Getting Reacquainted with Toronto FC, the Once-Lucky Wastrels of MLS

Just reeks of the vibe, right? Especially then?

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, and…I don’t know, Adam Braz? Marco Reda? Their first forays in the DP market fell (very) flat – e.g., Julian de Guzman (hard, "eh"), plus a list of one-to-two season signings that impresses in all the wrong ways – but splashing cash paved their way to Toronto’s fleeting glory seasons. All the seasons prior to that point? Trash, sometimes absolute trash (e.g., Wooden Spoon’s in 2007 and 2012): they didn’t make the playoffs in any form until 2015. When the 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 (who looks better after 2024) to pull them together? – but I do know that those moves built Tim Bezbatchenko’s reputation into something that still sells today (not unreasonably). As the timeline below* indicates, the investment didn’t pay off immediately, but Toronto rose meteorically once they took off. 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. This brings up one key difference between the 2016 and 2017 rosters – specifically, the arrival of the Spanish midfielder Victor Vazquez. Unlike the rest of the big names, he wasn’t a DP; Vazquez was just a smart signing that gave Toronto the fourth dimension a good team needs to become great. 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 (such a fucking thing for those several seasons) in MLS Cup 2019 with another DP, Alejandro Pozeulo, leading the way – but the manner of that loss already hinted at a waning force. 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 the team alive for a lot of pundits against the evidence of very bad results. Toronto finished 13th in the Eastern Conference that season, 27th overall. When the Wooden Spoon slapped them the following season (2023), I’ll be damned if that wasn’t the gods punishing hubris.

MLS Tourist Journal, Calendar Week 5: Keeping Up with the Joneses

He's not real, he's not real, please, don't let him be real...

“As a player, it’s one of the worst parts of preseason: Competing for a spot. You never know where you stand, and sometimes you’re competing with a friend. Every night you lie in bed and think about the way the coach spoke you, his mannerisms, and what they mean for your future.”

MLSSoccer.com’s Bobby Warshaw wrote a column about the preseason experience that broke my taboo against treating the soccer players as human beings. Until I get some real background – e.g., this article about the Portland Timbers’ Cristian Paredes' tough first year miles away from his home – I really do see soccer players as video game avatars. I’m not saying it’s healthy, I’m just sayin’…on to the weekly recap.

In all honesty, the first weeks of February don’t feel all that different from the last weeks of December. Sure, preseason has started, but, what’s going on with FC Cincinnati aside, it all feels like a big, stupid pile of names and numbers (e.g., FC Dallas beating Houston Baptist University 6-0, which feels like someone telling me the Toronto Raptors dunked all over the local high school’s varsity team, and why would you do that?). All the same, this was a busy week, one filled with trades what God-knows-what meaning, and a notable combination of action and silence between and amongst all the rest of the teams in Major League Soccer, aka, MLS…goddamn it, working in law has infiltrated my brain so fucking deep that I now use defined terms. The shame…

I’ll get to all that – plus a short segment on the teams who I don't believe are keeping up with the rest of the MLS Joneses, as well as my notes on the past week’s culture-shifting trades – down below. First, however, it’s time for a quick check-in with the two teams I follow, FC Cincinnati and the Portland Timbers. But not in that order. For reasons that will become immediately apparent.

Portland Timbers

Hometown Team 2.0 hasn’t done a thing since signing Claude Dielna last week (at which point I discussed it at some length), and, won’t lie, I feel like I’m sitting across from a significant other determined to give me the silent treatment. (What did the counselor say, Gavin, what did she say?!)

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.

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…

Clint Dempsey & Hero Theory

Clint Dempsey's self-visualization.

This post has an Alpha, an Omega, and shit-ton of Greek letters in between, at least conceptually. Still, I hope to keep it brief…

When I watched the Seattle Sounder’s midnight-of-the-soul-loss to the Los Angeles Galaxy (because close enough), a couple things stood out – among them, LA’s sometimes impressive efficiency, and on both sides of the ball. There was something about the Sounders, though, the way Clint Dempsey appears to operate on the assumption that his teammates are second-best to him in all ways, a reality that, obviously, obliges him to handle everything from getting the ball out of the back, to approach play, to finally scoring the sweet, sweet goal that sends the fans home singing!

