The club is likely going to have three U-22 slots this year and a TAM level DP (Salcedo). Saying this because Akinola is U-22 and they had a deal for that U-22 South African winger fall through this week as well.
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The club is likely going to have three U-22 slots this year and a TAM level DP (Salcedo). Saying this because Akinola is U-22 and they had a deal for that U-22 South African winger fall through this week as well.
An absolutely unreal use of the U-22 slot would be if they ponied up for Alexandro Bernabei at Lanus to replace Kemar Lawrence. It’ll never happen because they would never drop a multi-million dollar transfer fee on a left back, but damn would I love to see Bernabei and Insigne on the same wing.
How’s that Salcedo/Soteldo deal coming along? Seems quiet in the metaverse all of a sudden..
in this video https://www.torontofc.ca/news/touchl...lub-connection
Bob says the LAFC management had talks about losing the balance between youth and experience aroung the 21 minute mark. It doen't sound to me like he'sa guy who's likely to go with a whole lot of U22 inititiative players.
Sometimes when teams rebuild with a lot of youth the games get quite exciting. I mean, there is value in experienced veteran players, but the energy and excitement of youth playing translates to the game and to the crowd. It won't give you a championship either usually right away as I think you do need that balance with the experience, but the road to get there can be fun if your core of young players stick together year and year and grow. Have seen several European teams do that approach when needing a new direction.
Salcedo will not play in Tigres next game. Looks like things are moving along.
Interesting there’s no mention of a Homegrown contract, unlike Petrasso earlier. Must not have spent enough time in the academy.
MLS Press Release says he is a homegrown signing
https://www.mlssoccer.com/news/toron...e%20University.
No idea if he is good or not, but it is a warm body.
Sat next to him on a plane 25 years ago. He was a quite genial young man. Had just signed his first professional contract, to which I tactlessly commented "we have professional football in Canada?"
He had a momentarily hurt/irritated expression. We did not speak further.
Signing Deandre Kerr as a depth forward is exactly the sort of the signing that should happen when considering a young cheap Canadian depth player vs an overpaid terrible American journeyman like Dom Dwyer and Patrick Mullins.
In the same vain that most of us are probably going to be fine with Lukas McNaughton taking the place of Eriq Zavaleta.
Where all things are pretty much equal, take the Canadian.
I would have said the same. I lived in NY when MLS started. I could have cared less. I don't even remember them signing Donadoni, I only know that now. I did care about the Blizzard, when I was younger, but when that died I thought it was over. At the beginning MLS seemed totally utterly fake to me, every team playing on plastic pitches with NFL markings. Seemed like the worse of NASL, without the good players. (We had had Bettiga and Lorimer, and they were still big names, even if they weren't in the top 10 names in NASL at the time. I wasn’t buying whatever early MLS were selling.)
I got into Canada MNT games when I got back in the late 90s (probably first saw Stalts then) but only watched Europe until 2007. I vividly remember watching Stalts at Bremen - Telelatino! had Bundesliga sometimes -and just being gobsmacked that a guy from here could have made it all the way there.
The first months of this board in late 2006 were really about 25 or 50 people who knew England, Italy, UEFA CL, all trying to figure out what the heck MLS was. None of us rated domestics, nobody understood anything, so when we brought in all kinds of hopeless Canadians (Miggie Canizalez, Adam Braz, I could go on….) we all thought, of course, they must also be MLS players too…
It was an annual thing to have a thread on signing Stalts but looking back, he would have seen through Mo, Preki etc from a mile away, and so he aged out in Germany…. In some childlike way I am super thrilled he is involved here at TFC, at long last. He was Dichio before Dichio (but a heck of a lot bigger name! In his club career) for CMNT fans around 2000-2008…
So I'm going to assume once the Soteldo and Salcedo swap goes through Jozy is bought out shortly after.
The thing is, he has no reason to negotiate. They have to be compliant before the first game, which means if they haven't reached a deal by Feb. 25, he's getting the whole contract if they want to buy him out.
As long as one side has a hard deadline, the other side doesn't have to do squat.
We signed Greg.... I'll learn to spell his last name later. He's a keeper.
https://www.torontofc.ca/news/toront...0JNDj2zlLG4aZA
Probably for Next Pro.
Has Bono shown up for camp yet?
If not maybe there's something to the Portland rumor. Hope so.
That makes total sense being a home grown because the only other way for him to have played in MLS in 2022 was to sign a GA deal and enter the draft.
For instance Jay Chapman was a home grown player and after his senior year at Michigan State he had the choice of signing with Toronto or entering the draft. I do not know the rules of maintaining a players home grown status one they have gone to college ? I wonder if Omar had a choice and chose the draft , did the Reds express interest.
The last TFC academy player I believe to play a season of college and leave early to sign a home grown deal was Matt Stinson who went to Winthrop.
Interesting, I have a feeling they will want Luka Gavran who they drafted in the second round this year to play everyday with TFC II rather than be the third for the first team. It has been suggested Luka with his 6’6 frame was a steal in the second round. It’s not like he can not train with the first team if needed.
I guess this confirms that Borjan is not going to be a TFC signing
Ranjitsingh is pretty well regarded in the league. He was the pool goalie they used for that Philly playoff game where most of the first team was out.
Interesting signing. Maybe designed to push Westberg and Bono to compete more for their positions, or just acknowledgement Q is 35 and can't last much longer, while Bono is shakesville, let's face it.
Chris Mavinga is still in Toronto but was at the TFC training ground. Maybe he picked up a small injury and needed to stay behind or he's dealing something personal.
That would make sense. Looks like it's just a friendly on Feb 1, with their next games being two home/away games at the end of March. If they win that, they're threw to the World Cup. I know Mavinga hasn't played much with Congo of late, but would be really cool for him to be able to make it, even if just on an extended roster.
Just listened to MLS Extra Time. They think Jozy could be a max TAM player, which certainly explains why TFC are hoping they can do a buyout at something less than 100 cents on the dollar.
They think the likeliest landing spots for him are Orlando, SKC and Colorado.
(Also they think he could maybe score 25 goals. :hide:)
With many of the recent signings (young and old, including the new GK Greg Ranjitsingh), and the draft, very interesting that they're really loading up on the CanCon. Surprising especially under Bob Bradley, as mentioned above. We were expecting that TFC would try to capitalize on the current CMNT buzz and the upcoming World Cups, and as the club mentioned there may still be a player coming in from that group. However these other Cdn signings and drafts have all been from outside the CMNT camp. I would not expect Bob Bradley to agree to any of that for sentimental reasons, so they must see a practical reason for this making sense. I'm totally fine and very happy with it if there's some kind of plan behind it.
Oh here we go again...
Flipside with his injury record is keep him as far away from injury risk as possible.
Max tam seems wildly ambitious but if we pull it off it would be great. I assume this means we're actively shopping him and have at least some reason to believe we can pull it off so let's see how it plays out