pass). The second goal, though, coming as it did only minutes later and featuring bad positioning from a fullback and a TFC defense that had clearly fallen asleep (otherwise, how does Matteo Mancosu beat two defenders to the ball?), put Toronto in a hole that they barely crawled out of.

Then Montreal scored a third, just a weird thing that saw Ambroise Oyongo dribble from the depths, then into scoring position, then to scoring. A big hole, in other words, and one that involved a lot of digging.

The U.S., St. Vincent & the Grenadines, and an Inevitable Win

I see the U.S. winning the World Cup.

Call it a good start, I guess. Or just call it the right one. With the U.S. Men's National Team tangling with a small island minnow like St. Vincent & the Grenadines, anything too far short of clear victory would have begged questions. One of those could have been, how the hell did St. Vincent score that first goal?

Within the U.S. context, this is the equivalent of those preseason spring warm-ups that Major League Soccer clubs play against the local college: victory is basically assured and the day will be a success so long as Hristo Stoichov or Dema Kovalenko doesn't break some poor kid's leg (hmm...thought Kovalenko broke a college kid, too; nope, just one of my all-time favorite MLS players, Ronnie O'Brien). In any event, St. Vincent (or do they prefer the Grenadines, when people aren't feeling up for spitting out the whole mouthful?) could barely get out of their half. The game only becomes interesting if you rewrite the rules to allow Grenadines (going with that one, this time) a goal every time they got the ball across the midfield stripe at the feet of one of their players. Even with that revision, I think they still would have lost last night...

So, I guess that leaves talking about the U.S. Men's collective and individual performances. On the collective side, see above, I suppose. At its simplest, the U.S. just had to figure out how to break down the St. Vincentians (also, probably not correct...know what, hold on: I'm going to figure out how to do this right, show a little respect. OK, have my resource...added "the" to the nation's formal title; and, hence forward, I will call the players and their country by their right name; OK, got it). And they did. To their credit, the Vincentians fought hard to keep the U.S. in front of them and to make their one goal stand up...and that lasted about 6 minutes or so. It did take a nice headed goal by Bobby Wood to equalize, at least, and a couple U.S. goals felt a little lucky, thanks to deflections (still, did not know Fabian Johnson could take a respectable free kick; see all the goals here). And so the U.S. walked out 6-1 winners.

I'll wrap up with thoughts on a couple players, even while acknowledging that a game like this provides a pretty distorted lens by which to judge anything. To put that more clearly: there are things U.S. attackers can do against the Vincentians that they can't do against even Trinidad & Tobago (who, for the record, won last night). Anyway, on with the Yanks, starting with a very special debut.

MLS Week 28 Review: Blow-by-Blow, Team-by-Team

Our interns, hard at work.

As regular readers know, we at C & C Labs (Conifers & Citrus Laboratories, LLP) experiment continuously with framing, formatting and concepts, all with the long-term goal of presenting the perfect readable post. Yes, we've laid some mutant eggs – let us not forget...well, shit, already forgot it, apparently, but, suffice to say, we've laid some eggs that the mother not only walked away from, but quietly pushed off a cliff. And she's right. Fuck those things.

At any rate, somewhere in the middle of spacing off during...again, I dunno, some game, we came up with another approach, this one involving a full-spectrum review of Major League Soccer review that taxes neither writer nor reader. And doesn't that sound...just nice? This is really straight-forward (for once): I frame every game that happened in the week just past and wrap it up in one of two ways:

1) I provide three talking points for each club for the games where I went the full 90; and
2) Just one talking point per team for each game where I only took in the 20-minute mini-game.

Nifty, I think, and clear, I hope. The "interest rankings" have been updated at right. So, let's get rolling.

MLS Week 28
It's pretty easy to frame the week as a whole: the clubs that look ready showed it by winning where and when they should. The clubs that didn't? Well, they choked, didn't they? Some more than others, too, but most begged questions along the way. In the former column (winners!), you've got Columbus Crew SC, New York Red Bulls, the New England Revolution, and, if you're stretching, FC Dallas. So, who blew it this weekend? How about the Houston Dynamo, the Seattle Sounders and...goddammit, the Portland Timbers. Yeah, we're in there...especially given what Orlando did to Sporting Kansas City just today. Jeez-and-Us. Then again, guess who else slipped? The mighty, mighty, almighty Los Angeles Galaxy. So the league condenses again!

On to the games, full 90 first!

Portland Timbers v. Sporting KC; already written up, and in some distress.

Toronto FC 2015 Season Preview: Send the Drunken Sailor to Toronto. With His Wallet

A rainy day at BMO.

