What "Better Than Expected!" Might Really Mean

Well... there's hope.

My take:

Early, early days and that was nothing like the finished article for either side but, so long as disaster doesn't strike, we might be in the mix for 5th or 6th last (overall).  If things go magical we might even hang around in range of the last playoff spot into late summer.  There's some potential there.

That said, this game has turned out to be a trap for TFC fans.  Like usual, they'll have watched it in isolation from what happened in the rest of the league.  In that context, TFC didn't look too bad.

Consider how it looked if you were a neutral looking in though.  I'll suggest it looked a lot more like two pretty bad teams not really able to do very much.  That looks worse on Vancouver considering expectations in each respective city.

Julian De Gone

24 hours to digest this deal and I'm happier than ever.  The pessimism around Toronto FC right now is incredible.

Folks, 2012 is a write off. 0-0-9 to start has a way of doing that.

TFC, for once, made a prudent decision to accept that and start preparing for next season early.  The way I see it, the idea, popular in some places, that this is all a panic move to save season tickets renewals couldn't be more the opposite of what's going on.

No, it's not tweaking.  "Tweaking", depending on how you define that, was at best going to get us non-embarrassing results after the international break: "Danny and Ryan, you two go play up top.  Everyone else defend deeper and get the ball up to them quickly so that we're not playing with fire in our own end. Try and win some second balls in the opponents end to set up the offense.  Midfield and defense move forward as a unit and don't get stretched."  So far IT'S WORKED!

What's going on now is Paul Mariner has been given the liberty to make the hard choices, is taking flak for it, and moving towards the team he wants.

Rogers/Bell: Thinking About Afterthoughts

With all the oxygen in the Toronto sports conversation being taken up by upcoming changes in the world of our benevolent corporate overlords I thought I’d chip in with a typical bit of contrarianism.  In the TFC corner of this discussion, beyond trying to parse out what all this means for TFC’s chances of winning in the immediate future, a not insignificant part of the conversation has centred on the unexamined assumption that TFC isn’t really an important part of the deal.  I can’t say with confidence that such an assumption is incorrect, at least in terms of the valuation of MLSE the deal implies, but there’s something that needs to be challenged:

The "afterthought" narrative is being overstated.

A Point of Nomenclature

Writing yesterday at Canadian Soccer News about the respective likelihood of Toronto FC re-signing Joao Plata and Richard Eckersley blogger Duane Rollins made mention of his understanding that

 

The problem is that TFC is very tight up against the cap... ...the Reds only have about $500,000 available to them.

 

A number of commenters have already asked, not unreasonably, for clarification on how he came up with that number and how exactly MLS’ “salary cap” works.

Meanwhile, over on the Red Patch Boys forum there’s a stickied thread that attempts to calculate a “Cap Space Estimate” based on available data provided by the MLS Players Union compared to what the estimated minimum “salary cap” will be according to the current collective bargaining agreement between the league and its players.

It may seem like a pedantic point of nomenclature but continued use of the phrases “salary cap” and “cap space” are anachronisms that probably confuse more than they clarify when it comes to understanding how an MLS roster is paid for and organized.  The reason?  Simply put:

 

Since 2007 MLS has effectively not had a salary cap.

 

The Most Horrible Thing Ever

The following was originally a (typically longwinded) reply on the Voyageur's forum.  I repost here because I think it's something that TFC supporters need to take note of and in some ways its exactly the sort of writing I've always done that was probably more appropriate for a blog:


We're months from the start of the season, there's a lot of time for both teams to change and take shape, TFC is looking better at this point in the off season than they ever have before,* and I hate making explicit predictions but, honestly, from what I've seen from Jesse Marsch Toronto FC fans need to start preparing themselves for something that most can't even imagine: a Montreal team that is competitive in their very first season, capable of finishing ahead of TFC, and possibly even making the playoffs.