El Hombre Posted June 30, 2009 Share Posted June 30, 2009 As mentioned on the Footy Blog, it sure seems so in this article. If it's true, it's a good move. Depth is good. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RS Posted June 30, 2009 Share Posted June 30, 2009 Couldn't be. Mo hates Canadians. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
El Hombre Posted June 30, 2009 Author Share Posted June 30, 2009 quote:Originally posted by Rudi Couldn't be. Mo hates Canadians. Lame. You can do better than that. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gian-Luca Posted June 30, 2009 Share Posted June 30, 2009 quote:Originally posted by Rudi Couldn't be. Mo hates Canadians. Yeah, but Poz is really Polish. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RS Posted June 30, 2009 Share Posted June 30, 2009 quote:Originally posted by El Hombre Lame. You can do better than that. Really? I don't want to have to resort to being creative when I can use actual sentiment from the board instead. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tuscan Posted June 30, 2009 Share Posted June 30, 2009 Poz seemed solid on the field during the 07 season. He will add depth, which is badly needed, but we all know that. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TFCRegina Posted June 30, 2009 Share Posted June 30, 2009 Bring back Harmsy! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jpg75 Posted July 1, 2009 Share Posted July 1, 2009 If Mo brings Poz back then it shows that Poz really could play after all, and that Mo only got rid of him in the first place because Mo hates Canadians and not because they weren't good enough. [] Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TFCRegina Posted July 1, 2009 Share Posted July 1, 2009 And he should bring back Harmse so San Jose is in Harmse way! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BringBackTheBlizzard Posted July 1, 2009 Share Posted July 1, 2009 He's lucky that Kevin Harmse's girlfriend made an ultimatum or there are better braais in southern California than in southern Ontario or whatever. As long as he is making Marco Velez rather than regular starter money this is not a bad move. The P&J is not the sort of paper that makes things up simply to fill column inches so I'll be very surprised if this doesn't turn out to be true. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gian-Luca Posted July 1, 2009 Share Posted July 1, 2009 quote:Originally posted by BringBackTheBlizzard He's lucky that Kevin Harmse's girlfriend made an ultimatum or there are better braais in southern California than in southern Ontario or whatever. I think you may have missed this post from the always-reliable Mobillio on this forum which suggests that it was the health of a Harmse family member that spurred the trade rather than a girlfriend ultimatum: "Less to do about Kevin and more to do with health issues of someone very close to Kevin. Amazing the conclusions people jump to. I wish Kevin all the best as family always comes first no matter what your job is." Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BringBackTheBlizzard Posted July 1, 2009 Share Posted July 1, 2009 Vaguely remember seeing that but wasn't sure how it squared with the trade request to an American team part of the press release (the prevailing theory elsewhere seemed to be that he was in a similar situation to Richard Mulrooney in that his significant other couldn't pursue her career in Canada) and was not aware that poster in question had a good track record on that kind of thing. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
El Hombre Posted July 1, 2009 Author Share Posted July 1, 2009 quote:Originally posted by Rudi Really? I don't want to have to resort to being creative when I can use actual sentiment from the board instead. I honestly think that most of that sentiment disappeared from this board around the Serioux signing. As I was a card-carrying member of that group, I can say that it seems that Mo is coming around. It seems like the only time that gets brought up is by you or BBTB. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BringBackTheBlizzard Posted July 2, 2009 Share Posted July 2, 2009 quote:Originally posted by El Hombre It seems like the only time that gets brought up is by you or BBTB. Marc on the main board a few days ago in the De Guzman Next Year thread:- http://www.canadian-soccer.com/forum/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=19299&whichpage=2 Posted - 06/24/2009 : 07:06:59 Show Profile Visit Marc's Homepage Reply with Quote quote:Originally posted by Rudi I'm hearing that TFC have not given up on trying to snag JDG. Funny that, I thought Mo hated Canadians. He did, until he realized he couldn't operate an Canadian MLS team without them! Something most people running a Canadian MLS team wouldn't have taken a year to figure out. There are still people out there on here that actually believe it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
