A year after winning the treble, Toronto FC face critical questions
Toronto FC, a year removed from one of the best seasons in MLS history, face difficult questions as they sit far away from the playoff race.
After last season’s run to the treble and their narrow CONCACAF Champions League miss in spring, no one expected everything to end so quickly for Toronto FC. A club that last year were arguably MLS’s best-ever team are 11 points out of the playoffs in mid-July, a shocking regular season collapse.
Everything may not be lost for TFC, who still have many of the remnants from the treble-winning 2017 side. The Big Three — Sebastian Giovinco, Michael Bradley and Jozy Altidore — are still there. Their most significant offseason loss was wing-back Steven Beitashour. But FiveThirtyEight gives them only a 20 percent chance of making the playoffs.
Last Saturday, during a 2-1 loss to lousy Orlando City, Bradley was subbed out in the 67th minute, the first time he’s been subbed out of an MLS game since 2014. That, more than anything else that has happened in sports this year, is a sign of the apocalypse.
Injuries have played a key part in their demise. Altidore has missed a ton of games, as have Victor Vazquez, Drew Moor, Chris Mavinga, Justin Morrow and Beitashour’s replacement, Auro.
TFC’s flaws, though, feel systemic, like a once-great team that lost its charm. They give up bad goals, lack shape and rely on Giovinco to do everything. Silly mistakes from players that never made silly mistakes last year, notably Bradley, are commonplace.
A fix — even from manager Greg Vanney, who hasn’t, and shouldn’t, shoulder much of the blame — is so close yet so far away. It should be easy enough to go and watch film from 2017, when they ripped the Seattle Sounders apart in the MLS Cup final, but that decidedly has not been the case. They’d have to go on a run of epic proportions to salvage the season.
The age of their core is most concerning. Bradley is 30, Giovinco is 31 and Altidore is 28. Starting center-back Moor is 34, Morrow — who especially has proven essential for TFC — is 30 and Vazquez is 31. They can’t afford to waste seasons.
They have plenty of younger or prime-aged starters, too, players who were key parts of that historic team. Jonathan Osorio, Marky Delgado, Eriq Zavaleta and Alex Bono are talented, too talented to be part of this year’s disaster. Remember that this is a team a few months removed from losing on penalties to Chivas in the CCL final.
It’s time for TFC’s brass to decide whether this team, one without any major changes from the recent-but-fleeting glory days, is good enough to trust with the rest of 2017 and the future. They have to consider the possibility that major decisions might be necessary — that it could be more advantageous to get what they can from Giovinco before his value expires.
Parting with key assets, even expensive key assets aging out of their prime, would be admittedly difficult for a team that was so good not long ago. For Vanney and GM Tim Bezbatchenko, there’s likely a worry that now is too early to move on from their trophy-winning core. Making drastic changes when more potential glory awaits would be devastating. Players like Giovinco are rare, no matter how much money you spend.
But in 2018 MLS, youth is all the rage, and to win, following that mantra is almost essential. Holding on to aging talents could prevent developing players from earning valuable playing time, and it could shutter opportunities to acquire future centerpieces in the mold of Atlanta’s Miguel Almiron and Josef Martinez or the Red Bulls’ Kaku.
The Red Bulls, in fact, set a compelling precedent for TFC. They famously dealt away stud defensive midfielder Dax McCarty in January 2017, four months before his 30th birthday, in a move meant to get what value they could from a top-tier player at a crucial position. The $400,000 of General Allocation Money they received from Chicago is an undersell in hindsight, but it’s possible young superstar Tyler Adams would not have found a place in the lineup as quickly had the McCarty deal not been made.
NYRB also sent 32-year-old star playmaker Sacha Kljestan, the two-time defending MLS assist leader, to Orlando at the onset of 2018, and 27-year-old midfielder Felipe to Vancouver in March. Twenty-seven is far from old, but Felipe was replaced in tandem by the 19-year-old Adams and 25-year-old homegrown Sean Davis.
