Originally Posted by
stegosaurus
You’re right.
The development of players in North America is hindered by a bunch of factors that are endemic to the system, which doesn’t exactly help MLS teams develop players either (though there are examples of it happening).
Every team buys where they buy either because it works to an extent or because of corruption and “business relationships.” Look at Wolves. Look at the Belgian league scandal. PSG is rumored to be bringing in a Zahavi-friendly staff. Mendes is basically a meme at this point.
While we’ve seen players from all over join TFC, some of the biggest misses were (the entire decade the team sucked) + bad pickups for reasons unrelated to football.
If we look at the “current” iteration of TFC it’s obvious that the FO has chosen USMNT players, players with MLS experience, Ligue 1 pedigree players, rebuild projects, and Belgian player of the year winners.
With the exception of rebuild projects, which are going to be hit or miss, and some of the other players fall into this category as well, they’re going for a known quantity. While the Curtis era is now upon us, looking at Bez basically showed us exactly who we were going to hire for the most part. You knew he was going to bring in USMNT players, MLS lifers, and French league players because that’s what he (and Vanney) know. Belgian league POTY worked out well, bringing in people like Vazquez and Pozo.
All of our big flops in recent memory had more to do with mentality than footballing ability. There’s the odd misstep on players who legitimately suck (Kantari), but even someone like Perquis was a good pickup at the time.
Buying “known quantity” players who aren’t set for retirement is not a bad strategy for MLS. They’re mostly buying people who understand the way things are going to work here. Young players and developing players is a hit or miss approach. Buying technically gifted South Americans is the same. You don’t have infinite money with which to make mistakes, and you can have “depth” (we did) but it’s superficial.
While Aketxe was a bust and VdW had (has always had) attitude issues, I’d rather take these busts on TAM than DP mistakes like Kaku and Pity.