Adrian Cann leaves TFC training camp

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Toronto FC's 2010 MVP, Adrian Cann, has left training camp following a contract dispute, the club announced today.

Cann, who made $65,342 last year and was the 17th highest paid player on Toronto, wasn't believed to be asking for a significant pay increase above market value. He's in the second year of a four year deal.

I last spoke to Adrian a few weeks back when we were both on the Fan 590's Soccer Show. At the time, chatting off air, he stressed his desire to want to stay in Toronto for the long term. He wouldn't discuss specifics of how much he was looking for but repeatedly cited he had no desire to leave as "this is home, this is where my family is."

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Since he signed his last deal it's become well-known in Toronto media circles - but rarely reported - that Cann had gone into the last negotiations without an agent. For those who remember, there was a lengthy period between the initial news that he was joining the club and his actual introduction. The delay had to do with the previous management including an unexpected agent's fee in the contract - to be paid to an agency who had first brought a wave of players to Toronto. Cann balked, but having already announced his departure from his previous club and without a lot of options, eventually acquiesced. It wasn't ideal and it certainly wasn't right but, in the world of football, players without protection getting taken advantage of isn't a new story.

Regardless of how that played out - and there are certainly still plenty of stories to be reported there - given the amount of cap, allocation and roster space Toronto has available, it's puzzling how it has come to this. Perhaps, at 30-years-old, Cann doesn't fit into Toronto's long-term youth movement plan. Or perhaps the club just isn't interested in renegotiating with another player who is under contract.

Either way, with just over two weeks to go before First Kick in Vancouver, Toronto finds itself down a player at another position. And at the rate it's going, that youth movement may arrive sooner than most expected.

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