El Hombre Posted July 2, 2009 Author Share Posted July 2, 2009 ^ The fact of the matter is that it's either you or Rudi that feel the need to bring that up these days (as you see from what you quote). Most people around here have changed their tune lately. It seemed as if through the first year and a half, Mo did not respect the Canadian talent out there however he seems to have come around to the fact that having a solid base of Canadian talent is important to succeed in MLS (domestic quotas and whatnot). I think you'll find that the Canadian signings Mo has made in the last half year would be applauded by most around here (though I hate to speak for others). However, that gets shrouded in the need to defend a standpoint that I believe was relatively accurate up until the end of last season. People can change their opinions.... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BringBackTheBlizzard Posted July 2, 2009 Share Posted July 2, 2009 The idea that Mo Johnston had anything against Canadians because they were Canadian is basically berserk and richly deserves to be made fun of, in my opinion. Bad and mediocre players in MLS terms have fallen by the wayside along the way at TFC regardless of nationality. That's how things work in pro level soccer. It is a meritocracy. The roster regulation changes that were made after the first season made it easier to sign MLS quality Canadian players because other MLS teams and player's agents no longer had as much leverage in trade and salary negotiations. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gian-Luca Posted July 2, 2009 Share Posted July 2, 2009 quote:Originally posted by BringBackTheBlizzard The idea that Mo Johnston had anything against Canadians because they were Canadian is basically berserk And who actually held that view? No-one that I am aware of. People thought Mo disliked Canadians because he had to use so many and didn't want to when the team struggled in year one as anyone would have expected a first year team to do, pushed for using as few as possible and publicly called them crap (or as he put it "very average"), and not because they thought he was racist or prejudiced against Canadians, as you seem to suggest with the comment above. I won't even go into the comments he made which supported the Sun article claiming that TFC couldn't possibly be successful with Canadians. Like it or not, Mo has changed his mind when it comes to Canadians and more than once (he was orignally quite positive before he went negative and then became positive again). This includes the recent Canadian striker that he just signed who a few years back he privately told a few people who post on here & on usector that he wasn't overly impressed with, but obviously changed his mind (I'm told sometime last year) since he actually signed him. I was also told by a reliable source that one reason that TFC had few Canadians because the management originally thought that the fans didn't care whether they had many or not, but came to realize that many fans actually did. Shortly after that that we started to see Mo make noises about wanting a Canadian DP. I think the critics on this board have been relatively consistent, its TFC management that has changed, and for the better. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BringBackTheBlizzard Posted July 2, 2009 Share Posted July 2, 2009 Mo Johnston was trying to sign the likes of Radzinski and Bernier in season one and to trade for De Rosario. All that has changed is that for a variety of reasons it has finally become possible to get more MLS quality Canadians on the roster. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Marc Posted July 7, 2009 Share Posted July 7, 2009 El Hombre is right on. The only people who bring it up are you and Rudi. quote:Originally posted by BringBackTheBlizzard Marc on the main board a few days ago in the De Guzman Next Year thread:- http://www.canadian-soccer.com/forum/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=19299&whichpage=2 Posted - 06/24/2009 : 07:06:59 Show Profile Visit Marc's Homepage Reply with Quote quote:Originally posted by Rudi I'm hearing that TFC have not given up on trying to snag JDG. Funny that, I thought Mo hated Canadians. He did, until he realized he couldn't operate an Canadian MLS team without them! Something most people running a Canadian MLS team wouldn't have taken a year to figure out. There are still people out there on here that actually believe it. Give me a break! Geez man - it's Rudi who brought up this issue once again, and Rudi who suggested that people thought he "HATED" Canadians. Rudi posted an over-the-top post, and in my post that you quoted above, I was responding in the same over-the-top manner. It's an obviously ridiculous reply to an obviously ridiculous post. Of course Mo doesn't actually "HATE" Canadians, nor has he "HATED" Canadians at any time. No one seriously thinks that, and no one ever did. And you know that. But did Mo in the past undervalue Canadians, and their skills, and their necessity to a Canadian MLS team considering the MLS rule structure? ABSO-friggin-LUTELY, as his critics have maintained all along. And this has been supported by Mo's actions, Mo's comments to the media, Mo's comments to supporters, and the analysis from many posters on both the Vees board and the U-Sector board, the most recent being G-L's well-written post two up above this one. The thing that's changed is that Mo has changed his mind, and that's good for everyone. I applaud him for it. That's what most people do - when the facts change, or evidence becomes insurmountable, they change their minds. Mo's changed his mind on Canadians. I've changed my mind on Mo. As has El Hombre. Why haven't you changed your mind on his critics, or your initial assessment? Who is biased now? As G-L put it perfectly: "I think the critics on this board have been relatively consistent, its TFC management that has changed, and for the better." Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
