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  • Help from above


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    The first step, always, is to admit you have a problem.

    Ten games into the season just past, acting Toronto FC president Tom Anselmi fired coach/GM Aron Winter, tossed all the keys to Paul Mariner, and finally admitted to himself that the biggest anchor holding back ye goode shyppe TFC was a brutal lack of soccer-savvy leadership.

    There were many options available at that point, but all the twelve-step programs agree on the need to surrender your addiction to a higher power.

    And yesterday, with the hiring of D.C. United founder Kevin Payne as incoming president and general manager of Toronto FC, that’s exactly what Anselmi did.

    The higher power in question wasn’t god or the universe, however. In the end, solving the problem fell to the real and ultimate owners of this baffled, embattled franchise:

    Major League Soccer itself.

    [PRBREAK][/PRBREAK]

    Oh sure, the spin at yesterday’s presser was how much Anselmi and Payne admire each other, and what a great opportunity Toronto is for a man who built a franchise that has brought four MLS championships to the banks of the Potomac River.

    But the obvious under current is that the league – with the unacknowledged urging of commissioner Don Garber – whisked Payne out of an ever-decreasing role in Washington, to sally north and show Anselmi and Maple Leaf Sports and Entertainment how the game of salary-cap soccer in Our Little League is really played.

    All involved can thank their lucky stars for that!

    Anselmi – who has freely admitted at multiple times in the past that he really doesn’t know a thing about soccer – has never been more dangerous than when he’s had to pick a leader for Toronto FC. And while he may, indeed, have had strong encouragement from league office to hire Mo Johnston back in the beginning, both Anselmi and the league have likely made up for that with the hiring of Kevin Payne.

    There are still a couple of concerns, however.

    Payne told the media yesterday he’d been in Toronto for all of five hours, and had no real idea yet of the inner workings of MLSE. Let us all profoundly hope it stays that way!

    Then, of course, there’s the issue of TFC head coach Paul Mariner. Payne spoke fondly of the man, citing the long competitive rivalry between his D.C. United and Mariner’s New England Revolution. He rightly praised Mariner as a man with great and useful experience and success in MLS.

    But he also, when asked about his “philosophy,” made a key point: In MLS, he said, you get the best players you can, and teach them to be better. Makes perfect sense, given the salary cap, but everyone I later chatted with in the assembled press corps had the same idea at the same time.

    Mariner is not a great teacher.

    I grew up the son of an inspired university professor. I’ve valued great teachers all my life.

    Paul Mariner is not a great teacher.

    Payne is clearly remembering Mariner as the number-two man to Steve Nicol in New England. He likely doesn’t know about the screaming, relentless, glad-chatting, hammer-smashing, challenging-fans-to-fights Hulk Mariner who emerged from Aron Winter’s shadow after the Dutchman got dumped.

    Hulk Mariner is not a great teacher.

    Payne also praised player-personnel boss Earl Cochrane, whom he has supervised before back at D.C. Payne said that while he will have significant input on player moves, Cochrane will remain in his present position, and will be the person other teams contact when they want to make deals with TFC. (That’s the same Earl Cochrane who has now helped seven different TFC coaches not win.)

    This basically means the entire cast of management characters who pancaked TFC into a smouldering slobber of runway mush in 2012 is back running the team in 2013 – minus Winter and Anselmi, plus a genuine MLS leader in Payne.

    Certainly a trade you’d want to make, but unlikely to be ultimately enough.

    Interestingly, both Payne and Cochrane told reporters afterwards – in separate scrums – that Payne was in no way even consulted on the recent decision to bring oft-injured striker and designated player Eric Hassli back for 2013. If anything, that adds more credence to the idea that MLS – not MLSE – came up with the idea of shipping Payne north to TFC, and that it all came together rather quickly.

    Payne freely admits he knows nothing, as yet, about the structure of Canadian soccer. Youth soccer experts I talked with yesterday bitterly charge TFC has bungled its academy program, alienating many local clubs without actually boosting the MLS chances of promising future prospects.

    So …

    Meet the new boss; NOT like the old boss – and that’s a good thing.

    Toronto FC took a good turn in the right direction yesterday, but a long, bumpy and difficult road remains.

    Onward!



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