It’s a run of incompetence so consistently uninterrupted it qualifies as backward genius. Hell has a soccer team. They play in Toronto.
If they want to make some front office additions in the off-season, we suggest hiring an exorcist. Five bucks says that if he pours holy water on the dressing room carpet, the walls will start bleeding.
After
losing last night, FC was
mathematically eliminated from the playoffs. The playoffs don’t start for two months.
Manager Paul Mariner is a relative newcomer to this marathon episode of
The Gong Show, so he’s still working through the emotional progression. He emerged post-game rattled verging on frothing, his voice hoarse from screaming.
“If that’s the lads showing what they can do, we have to have a serious think,” Mariner said ominously.
Translation: Everybody who’s painting the trim, stop what you’re doing. We’re going to have to tear this thing down — again — and start over.
Then, in keeping with the traditional gnomic style of Toronto FC managers throughout history, a tantalizing, inscrutable suggestion of the solution to come.
“I still firmly believe we’re four players away,” Mariner said.
That’s pretty specific. Which four?
“Not tonight,” Mariner said.
Why won’t they ever say? At this point, he could suggest buying five goalkeepers and it would seem like bold, out-of-the-box thinking.
“I think this team needs a No. 10, a creative player, someone quick at the back, someone wide left, a backup goalkeeper, if not a No. 1 goalkeeper, and then a couple of more players,” the Toronto FC coach said.
The coach who said that was Mo Johnston. He said it in 2007, just after finishing dead last in the team’s inaugural season.
You know who should be the next coach of this team? Bill Murray. He may know nothing about soccer, but he’s already survived Groundhog Day.
If that was Johnston’s problem after Year One, Mariner’s is much the same and yet far worse.