I picked up the phrase “hero-ball” somewhere – again, probably from Matt Doyle (because that’s all I read) - but that’s all the attribution that I have time for. I’m condensing it to “hero” here because it fits better. Now, to my point…

After recording the Dangerous Balls Podcast, I thought harder about what the “hero” concept means to me. Some players – and, here, yes, absolutely, I would include Dempsey, but also the Colorado Rapids’ Jermaine Jones and Toronto FC’s Sebastian Giovinco – want to put the game on their shoulders and carry it to victory. It’s just in their nature. Sometimes, this pans out – see, Giovinco through all of 2015 and up until…is it six games ago? See Jones’ (pre-meltdown) time in New England (e.g. before his messiah complex caught up with him?), and see Dempsey in the good games in the Copa America Centenario and through the Oba-Deuce year(s).

There’s an aside in all of this: coaches love “hero” players, at least so long as they can pull it off and probably for a few years after. It simplifies a coach’s job when a player can, say, both start and finish a play the way Dempsey sometimes can, or when Jones provides enough presence in midfield to make it effectively a vast no-go zone for the other team. Sounders’ coach Sigi Schmid enjoyed two years of looking like a genius for no better reason than writing “Dempsey” and “Martins” into the starting line-up. Really good players are short-cuts, basically, players with enough talent and sense/belief in what they can do to sort of dictate a new game-plan for their coach; it saves him from thinking, wins them more money, adulation and random hate for five lifetimes, etc. I'm not saying it's win, win, win. I am, however, saying that Klinsmann defaulted to this this past June…the lazy fuck.

What happened against LA, though, highlighted the increasingly real limits to the Dempsey’s “hero” time. The way he showed to receive the ball in the middle third limited his useful availability in the final third where the Sounders needed someone to link play, or, if nothing else, another runner in the box. Here, it’s less that he’s no longer capable of doing something he once did (think it’s true, though, just sayin’), than he’s undercutting some important work that his current and future teammates need to learn – e.g. how to get the ball to either him, or literally any other attacking player/fullback going forward. And, yes, it goes without saying that covering all that ground will get harder for Dempsey with each passing year.

Sometimes, the best way to help another player is to let him learn his job. So, yeah, back off, Clint.

MLS Week 26 Review/Week 27 Preview, Plus: Best & Worst DPs And...9 Quick, Hot Takes

Official Conifers & Citrus icon...in spite of what some memories I note below.

(Posting late again. I know, Judy. I know. Next week. Or maybe the week after. I know you can't stop it, Judy, but can you make it slow down?)

Time to slip out of the small, scenic pond where the Portland Timbers reside (Lake Oswego?) and into the big, rollicking ocean that is Major League Soccer as a whole. While I'm still refining the format – and believe that this feature will be more fluid than fixed until 2016 – I do feel like I'm getting closer. At any rate, lots to get to below, which include:

1) The Review/Preview, the lede that looks both backward and forward at trends in MLS;
2) This week's feature on the best and worst in designated players for 2015; and
3) Takes, Quick and Hot, e.g. quick, (ideally) worthwhile thoughts about MLS teams, players and...or just me sharing my pulling out my next wild hair.

OK, that's it. Time to dig in.

Week 26 Review/Week 27 Preview
MLS stuffed a heavy work-week into Week 26, featuring 12 intra-league games in all. The general schedule piled on a few more games for MLS clubs, courtesy of the Canadian Championship (which ended in a comfortingly sensible manner) and the CONCACAF Champions' League (CCL). The overall set up asked more of some clubs than others and, to be fair, some held up better than others. The trickier issue comes with figuring out why.

Fatigue, or some version of it, offers up an obvious villain in all this. For instance, DC United could argue that all those midweek airplane miles combined with the New York Red Bulls to kick their ass last Sunday night. Sporting Kansas City could finger the same guy in the police line-up (still talking about fatigue) as the reason for their now-100% apparent slump, and so could the Montreal Impact, who also played two games in Week 26 and lost both - and Laurent Ciman, for a bit (and, it bears noting, they will play catch up the rest of the season). It's not a perfect excuse, though, as demonstrated by several examples, including the Colorado Rapids (played two, won two), or, to compare apples to apples, why not ask why the Seattle Sounders, a club that logged more miles than DC, came out with results that ran the opposite direction.

MLS Week 24 Shots 'n' Beers Review: Great Games, Bad Defense, and DP Theory

It was the Best of Times!

