Oh me of little faith

After the firings, and with the blame game in full swing, people are starting to turn to the question of who's next, and primarily who'll be TFC's next general manager.  Many are suggesting that we need more than one person to properly do the job, the 24th minute's dream team for example would include 4 people, including Jason de Vos which would make this Darlington fan positively giddy.  At the top of that sort of structure, most people see an experienced and successful football man, an Eminence Grise who charts the basic course and vision for the club, but who would be less involved in the day to day running of the club though always available as a sounding board for his staff.

Sounds like a great plan to me, and luckily TFC already has that man in place, with a clear idea of what he wants the club to be.  Unluckily, his name is Tom Anselmi.

At the press conference to announce the firings, Anselmi was front and centre and there were a few quotes that exposed his guiding philosophy, and let's just say it doesn't seem like it's about TFC winning, or even TFC learning from it's recent mistakes.

When talking about the full time job prospects for interim GM Earl Cochrane and coach Nick Dasovic, he waxed poetic about how MLSE had "made a committment right from the get go that we need to develop soccer infrastructure in Canada and especially Ontario", and how "they wanted to start investing in Jim Brennan and turn him into a soccer pro, they've been investing in Nick, investing in Earl, creating a team of people that can grow together and build on the expertise that exists."

To that end, they "asked Preki to take a couple of assistant coaches under his wing, we believe it's important for us to be developing coaches in this league, we believe there seems to be a bit of a shortage of head coaches that know the North American game, that know the MLS rules and stuff, we believe developing head coaches is important and this (the interim coach job)will be one new feather in Nick's cap and ultimately he's going to be a head coach in this league"

In a way it's an admirable goal, but I'd rather have TFC committing to employing the best, most experienced and successful people possible, prioritising winning as soon as possible, rather than being a training school for up and coming Canadians (or other non-Canadian MLSE favourites such as Danny Dichio) who can then spread their expertise throughout the country or the league.  Given how Preki was treated when a power struggle developed, ie management backed their investment over their head coach, and given that they're reaffirming their committment to this model at both the management and coaching level, is any premium candidate really going to be looking for the job.  Also, would it not be best to build a high quality management team and a culture of success, then start introducing people into that environment to learn from?  I have much more confidence in what Steve Yzerman learnt at the Redwings than in what Jim Brennan would have learnt under Mo Johnston.

Moving on to the search for the new GM, and the hiring process, Anselmi said "I'll lead the effort but I'll be looking to the league for support, and other people we have out in the markets, contacts, that sort of thing, a lot of different people involved who'll be providing advice and assitance in who the potential candidates are, then we'll shake that down and ultimately make a recommendation to our shareholders, the owners."  After the league was heavily involved with the hiring of Mo Johnston, that doesn't really fill me with confidence, and I don't like that it's "the shareholders" that the recommendation is given to.  Though the slip was immediately corrected to "the owners", to me it exposes that for Anselmi and MLSE, this is much more a business venture than a sports team.

As for how he decided that now was the time to fire both Mo and Preki, well it doesn't sound like a highly scientific process.  "The team was heading in the wrong direction, but it was even bigger than that, it was, just, the situation wasn't right, that's the best way I can describe it."  "it was, you know, a gut, you know when things don't feel right and it just didn't feel right....it just felt like it was heading in the wrong direction."

If you're thinking I'm being unfair and that MLSE has shown it understands when to get out of the way, as is generally suggested when referring to their corporate cousins, the  Leafs and the Raptors, well guess who's going to be making decisions soon about Raptors GM Bryan Colangelo's future.  That's right,  noted sports expert Richard Peddie, in this article in the Star. He's going to make a decision quickly 

“I will make a recommendation to the board (on Colangelo’s future) at some point during the season,” said Peddie. “I’m not going to leave Bryan hanging out. He’s got kids in school here.”

  His criteria?

" ...I want to see them play hard and be active and be better defensively. And we’ll see where it goes.”

  and 

“I’ll just watch, and if I like where I think it’s going, we’ll re-up Bryan.”

So basically he's going to go with his gut.  Sounds like Tom's got what it takes to stick around with MLSE and TFC for a long, long time.