loyola Posted July 7, 2009 Share Posted July 7, 2009 How can we be sure Mo "changed his mind"? Maybe it's just that more Canadians, good enough for MLS, are now available via trades or transfers? Could that be just that? TFC has been linked with a lot of Canadians players before (Bernier, Radz, Gerba last year before he moved to England, Wagenaar, Stama to name a few) but the fact any of them signed didn't mean TFC didn't care or wasn't trying. So, I don't see the fact that we're now seeing more Canadians in TFC roster as a sign that Mo "changed his mind", maybe it's just a change in some players/teams/market situations that made certain players more accessible than before. BTW, on the "changing his mind" about Gerba, can we really blame him? Gerba had done very little career wise to deserve that much attention from Mo (at the time he did talk to that fan). Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gordon Posted July 7, 2009 Share Posted July 7, 2009 quote:Originally posted by loyola How can we be sure Mo "changed his mind"? Maybe it's just that more Canadians, good enough for MLS, are now available via trades or transfers? Could that be just that? TFC has been linked with a lot of Canadians players before (Bernier, Radz, Gerba last year before he moved to England, Wagenaar, Stama to name a few) but the fact any of them signed didn't mean TFC didn't care or wasn't trying. So, I don't see the fact that we're now seeing more Canadians in TFC roster as a sign that Mo "changed his mind", maybe it's just a change in some players/teams/market situations that made certain players more accessible than before. BTW, on the "changing his mind" about Gerba, can we really blame him? Gerba had done very little career wise to deserve that much attention from Mo (at the time he did talk to that fan). TFC is now where most of us hoped they would be 2-3 months before the start of their first season. Basically, you are asking us to believe that TFC was shutout and have been rebufffed in EVERY effort to obtain MLS quality Canadians. You can choose to believe that if you want. Unfortunately, I am not able to suspend my disbelief. Sure, getting 100% of the things that we, as message board hacks, though possible is unrealistic. But to go two years getting 0% is far, far more unrealistic IMO. The list is lengthy. Lengthier if you include the players that other MLS teams put in discovery claims on and then were allegedly unattainable TFC. Can I "prove" the above, beyond a shadow of any doubt? No, obviously nobody except a handful of MLSE staff could one way or another. But on the balance of probabilities, yeah, I am pretty convinced that TFC has had a recent change of heart. TFC has finally figured out what I and others have been saying all along - they have a niche access to a decent pool of players and they have been failing to tap that. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RS Posted July 7, 2009 Share Posted July 7, 2009 0%? TFC had in the first year a bunch of Canadians that everyone here (myself included) thought were MLS calibre. Marco Reda, Adam Braz, Chris Pozniak, Miguel Canizalez. That they proved to be out of their depth (Pozniak maybe not included) is not due to Mo Johnston disrespecting the Canadian player pool. If anything, he, like most of us here, overrated that pool. Young kids like Joey Melo, Gabe Gala and AJ Gray were given a shot. Tyler Rosenlund and Tyler Hemming seemed to be victims of the MLS salary cap more than any anti-Canadian bias. But they were still given a shot. Not to mention those who stuck with the club, Jim Brennan, Nana Attakora and Greg Sutton. So Mo Johnston was supposed to wave a magic wand, and suddenly DeRo was going to jump from a very successful Houston side and onto an unknown quanitity in TFC? Did DeRo even want that at the time? We all know that Serioux was traded for O'Brien in that first year, and while it was ****ty for Adrian, it was a gamble that just about every other MLS GM would have made at the time. And O'Brien proved his worth on the field that year, he was just about the only offensively gifted midfielder we had. Once he got hurt, TFC's offence went down the tubes. There's actually less Canadians at the club now, and yet in some twisted sense of logic that means Mo Johnston has changed his mind or had a change of heart? That is ridiculous. Now that TFC has Canadians who were already in MLS, now all sins are forgiven? Do you realize how fickle and unrealistic you sound? Do you realize the sheer number of Canadians that were at TFC in '07 that I just named off the top of my head? Maybe the people who made such outrageous claims like "Mo hates Canadians" (and I'm not making this up, it was a sentiment echoed on this very board) are now backtracking since the right Canadians have proven to be more successful? Who knows. I think Mo's biggest mistake in this regard was publicly grumbling about the Canadians he had at his disposal and pining for better ones. How that translated into him having some anti-Canadian stance is beyond me. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
VPjr Posted July 7, 2009 Share Posted July 7, 2009 At one time, I believed that Mo didn't rate Canadians. As much as I don't like the man, I've come to realize that Mo's not that stupid. In year 1, Mo simply didn't know the Canadian talent pool beyond the handful of players in MLS. So, to meet his quota, he turned to someone who could deliver Canadian players ("superagent" Barry McLean). Most, if not all, of the Canadians that were brought into TFC in year 1 were First Wave clients. I do criticize Mo for this over reliance on his own agent to deliver players to the team. I'm sure it was a hectic time but he needed to do better. Mo loves to wheel and deal for players but I've never believed he really has invested the time and effort to actually search the world for players to improve his team as quickly as he could have (Canadians or otherwise). Even in year 3, the team has better talent but its still not a very good squad, with significant holes and a lot of players with ill fitting roles. To Rudi's comment above that there are now fewer Canadians than there were in 2007, I say, yes but there are also 4 fewer roster spots thanks to the axing of spots from the DEV roster. The number of Canadians would be the same, give or take 1 player, if those extra spots still existed. I do agree that Mo has started to assemble a roster of higher quality Canadians (I don't think, in hindsight, it would have been easy to do that in Year 1 although he certainly could have done a better job of it last year). I've also heard from certain players that TFC made overtures/inquiries about bringing home some other talented Canadians. The reality is not many Canadians really want to play in MLS and even fewer want to play on turf. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gordon Posted July 7, 2009 Share Posted July 7, 2009 quote:Originally posted by Rudi Now that TFC has Canadians who were already in MLS, now all sins are forgiven? Do you realize how fickle and unrealistic you sound? Do you realize the sheer number of Canadians that were at TFC in '07 that I just named off the top of my head? I, and many others have answered, an nauseum the arguments you offer. Clearly you are not convinced. I won't bore by rehashing particularly since they haven't convinced you in the past. However, what part of "TFC is now where most of us hoped they would be 2-3 months before the start of their first season" led you to believe that all sins were forgiven? Let me clear, they are now where most of us hoped they'd be 2-3 months before their first season. It is now 3 months into their 3rd. They have a long way to go to even reach where they should have been at the start of their first season. I have reached the conclusion that there has been a change of heart since it is pretty clear from their recent (and attempted) signings that they are willing to pay quality Canadians quality wages. That is one argument that I have been making since day 1: That in order to field a team with the requiste number of canadian starters and be competitive, they'd actually have to pay for Canadian talent. And equally, you'd recognize that I have pointed out that all but DC United and Chivas pursue similar strategies with american players. Because quality non-North American players are a dime a dozen while the same is not true of domestic players. Its called supply and demand. DD, Gerba, and now the apparently earnest and agressive efforts to sign DeGuzman are all very recent examples. Examples missing from past years incidently. They still have a long, long way to go but, they seem to be on a path that they can not easily retreat from. AS such, I have muted my criticisms. Now they do need to fill in the numbers as you correctly identify. If they fail to do so, then expect my criticism to be revived. quote:Originally posted by Rudi Maybe the people who made such outrageous claims like "Mo hates Canadians" (and I'm not making this up, it was a sentiment echoed on this very board) are now backtracking since the right Canadians have proven to be more successful? Who knows. We are not backtracking. I have argued incessently that TFC has refused to go after the right Canadians. Instead, they went after the exemption to domestic quotas. Your assertion regarding Serioux is case in point. There is no questioning that O'Brien was a very talented player. It was also pretty clear however, that there was a dearth of Canadians with MLS experience. And as such, from day one, a younger MLS quality Candian player was was teh more valuable comodity. I disagree with your assessment that every GM would have done the same thing. I disagreed with that notion at the time of the trade and disagree with it today. I have argued over and over on this board that a in a league with import quota's - or basically pretty much every league in the world - that you build winning teams around your domestic players. And please do not trot out Arsenal or some such as all of EU players qualify as "domestic" through law and I have also stated many times over that if MLS treated Canadians the same as americans league wide, I'd be more than satisfied. And, the "Mo hates canadians" bit is a construct of those who found it convenient to try to add that colour rather than addressing what was really being said and that is, TFC discriminates against Canadians. I won't review the whole argument for you but it sums up like this: TFC fails to acquire attainable Canadians who can play in the league and then asks for an exemption - one which favours americans - from MLS rules regarding domestic quotas at the expense of canadian players. That you and others choose to reject this argument is definitely your right, that you insist on propogating the "Mo hates canadians" as a supposed sentiment of this board does you no credit whatsoever. quote:Originally posted by Rudi I think Mo's biggest mistake in this regard was publicly grumbling about the Canadians he had at his disposal and pining for better ones. How that translated into him having some anti-Canadian stance is beyond me. You have chosen to accept the TFC position that they could not get certain players, that certain players were given a chance and found wanting or that transfer fees were exhorbinate and as such I do not expect you to agree with an opposite point of view. That understanding the opposite argument is "beyond" you is of concern however. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RS Posted July 7, 2009 Share Posted July 7, 2009 Gordon, please read VPjr's response above yours. He is well connected in the soccer scene, and has an extensive network of contacts within the game. As well, his posts have proven that has no love lost for Mo. Yet a lot of what he is saying is in line with what I have argued all along. Despite what you say, getting MLS-quality Canadians is a lot tougher than simpy aiming to do so. And if it takes longer than you like, that does not mean that Mo or TFC discriminate against Canadians. You may have re-worded it, but the sentiment is still the same. P.S. Serioux and O'Brien are the same age. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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