I think I'm finally there on a concept for these weekly reviews of Major League Soccer. I call this process, The Struggle. But enough about me. Why? Because MLS Week 24? It was goddamn nuts! To give it a name, it was the Week of Not-Giving-a-Shit Celebrations! As in, "why, yes, I'll take that yellow card you fun-sucking prick, because this shirt is coming off!!" Moving on to some random observations:

- The guy in the DC United replica shirt that said "Wine," has inspired me to get a Portland Timbers replica of my own that says either "Gin" or "Bourbon." Taking votes!

- If you listen closely after San Jose's goal, you’ll hear the Mexican commentating team freaking the Hell out. And it was like music.

- Related: was Paul Caligiuri let go by Univision/Mas? Don't they know that novel mispronunciations of players' names don’t grow on trees!?

- I really, really struggled with Shep Messing's broadcast partner who kept using the phrase, "ball defended away" to describe a defensive clearance.

Moral of the story: keep your eyes open during broadcasts, because there's always something out there....like the kid ball who stood behind (think it was the Houston Dynamo's) Tyler Deric fronting all the while. Moving on!

Next, it's time to record the games I took in this weekend. How much do my wife and kids hate me this week? Three! Three games worth of hate!

New York Red Bulls v. Toronto FC
Real Salt Lake v. Portland Timbers (written up here)
Sporting Kansas City v. Vancouver Whitecaps

I watched the rest in the usual 20-minute, bite-sized format. Right, may as well start the review in precisely the same way I'm starting to type: with a Shot...which, here, means a great summation of the week/weekend just past (hat-tip: Series of Unfortunate Events).

Toronto FC 1-0 Portland Timbers: The Real Meaning of #RCTID

RCTID, aka domestic bliss.

About three years into a real relationship – as in a sexual, monogamous, in-it-for-the-long-haul sort of arrangement – all the failings that you once laughed at become the grating quirks and habits that make you want to either leave, or set up a very, very active Tinder account. There's a decision to be made at this point, obviously, staying in or getting out. And, with the Portland Timbers, I, and just about everyone else who calls themselves a fan, is committed for the long haul, warts, farts, terrible hygiene, bad breath, philandering, perverse, diaper-based sexual preferences, and all.

But, lord, the Timbers try the patience of ten GGG saints...

I watched the game next to a guy who laughed non-stop all the way through the first half. I thought it was fitting, if in the spirit of a long-suffering wife laughing at her husband’s impotence. I know the feeling because, right now, I feel nothing short of contempt for my club. After weeks of having faith that Portland has a shot to get some kind of result from every game, the gears shifted after this one. My default belief going into every game is that Portland will lose.

To keep with analogy, every win will become my constantly drunk wife remembering our anniversary for the first time in three years. All together now...AWWW...

So much hate to spread around. I want to hate Adam Kwarasey because, as I tweeted during the game, every cross that flies over his box looks like the first one he's ever seen. And yet he's not the problem: not only did he make (a minimum of) three solid saves, he even improved on crosses as the game wore on. And, once again, Darlington Nagbe turned in another...let's call it a head-scratcher. The man has turning sickness – i.e. the disease one sees in wildebeests with their brains eaten full of holes where they turn in circles till they die in the dirt – and yet he probably set up Portland’s best, few chances, or the passes that led to the same. I want to fault the defense, but, after setting up a shooting gallery for Toronto FC and/or Sebastian Giovinco over the first 20 minutes, the back four shut down pretty nicely overall. And yet I did manage to hold onto a bundle clear, satisfying hatred...see talking point #4 below.

Toronto FC v. Portland Timbers: A Clash of Fine China

Next-level Red Rover....

To shorten these preview posts a bit, I’m going listicle on the Portland Timbers’ previews and, when looking ahead to other games, I’ll stick to talking up (or down) only those with a good hook/angle. And, yes, this Wednesday game business is driving me goddamn nuts, because Sporting Kansas City v. New England Revolution? That there was a quality match-up, friends. It looked just as good on the menu as it did when it arrived on the table. (A missed penalty, a dubious penalty, big soccer players making big soccer plays; had it all, I tell ya!)

On to the main attraction: Toronto FC v. Portland Timbers. First, let’s set the stage...

Toronto FC. The buzz-boys of 2015. Major League Soccer’s big spenders. As Twitter announced yesterday, they spent over three times what the Timbers did to create their roster (just north of $20 million versus just short of $6 million). And what has all that scratch bought them? Three points fewer than Portland – though they can go even on points by winning this weekend and a keep a game in hand to boot.