What Happened Last Year
Toronto FC tried so friggin' hard to make the playoffs for the first time in 2014 that it's fair to wonder if the Major League Soccer (MLS) Competition Committee didn't spare them a pitying thought when it expanded the number of playoff spots going into 2015. TFC's 2014 saw the arrival of Michael Bradley, who embraced the club with both arms, and Jermaine Defoe, who...ah, moving on. Gilberto came, too, and he did...things. It's hard to remember now, but TFC started pretty brightly – even as an uncomfortable number of red "L's" trickled into the early returns. No, my chief memory of Toronto's 2014 was the faint, yet very real awareness that their playoff hopes were absolutely fucking dead by September (this headline is funny in that context). The players talked bravely in the media, but the funeral dirge played a little too loudly by the time the last games came around. This made for painful viewing, to be sure, even as the Reds dying corpse could still kick hard enough to, oh, end my Portland Timbers' playoff chances (touche, fuckers). Conventional wisdom held that too few capable planets revolved around TFC's stars. Eh, could be. It certainly didn't help that Stephen Caldwell had to raise pups like Nick Hagglund while trying to hold Toronto's defensive line. It also probably didn't help that Defoe missed too much of the season (and hated Toronto with all his heart) and that the World Cup kicked Bradley's ass twice over (that's once for wear and tear, and once more for confidence). Whatever happened, the whole project has to float near the top of MLS's all-time Expensive Flops list. Fer reals.
Final Stats: 11-15-8, 41 pts., 7th in the East; 44 gf, 54 ga

Jozy Returns: Good, Yet Not Triumphant

Welcome home, Jozy. Brewski?

The big news of the day – that is, Jozy Altidore’s return to Major League Soccer (MLS) – doesn’t feel so big as it once might have. That’s less a knock on Mr. Altidore* than a subtle acknowledgement that signings of “big” American players don’t ripple across the league as a whole the way they used to. And that’s a positive step, even as I’m certain that news likes this hits heavier closer to home (i.e. Toronto FC fans must be tickled; Red Bull New York fans less so).

It’s also worth noting that some number of MLS clubs passed on Altidore due to the high asking price. I heard a big number for Jozy’s salary (can’t recall where) – something like $6 million – but that’s unconfirmed thanks to league policies that bar the fourth estate from talking pesos. Whatever the dollar figure, I hardly begrudge Altidore for asking or taking it. Get paid, son. I do, however, feel a certain quiet respect for my Portland Timbers for passing on what seems to be a bloated salary. Goals are great and all, but who likes paying too much for anything?

Toronto, ever reliable when it comes to spending, bolted past such quibbles. They’ve mastered the trappings of ambition, at least; and yet they’ve taken strides to creating a roster-as-metaphor for U.S. wealth inequality. Fascinating...

* To pick up that asterisk above, Jozy’s probably a good bet to make the over proposed by Taylor Twellman: 12.5 goals in 2015 (thanks, Soccer by Ives’ podcas!). Altidore will be a good player in MLS, maybe even a little better than his service. So, welcome back and all that.

The other side of the transaction, i.e. the piece that sent the long-disgruntled Jermaine Defoe back to (the shittiest little-big club in) England, is no less interesting, in that it brings in a couple current themes. Defoe’s arrival last season, coming as it did in his earlier 30s, offered an encouraging counter to the typical “retirement league” trend/perception that still attaches to MLS. A little echo of the notorious Frank Lampard Situation can be heard in there, too: if one can still play in the top flight, why the flipping hell would one stop doing so? Lampard answered that question – or Manchester City did on his behalf – just as Defoe arguably did with this move. That says a couple things about MLS’s global rep, the implications of which...aren’t so good.

The mini-glut of returning Americans says something as well. It could be roughly the same thing that Mexicans players’ long-standing tradition has said for years and years and that’s...not terrible (e.g. our guys value comforts of home). There’s also the Cheers Effect (going where everyone knows your name).

Like just about anything between now and when the thing is signed, the Collective Bargaining Agreement (CBA) comes into the picture. No, MLS can’t compete with Europe’s glamor leagues, neither in quality or the grandness of the stage. No matter, what MLS Commish Don Garber says, it won’t likely be able to for a decade. If we’re lucky. But what the league chooses to pay players – and this is total compensation (some details mentioned in this very good article) whether for designated players or the regular guys – will definitely influence the extent to which MLS start picking higher quality players from Europe, or even Mexico. I don’t see how more can’t be better for everyone except MLS owners, but even they could ultimately reap greater rewards. Investments, man...

It should be clear now that American players have some in-built motivation to return to the States to play. They’re people here, if nothing else, and able to command cash and respect. Drawing good, younger players from Europe (or Mexico) constitutes the next big step. And what happens with the CBA definitely matters there.