Toronto FC is winless in six MLS games to start the season and fans are starting to wonder what is next.
The team is yet again struggling near the bottom of the standings and it appears the season could be over before it has really started. With 29 games left to play TFC is certainly not without a shot of making a run at the playoffs but with each defeat the prospects are looking bleaker. Add in the fact that this is a club that has never had much success on the road and playing catch up does not look like an easy task.
The issues are now starting to go much deeper than the results on the field, as the players and the manager are often finding themselves on different pages. There are still a lot of individual errors — all three Chicago goals were as a result of defensive lapses — but there is also a lot of confusion from players who are being asked to fill roles that they are not accustomed to.
Normally a holding midfielder, Torsten Frings was in the middle of a three-man defence on Saturday. Adrian Cann was playing on the left side despite having a weak left foot and nowhere near enough speed to match Patrick Nyarko or Dominic Oduro. Both players are capable of being solid when put in the right role but when you ask that much of them and leave them exposed mistakes are going to happen. .
In the past it has been easy to blame the players. The likes of Ty Harden, Julian De Guzman, and Terry Dunfield have frequently served as scapegoats. Fans regularly question the skill level of many of TFC’s defensive players but Cann and Frings are supposed to be the best of the bunch. So when both of them are making mistakes that cost their team the game then it may be time to start questioning the tactics.
Following the match coach Aron Winter remained defiant as reporters questioned his tactics. When asked about the bad goals Winter replied, “It’s not only concentration it could be also quality, it could be focus, it could be everything. But still it’s not good because it’s too easy that you are giving the ball way and it’s too easy that you are missing those opportunities to score.” From there he continued to throw his defenders under the boss suggesting, “we need some better players or we need some reinforcements.”
It was a sentiment that was not exactly shared by Milos Kocic. TFC’s goalkeeper pointed to all the space that was being allowed in the midfield as the real issues: “If you don’t have pressure on the ball in the midfield and they can pass it with Oduro and Nyarko who are very fast. If the midfielder, Grazzini or whoever, has the space to pass the final ball then it is so hard to defend. I am going to save a breakaway but I can’t save it all the time.”
That was not a criticism of the players in front of him but rather of the way the team is lined up, as it leaves so much space in the middle of the park.
If the players are not good enough to get the job done and avoid these mistakes then who is to blame for that? Does it come down to Winter and Paul Mariner being unable to bring in the proper defenders?
Prior to the season Winter was confident that his signings of Miguel Aceval and Geovanny Caicedo would be the solution but that is no longer the case. Winter explained: “We brought a player in like Caicedo but it didn’t work out because at that moment he was not happy. We brought in Aceval but he still needs some time. But still it’s not that we didn’t bring some defenders. But still we need some other defenders.”
Six games into the season is not the time to be admitting that you need reinforcements. That is something that needs to be worked out during the off-season and when you have Cann, Harden, Aceval, Aaron Maund, Doneil Henry, and Logan Emory all available at centre back you have to wonder why the team has so many players who they think are not up to the task.
No matter how you look at it things are very bad for Toronto FC. The only reason that this team is currently showing any level of competitiveness is because they have done well to stick together.
Ryan Johnson said it best when he declared, “we are going to continue to fight for each other here no matter what happens. … “It’s killing Toronto and our fans. It’s hard to keep letting down our fans every week and it is really starting to get to me.”
David Rowaan is a Toronto-based writer and key contributor to Waking the Red, a blog about Toronto FC and Canadian soccer. Follow Waking the Red on Twitter.