All we are saaaaaaay-iing...

Things have been quiet recently with, aside from Canada's women racking up yet another tournament win, and Sepp Blatter switching from trying to get MLS to conform to a winter schedule to openly musing about switching the World Cup to conform to the MLS schedule, not much really going on.  The snow and cold has brought football to a standstill in England, and there's only so many times you can despair about nothing happening with TFC's GM/Coach search before you give up and/or readers start rebelling in the comments section.

There were a couple of interesting tidbits over the last few days, firstly Earl Cochrane saying  “I absolutely have the ability to make decisions, but I do not think making those decisions in a vacuum is the best thing to do.” which to me is an encouraging sign that there's going to be someone else coming in to be the guy who makes the big calls.  Also Nick Garcia musing about the problems with TFC last year "I think it boils down to communication. There were not enough veteran guys on the field guiding and leading the team." as well as embracing his inner grumpy old man, complaining about the young players being too into Twitter and text messaging.

But that was about it, so it was a welcome relief today when the minor news of the 2011 season First Kick games was annnounced, with Toronto opening their season on March 19th at Vancouver, before having their home opener on March 26th against Portland.

I'm not a huge fan of either of those games.  The Whitecaps game, it could be a great roadtrip for TFC fans, and a great opportunity to show off their traveling support, but it seems like a bit of a waste for Vancouver.  The home opener, their first ever game in MLS was always going to be a big event with plenty of media coverage across Canada, and now they're going to have to partially share that attention with Toronto.  It would have made much more sense to have them play a different team and then have the first all Canadian MLS game as another high profile game later on.  As for the Portland game, March 26th?  At BMO Field?  That's going to be cold, and potentially snowy, I guess MLSE is really going to make the season ticket holders work for their free home opener announced back in October.

The other obvious angle to this is that we start off with 2 games against the expansion clubs, which should be a gentle start and at least 4 points, but could be a very embarrassing banana skin if TFC once again goes into the season under prepared and without a full squad.  Hopefully this will serve as added motivation to speed up the new management search, the latest rumours mentioned Paul Mariner, former assistant to Steve Nicol at new England, and coming off a failed coaching job in a very tough situation at Plymouth Argyle, which is a bit underwhelming and quite the step down from other names mentioned like Roberto Donadoni, Franco Baresi and Carlos Quieroz. 

Jürgen Klinsmann previously mentioned a new coach may be in place by Christmas, which is coming up very quickly.  While that's not really that important of a milestone, let's hope at least someone is in place by the time the January transfer window comes around.  I'm happy that Earl has done plenty of work and has some people lined up, and equally happy that he's going to wait for the final decisions, trades/signings etc to be made, but with a very under-manned roster right now, I'd rather not wait too long.  All we are saying?  Give us a coach!