Will they do it? The trends read better than the results, at least some of them. TFC started 2015 on a seven-game road-trip. Said trip started great and ended well, but a chasm yawned between in the form of five straight losses that surely reminded every Torontonian of a deeply-cursed former life (shudder to think of the atrocities committed by the former selves of every player who has ever pulled TFC’s red jersey over his shoulder). But two wins in their final road games (cough, Orlando, cough, in the bad days, cough, cough, Philly!) sent TFC rolling back to an embiggened BMO Field confident and hungry. The schedule handed TFC an opponent that looked entirely beatable, too, in the Houston Dynamo. A clear day broke. Toronto fans provided the theater, chanting and marching their way to the field. Promise swelled like the biggest, ripest fruit the club had ever seen...only to burst into a rancid puddle when Houston cut into the skin.

Toronto didn’t do so great against the New England Revolution last weekend, either; most reports I read said the draw flattered them, so there’s that, too. So, will Toronto make that big, beautiful stadium bounce when the Timbers come to town?

The MLS Divine Comedy, Week 7

Philadelphia? Hello, and sorry. To the left, please.

For Week 7, I decided to return to, but re-name, the whole "Sinking, Swimming, Treading Water" concept. Thought I'd reference the classics instead, with an homage to Dante's Divine Comedy: going forward, these posts will divide MLS's clubs between Heaven, Hell and Purgatory. That distinction is self-explanatory, yeah? And the arrangement should last even through the playoffs – that is, a club can remain in Purgatory in the post-season, for no man* resides in Heaven till he hoists MLS Cup! I’m keeping Hell pretty small and that's less about me feeling all New Testament, than about the passage to the playoffs seeming very much wide open. Good works and grace have nothing on stupid parity and the stupid playoff format.

(* Here, "man" shall mean, exclusively, a male professional soccer player, who plies his trade in the officially recognized domestic North American Division 1 soccer league, dba, popularly MLS.)

As happens more often than I should admit, the past weekend didn't come together so smoothly. I made it through only two games in their entirety:

Seattle Sounders v. Colorado Rapids
New York City FC v. Portland Timbers

With that entered into the record, I did watch the first 30 minutes of FC Dallas v. Toronto FC, it struck me as indecent to watch Nick Hagglund suffer more, not unlike Noah's daughters who wisely took a pass on seeing him rolling around all drunk and naked. The rest of the games I took through MLS Live's condensed matches – which, again, I can't recommend enough. Once again, the number in parentheses after each team's name records how many times I've spent/suffered the full 90 with it. I'll do better in catching full games going forward. Probably. The heart's in it.

The summaries for each team will be shorter than previously. All the detail stuff I once tried to work in – e.g. flagging some player, a trend, or a concept that's in the air or on my mind – will go over to a mid-week post going forward. That'll be me making sense of the week.

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

Toronto FC Drops the Mike, Wins the 2014-15 Offseason

TFC fans would never abandon a sinking ship. NEVER.

Unless some other Major League Soccer (MLS) club embarks on a true drunken sailor spree, I hereby declare Toronto FC the official winner of the 2014-15 offseason. This means retiring the only series of this blog's short life. Sad day and all that, but we’ll have games to talk about soon enough. Right? (Fucking CBA negotiations...just give them free agency, you assholes...)

How does a club "win" the offseason? In short, by making the most, and, by assumption, the best steps to make its first team competitive in 2015. In other words, this isn't about which clubs look set to win it all in 2015 – teams returning strong teams, like the Los Angeles Galaxy and Seattle Sounders FC, look fine there – but instead asks which club set itself up best to improve over their 2014. Or even to challenge for the top of...something.

(And, for the record, I do rule out the two expansion clubs, Orlando City FC  and New York City FC, because, 1) they have no MLS track record and, therefore, no yesterday’s apples with which to compare to today’s apples; and 2) expansion clubs’ rosters are, by definition, ground-up rebuilds. So, of course they've done more than anyone else.)

Back to TFC, their super-signings got plenty of press. Anyone who missed the arrivals of Jozy Altidore and Sebastian Giovinco probably doesn't actually think about MLS, at all, so no links for them! The problem was that neither of them addressed the widely-held/likely-safe, assumption that balance issues kept TFC from looking like a contender. Put it this way: till today, the weight of talent for this club rested at the fore of the good ship. Toronto appreciated this problem, so they dropped some weight at the back. And – pow! - they righted TFC's little dinghy. (Who's in the mood for a song? My ding-a-ling, my ding-a-ling! Won’t you play with my ding-a-ling!)

