Repeating your own mistakes is bad. Especially when you’ve spent good money to bring in people to tell you how NOT to repeat those mistakes. However, repeating other people’s mistakes? There’s something special about that.
Reports out of Toronto have approximately every out-of-a-job manager eager to head north and try to turn Toronto FC into a playoff team. That's job one for a club that has never advanced to the post-season.
At some point in the near future, maybe even by the time you're reading this, former Ajax player Aron Winter will become technical director and head coach with Bob de Klerk, Ajax’s youth academy director, coming along as his top assistant. Again according to reports, former New England Revolution assistant and Plymouth Argyle manager Paul Mariner will also have a job with Toronto FC.Tony Edwards reports on whether Toronto FC have learned from their previous mistakes, as well as from blueprints by other coaches and clubs.
Speaking to the Dutch paper de Telegraaf, Winter was quoted as saying: “I visited [Toronto FC] for two days last week and immediately had a good feeling.... Of the three candidates, I made the best impression. Around the turn of the year everything came about.”
Winter, who doesn’t lack for confidence if the quote is accurate, comes to MLS after a few years as an assistant at Ajax, the team for which he made the most appearances during his playing career. As a player, he won the European Championship with the Netherlands in 1988, plus the Cup Winners Cup and the UEFA Cup (twice) while playing for Ajax, Inter, and Lazio, among other clubs. In other words, no one doubts his pedigree.
But its not his pedigree as a player that's open to questions. It’s a coach joining arguably Major League Soccer's top candidate for most dysfunctional franchise with exactly zero working knowledge of MLS and Canadian soccer.
Winter's European coaching experience is with Ajax, a team with a deserved reputation for player development but one that has also had its issues in recent years. Coaches such as Marco van Basten, Martin Jol, and now Frank de Boer have taken their turn trying to win the Dutch league and qualify for the Champions League.
So what should we expect of the Ajax method in Toronto? Even if the Dutch club is no longer considered the biggest threat in the Eredivisie, there's still mileage from the phrase 'total football.' We can expect the same object statements any team uses when they hire a new person tasked with winning more games than the last guy. TFC management can give this a continental spin, but it's still all about figuring out how to qualify for those pesky playoffs, still the quality control for MLS.
We can expect the same thing from their new hire. No over-promising, but simply restating a commitment to changing things. Few MLS fan bases really have the patience for long-term revamps, so there's a timeline issue for any new coach. Then again, making the playoffs isn't a miracle by MLS standards. That makes it all the more odd that Toronto has yet to manage it.
Here's what won't be said. Toronto's ownership Maple Leaf Sports and Entertainment has ignored just about everything that has built a winner in MLS in taking the Dutch option. Think of it as a tick list for a proven route to playoff success.
- Coaches who know the league and the players
- An understanding of MLS’s still evolving system of player development
- A willingness to use the available building blocks
- An understanding of how to manage players in a salary cap-controlled system as well as managing expectations from the public.
It should be noted that it took Schellas Hyndmann and Jason Kreis years to get their teams playing as they wanted. Bruce Arena, Sigi Schmidt, Dominic Kinnear, Frank Yallop, Steve Nicol. With the exception of Nicol, none of these men would be recognized overseas. And yet there's a reason these men are the most respected, and most successful, coaches in MLS. The list of imported coaches who were a success in MLS is significantly shorter.
Winter is willingly walking into a League with different rules, a different culture, and different expectations, none of which he experienced as a player. It's not as if he's unaware of the peculiarities of the MLS experience. What remains to be seen is how that works in practice for yet another attempt at recruiting from outside the former MLS coaching ranks.
An international coach and some positive statements are no substitute for knowledge of what makes MLS unique and how to get the best out of the available players. After four seasons, Toronto has to know that. Yet they still went with what from the outside looks like the riskier option.
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