The goal was clear from Jesse Marsch: Extract what you can from your best players until selling them on becomes the best option. Kaku, 23, replaced Kljestan, and guess what, the Argentine leads MLS in assists. The Red Bulls are on 1.94 points per game and again are one of the league’s top contenders.
Toronto should at least feel out the market for Giovinco. Altidore is still entering his prime (making him too good to part with, unless they are blown away by an offer) and Bradley would be a tough sell considering his salary — $6 million a year is a lot to pay a 30-year-old defensive midfielder who has been mostly bad this season.
Giovinco, meanwhile, has been TFC’s best player. He has four goals and nine assists, a higher scoring pace than his 2017 MVP nominee season, and he’s fifth in MLS in xG+xA, which measures a player’s total expected attacking production. Quietly, he has been one of MLS’s best players.
Per American Soccer Analysis, in a chart published by The Athletic’s Jeff Reuter, Giovinco takes on a higher attacking burden than almost any other player in MLS:
Even at his team’s lowest point, Giovinco has been productive. Most profoundly, the Atomic Ant is nowhere close to the level he was at in 2015 and 2016, when he made a legitimate argument for being the best player MLS has ever seen.
If TFC were to consider trading him, they’d have to look for a significant return, perhaps larger than any trade return in recent league history. The highest amount of allocation money dealt between teams is $1.2 million, from Philadelphia to Chicago for David Accam (split between $300,000 of GAM and $900,000 of TAM). Toronto would have to get more for it to be a worthy deal.
Kljestan’s deal, a straight swap for young center-back Tommy Redding and forward Carlos Rivas, is not a thrilling sight for Bezbatchenko and TFC, considering Kljestan had been one of the most productive attackers in MLS prior to the trade. Redding hasn’t played much and Rivas was sent on loan to Colombia.
Finding a willing partner would be an interesting endeavor for TFC. Who would be willing to part with as much allocation money as would be necessary to acquire Sebastian Giovinco? More pressingly, who could afford to spend that much for a 30-year-old attacker without a ton of versatility?
Only a team with 1) significant allocation funds to spend and 2) a willingness to build a system around Giovinco would answer in the affirmative to those crucial questions. Pinpointing a potential partner, then, is difficult, because it requires forecasting a club’s future ambitions. It’s not as simple as looking at, say, McCarty and thinking “Chicago need a defensive midfielder, so he makes sense.” Acquiring Giovinco would be a broader statement impossible to accurately predict.
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Imagine, for instance, the Fire with Giovinco. Chicago need a difference-making attacker and another goalscorer. Nemanja Nikolic would be a favorable striking partner for the Italian, and there’s a good bet that Giovinco would enjoy playing with Bastian Schweinsteiger.
Or Sporting KC, the perpetually win-now club need a striker. Giovinco is not the striker they’re necessarily scouring the market for, though: He’s notoriously short, and has not played as a lone false 9 with Toronto. Unless a team were to try him either as a false 9 or in an attacking midfield, Clint Dempsey-type role, he would need another striker up top.
As San Jose and Chris Wondolowski have discovered, it’s difficult to be shoehorned into a two-striker formation in order to incorporate a natural second striker. SKC manager Peter Vermes has rarely departed from his favored 4-3-3, a formation not easily capable of taking on Giovinco.
Should TFC not find a deal for the Italian, or decide he’s not worth trading, they would be betting on their current team. Given that team’s historic success, it’s not a bad bet. But it could be a missed opportunity to get maximum value from the best player in the club’s history, and it could put them in the unfavorable future position of having multiple core players over or approaching the age of 30 with diminishing prospects of success.
It’s a difficult predicament, and an unusual one. The discussion revolving around a team as talented and successful as TFC should revolve around the longevity of their core. Instead, it’s about sustainability, and whether it would be more advantageous to break up the core earlier than expected than to hold on to it. Sports teams that get this good don’t suddenly tank to the bottom of the standings.
This is an unprecedented conundrum, one that Toronto might just wait out, trusting the system they’ve so meticulously built. They at least have to consider the other choices, though, and that includes a trade of the MVP. It might just be less nuclear of an option than it originally seems.