Between some solid experience for former clubs and country, and some nice club names on the ol' CV, Damien Perquis provides enough (apparent) weight to get TFC's boat sailing damn close to level. This morning, much like, oh, let's go with a drug dealer, a man carefully adding and removing his sweet, sweet contraband to the opposite side of the scale, TFC finally (if only arguably) fully balanced the scales with the trade for Eriq Zavaleta. Combine personal biases and how my neurons chat one to the other and this gets TFC over the threshold for me. That's right, just one more tiny piece and they've done enough to get me believing that, holy hallelujah, those extraordinarily loyal fans up north have got the team they deserve. Get cocky, Toronto...

Zavaleta may or may not mean all that much in the grand scheme, but he looks experienced enough to provide depth for one or both of TFC's existing, fairly decent fullbacks, Justin Morrow and Mark Bloom (or, if ignorance means I have him lined up in the wrong part of the back line, eh, he's still depth at the back). Perquis should challenge to a starting role and, as such, he provides the more important service. Worst case, he spells Stephen Caldwell and helps Nick Hagglund grow into the big-boy soccer boots.

So, congrats to Toronto FC and their brain trust. And to the several other nominees considered over the life of this short series – chiefly, the Chicago Fire, Columbus Crew SC, and the Houston Dynamo – thanks for playing and good luck.

In closing, sorry about the jinx, Toronto! And best of luck to you in 2015!

Who's Winning the 2014-15 Off-Season: Part 2...Think of Burning

Because what's funnier than Nazis?

Welcome to the 2nd installment of "Who's Winning the 2014-15 Major League Soccer (MLS) Off-Season"...which really needs a snappier title. Working on it...

Last week's edition crowned Columbus Crew SC the early winners. Even as I’m starting to question that call – see below – it was, and is, defensible. Ives Galarcep talked it up enough in a recent podcast that I can at least argue that it’s not a completely lonely position to take.

So, before getting into the back-sliding, let me remind readers of my personal criteria for weighing new and new-to-you players who come into MLS:

A star DP > MLS player of good reputation > a foreign acquisition with a respectable CV > a known MLS squad hack > a homegrown player > players acquired through the Superdraft.

Plenty of players have come into MLS since that last post (dated, January 18, 2015), none bigger than Sebastian Giovinco. He’s the big ol' shit, the inspiration for chatter and that annual heartbreaking optimism that Toronto FC fans cling to every season until hope, as always, abandons them. Other moves abound, whether intra-MLS transfers, players re-signing with last year's club (probably after a pay-cut), or foreign players with smaller names coming in from solid,  yet less-heralded, European leagues. And players keep coming to New York City FC and Orlando City – which are just like new toys that we all get to share somehow. In short, it's been a good off-season.

And yet I find myself having to walk back last week's awarding of first place to Columbus. It's much less about anything the Ohio club has done, or failed to do. Hell, they even brought in (another) fullback in Hernan Grana, which is enough to make one wonder if anyone will play centrally for that club (of course, someone will…I mean, someone has to).

No, it's about a total failure on my part (shit, again with the retractions!) to fully consider what the Chicago Fire has done since the 2014 season ended. For me, this is a little secret of the MLS off-season: Chicago has rolled over a lot of their team (see the "Out" column on the very first line). And, well, here's to hoping a lot of those come good...if only for Chicago's sake.

Before turning to Chicago, please allow a couple comments. First, the East is winning the off-season hands-down. They're more active, they're digging up more interesting players (see the above personal criteria), and more of them. Yes, this is a function of being the lesser conference in 2014 (fronting), but it's still true (see: Andy Craven and Kyle Bekker...who looks like an extra from Hogan's Heroes (which is on, one channel another, without stopping....ever)

Second, Toronto FC seems the obvious choice to overtake Columbus, what with all those very, very expensive signings. Personally impressed as I am with the Giovinco signing, Toronto has serious issues with balance...at least until they sign that Polish defender. Even then, I might not buy their overall project. Bekker going seems like a loss, even if he is/was a project, but I also think Jonathan Osorio gives them enough of something similar that he won't be missed. Anyway, give TFC a second central defender, plus an outside back who can flip, and Toronto crushes the off-season.

