Mo Johnston’s Conflicted Moves

Photo from CBC.ca

With yesterday’s deal for Car­los Ruiz, Mo John­ston has proven once again he can make a deal to keep his team ahead of the curve or in this case from falling off the curve. Major League Soc­cer has very few proven con­sis­tent goal scor­ing tal­ents. TFC had one in Jeff Cun­ning­ham, but now has acquired Ruiz still play­ing well enough as an inter­na­tional to bang in goals on a rou­tine basis for Guatemala and some­one who has excelled pre­vi­ously over mul­ti­ple sea­sons in MLS.

Toronto’s flir­ta­tion with British based play­ers has been costly. Many play­ers from Eng­land sec­ond divi­sion, the Cham­pi­onship are unpre­pared to play in MLS because of issues of arti­fi­cial pitches, alti­tude, travel, and poor train­ing facil­i­ties in North Amer­ica. No one will assume that the play­ers com­ing from Britain do not have the qual­ity tom com­pete: Dar­ren Huckerby has proven even a semi washed up player in England’s sec­ond divi­sion who has never been capped by his national team can be dom­i­nant an expan­sion induced watered down MLS. But foot­ballers that arrive from abroad must under­stand what is involved in play­ing in this league beyond sim­ply the football.

Mo John­ston has finally begun to look within MLS and to cut ties with some play­ers signed from the British Isles: Gone are Andy Welsh, Colin Samuel, and Lau­rent Robert and instead Amado Gue­vara and Car­los Ruiz two proven MLS com­modi­ties who under­stand what is involved in being suc­cess­ful now anchor TFC.

Toronto can make the play­offs this year and have the skill level required to com­pete for MLS Cup. In John Carver, the Reds have an accom­plished tac­ti­cal man­ager who quite hon­estly can out think most man­agers in MLS. But some prob­lems still remain. Mo Edu’s move to Rangers leaves a huge whole in the mid­field and TFC is still not doing a good enough job brin­ing in Cana­dian tal­ent. Canada cur­rently has a deeper and bet­ter player pool than any­time in its his­tory includ­ing in 1986 when the Maple Leafs qual­i­fied for the World Cup, but TFC seems reluc­tant to tap into that well of tal­ent. As the sole MLS side in Canada, TFC could be con­sis­tently one of the best teams in MLS as Van­cou­ver and Mon­treal have con­sis­tently been in USL by focus­ing on Cana­dian tal­ent which at the very top of the player pool is arguably supe­rior to even Amer­i­can tal­ent. But no effort has been made by TFC to my knowl­edge to bring stars like Ali Gerba, Rob Friend or Atiba Hutchin­son back to MLS. Instead the focus of TFC for a year and a half was on play­ers play­ing foot­ball in Britain. This instinct reared its ugly head again with the sign­ing of Johann Smith last week whose two years in Eng­land qual­i­fied him for Toronto’s ulti­mate lit­mus test.

The move to acquire Ruiz is an out­stand­ing move but for TFC to reach its full poten­tial it needs to make more moves to bring in Cana­dian play­ers and cur­tail the club’s fas­ci­na­tion with British based players.