A mangy flea-ridden pigeon.

My post yesterday called for a Scrooge like epiphany and changing of ways from the MLSE higher ups, and in a way, that's now what we have.  Daniel Girard's article in The Star has Tom Anselmi in a remarkable and unexpected mea culpa.

First of all, the chief operating officer of Maple Leaf Sports & Entertainment is “pissed off” about the poor performance of Toronto FC this season, which will see the team miss the playoffs for the fourth straight year. He also admits the club “screwed up royally” with its season-ticket renewals.
And he vows to “get this fixed real quick” by re-jigging season ticket packages and hiring the right general manager to improve on-field results.

It seems he recognises the need for action on both the on pitch and off pitch side of things.  For me the most important thing for the future of the club is the on pitch product, so let's start there.  Anselmi seems alarmed that Mo and Preki made so many changes, as opposed to going with the plan of  making“a couple of tweaks that would put us over the finish line” and into the playoffs.  I'm concerned that he felt last year's over budget division-riddled squad was a couple of tweaks away, and also very alarmed that he seems to see making the playoffs as the finish line, but I'll let that go for now, as this is the depressing part.

“At Maple Leaf Sports, we’ve been accused at length about suits like me interfering with the team. (This is) proof positive, we don’t interfere.“We had a general manager and a head coach who played together on both sides of the ocean, won a championship together. You would have thought that they were on the same page. We stayed out of their hair and let them do what they did and maybe that wasn’t the right thing.”

Anselmi insisted that he and other MLSE executives aren’t looking to run the day-to-day operations of the team. But rather than a “one-man band” as under Johnston, he said the new GM will have soccer people around him in the front office, including interim GM Earl Cochrane and Jim Brennan, who earlier this season retired to move to the front office as Johnston’s assistant.

So the lesson he's apparently learned is that he should be interfering more rather than letting whoever he hires next do the job their way!  While the idea of having soccer people around the new GM is a very good one, it seems that Jim Brennan and Earl Cochrane are definitely going to be a part of that, continuing Anselmi's investment in their potential rather than viewing getting whoever it takes to win as a priority.  To recap, it seems whoever they hire won't have independence to bring his own people in, will have Anselmi's pet projects pushed on him and won't be left alone to do things their own way.  That should get us some quality applicants.

While it's easy to despair on that front, the fair thing to do would be to wait until there's firm action taken before judging too harshly, so instead let's move on to what is being done to fix the "royal screw up" with season tickets.

An email was sent out to TFC's mailing list and posted on the club's website saying how sorry they are, and inviting people to a series of townhall meetings over the next week or so, which could be very interesting, but what did they actually do?

TFC fans know that with two extra teams in the league next year, there were always going to be extra games in the season ticket package and overall prices were going to go up because of that, but what most people are angry about is yet another increase in the per game cost, and the fact that tickets to this years MLS cup final were automatically included whether we liked it or not, whether TFC is there or not.  So that must be what they addressed right?

Nope.  Instead, with no mention of the MLS final or per game increase issues, we get the news that tickets for 2 Concacaf Champions League games will be taken out of the package and the deadline for renewal extended to October 22nd.  So instead of paying for those 2 games, then getting a refund if TFC don't qualify, we don't have to pay until TFC qualify.  That's nice, for sure, but really misses the point of what people are angry about, and has in effect made people angrier, giving the impression that they think they can placate everyone with a token gesture like this along with a few compliments about how Toronto has the best fans in MLS, and how they're looking forward to showing the rest of MLS and the soccer world how great our fans are this November.

I suppose it's a start, but it's hardly the big turnaround needed to improve supporter relations.  To belabour my scrooge analogy even further and for the last time I promise, they haven't gone out and bought the biggest goose in the shop for our christmas dinner, they've given us a mangy flea-ridden pigeon they found dead on the street, and they expect us to be thankful for that.

This Saturday's game against the Crew should be interesting, the Red Patch Boys will be wearing green rather than the usual red, and the North End Elite are planning a silent protest, no standing, chanting, clapping, no nothing.  The Front Office has a long way to go to get people back on side.