So, Chicago. Here's the thing for me: They have all but rebuilt their front-line, bringing in no less than three at least intriguing forwards. Add the...let’s call it the apparent signing of Wigan Athletic's Shaun Maloney (NOTE: not yet on the roster), and the Fire's attack is, according to my criteria, much transform'ed. What I missed before with Chicago is what had me lean toward Columbus: while the Fire had clearly stacked up their attack, virtually all of this came at the forward position; this meant they hadn't done much to improve a defense and/or midfield that was, at times, iffy and/or a collection of parts in 2014. With that in mind, Columbus' latest acquisitions (Kristin Steindorsson and Chris Klute) read like tidy fits for their system. Throw a great far-post attacker like Kei Kamara on top of the team they already had and things looked pretty sunny in Central Ohio.

In fairness, Chicago added a fair number of unknowns – i.e., guys listed in the third spot for my personal criteria (e.g. "foreign acquisitions with a good CV"). That makes them unknowns, of course, which means they should probably get "doubt" before they get the "benefit" therefrom. Then came, apparently, Shaun Maloney. Yeah, there are issues with what to do with a guy like Harrison Shipp (hat-tip: March to the Match's (tragically) final podcast), but Chicago is trying hard enough and seeking enough upgrades all over the field for me to believe they're really aiming to climb out of their personal Hell in the 2015 season. To personify my oversights in the form of player names, I only caught Adailton when I reviewed the Fire's off-season, but failed to see, say, Joevin Jones' arrival.

I don't know what to expect from Chicago this season, but, goddammit, they're trying. Harder than the entire Western Conference, anyway. So, good luck, The Fire...

The Incredible Weight of Sebastian Giovinco

Giovinco! Oh, YEAH!!

Some days, there are stories you just can’t avoid...even when you want to, say, post on your own team's future (and barring the signing of another Italian International, and in his prime, that post on the Portland Timbers' future goes up tomorrow). It is damned hard to duck Toronto FC’s signing of Sebastian Giovinco, an Italian player in the prime of his career, and one a minimum of three months away from suiting up for the Azzurri (see the date on the video in this article...speaking of...).

The tall claim in the title of that article/video kicked off a reddit...do I call them threads? (Sorry, old.) Does Giovinco possess "a level of overall talent yet to be seen in MLS"? Smart and lively as the man looks in that video, and then there’s the pedigree to consider, the short answer is....I don't know. Part of me wonders why anyone would bother with the question. What point does it serve to determine precisely how tall Giovinco stands in the historical hierarchy of MLS DPs? (And who’s bringing the crates, because 5’ 4”?) The man will show up, he’ll do his thing and...well, we'll see won't we? Maybe he's a prick and his teammates will hate him. Maybe he’ll inspire Toronto to their best season ever (NOTE: low bar). Time will tell.

OK, yes, I get what animates the question: does Giovinco's arrival further legitimize MLS's global brand? Again, and sorry, but I don't know. The more immediate concern comes with what his salary(!) does to the Collective Bargaining Agreement presently under negotiation (and does that get capitalized, or does it just warrant capitalization). That’s a big, complex issue that 1) I can't really get my head around at the moment, and 2) the league will undoubtedly keep the final settlement secret, so, let's just hope it all works out and everyone gets richer. Right?

My favorite angle on all this came from (probably) the Toronto FC front office, notably the claim that Giovinco "completes [the TFC] puzzle." Maybe. Or it could be that TFC loves its shiny toys very, very much. Too much, possibly. Pull up TFC's roster and you'll see those eye-catching signings. What you'll also see are a bunch of defenders that are a year older and a midfield that didn't do an excellent job of covering them. I base this on the fact that TFC tied for fourth-worst defense in MLS (58 goals against) – and while playing in an Eastern Conference that is, generally, regarded as the weaker conference.

The take-away from all this is pretty straightforward. Toronto very likely did get one helluva player in Giovinco - and his signing does look pretty amazing in context. Even allowing for the usual adjustment period, consider his numbers and an entirely respectable level of play in one of the world's undisputed top leagues, as well as a solid number of caps for one of the world's undisputed top national teams: details like that speak volumes, at volume. The question, for TFC fans in particular, is one of balance. Do they have too many great parts in too few places to really compete?

To put the entire weight of the answer on one man's aging legs: can Steven Caldwell manage a defense of relatively unheralded parts competently enough for all the (undoubtedly) beautiful work at the other end to hold up? Come next November no signing, no matter how big, will paper over another missed post-season.