Coaching hire, roster decisions to headline Toronto FC’s quick off-season

Toronto FC’s off-season became a whole lot more interesting this week. 

The firing of head coach Robin Fraser on Monday means the top priority this winter for GM Jason Hernandez is to hire a new tactician who can help bring success to Toronto after it finished 12th in Major League Soccer’s Eastern Conference in 2026 and failed to make the playoffs for a sixth consecutive year. 

Hernandez revealed during TFC’s end-of-year media event on Tuesday that the ideal coaching candidate would be "a leader; a voice with energy," and someone who, from a tactical perspective, would “be able to deploy the team in different ways.”

Hernandez felt that Fraser and his staff, the bulk of which were also let go on Monday, focused far too much on how to stop their opponents this season and that they approached too many games "not to lose versus to win."  

"I think what we felt was missing, unfortunately too often, was a consistently clear version of the team in which we show up on a matchday and understand how they're being deployed, how intentional our assets are being used, and it's something that we can hang our hat on," Hernandez explained.   

Designated Player midfielder Djordje Mihailovic, who finished an injury-riddled season with three goals and seven assists, shared his GM’s viewpoint. 

"I think too much this year we are putting the majority of our focus on, 'Okay, this is what the (other) team does. What are we going to do to stop them?’ — instead of, 'All right, this is what the team does. This is what we're going to do to beat them.' I think it's a certain perspective that I think was too common this year,” Mihailovic offered. 

“From an attacking player, I want to attack. I want the focus to be on attacking. I'm sure the fans want the focus to be on attacking and seeing attacking football out here, so I think this could be a point of emphasis in the next pre-season.”  

Finding a new coach in a timely fashion will be Hernandez’s top priority, given the short off-season and the seismic format changes coming to MLS. 

The 2026 MLS campaign was the last to run from February to December, as the league is switching to a traditional summer-to-spring regular season next July to better align with top leagues around the world.  

But before that happens, MLS will stage what it is calling a “Sprint Season” — a compact, 14-game campaign, followed by playoffs, that will go from February until May 2027. The mini-season will help MLS bridge the gap to next summer when it changes to a summer-to-spring schedule. 

That alone makes life a bit more complicated for Hernandez and the league’s other GMs when it comes to strengthening their respective teams this winter. But if that’s not enough, the current collective bargaining agreement expires at the end of 2027, and the prospect of a new labour pact could potentially move the goalposts in terms of how GMs can build their rosters this off-season. 

"I would say not just for Toronto, obviously for 29 other clubs, it's uncharted waters. We are now going into what's going to be a very quick off-season, into a sprint season, then into a calendar change," Hernandez said.  

"So, all of these things combined with some of the unknowns that you would imagine as MLS continues to work on — there's a new CBA being worked on. Does that mean new roster, salary cap and budget guidelines, and rules around how you can build the team? So, there's a lot of variables, which I would say certainly has made getting where we want to be a challenge in the past, and it'll certainly be a lot of variables that we're all managing going forward." 

Despite TFC not making the playoffs and finishing 12th in the East for a second consecutive year under Fraser, the club’s GM doesn’t believe a major roster overhaul is required ahead of the 2027 MLS Sprint Season. 

Hernandez feels confident with many of the players he’s brought in during his two-and-a-half years at the helm and feels “quite strongly that these are the right guys.” 

“I think from a roster perspective, there'll certainly be tweaks. I don't believe there'll be wholesale changes. I think over the last two windows, the winter and the summer, I think we've maybe signed 17 people. That's quite a lot in MLS,” Hernandez explained. 

"I think that probably speaks to another element of why we found ourselves sometimes in maybe more difficult moments than we should have been, because, in many ways, it's guys coming together and a lot of new faces building the plane as we fly, so to speak, as a team."  

Nonetheless, 11 players on Toronto’s current roster are in the option years of their contracts now that the season is over, which means Hernandez has to decide who to bring back and who to cut loose by the league’s Nov. 25 deadline for non-playoff teams.  

Hernandez also has to decide the futures of Colombian forward Emilio Aristizábal and Chilean defender Benjamín Kuscevic. Both players are at the end of their respective season-long loan deals, which included purchase options for TFC.  

And three other players are out of contract, including captain Jonathan Osorio, who is the club’s longest-serving player and all-time appearances leader across all competitions (421) and has spent his entire 14-year playing career with the Reds.

"Ideally, it would be great to stay here and to help on this project moving forward. Now I'm getting towards the end of my career, and it would be nice to end with one team. Saying that, it's football. You just don't know. That's all I can say,” stated Osorio, who turns 35 next June. 

Hernandez added: "Ultimately, a player is in charge of his own career, and so we have to be respectful of that. I would say very simply, exploring a solution and a way in which to continue to work with Jonathan is something we want to do."