Originally Posted by
ensco
This Borre story doesn’t add up to me, unless a complete general collapse in the traditional player markets in happening. Which is not something I am reading.
Are MLSE, Ali Curtis and Chris Armas, and a Canadian team seriously able to go toe to toe with the Sampdoria, Udinese, Valencia, Espanyol, Benfica type clubs where these players always go? Each of those teams I am guessing would have 10 guys making 4M euros a year or more. This size of deal is not a big deal to them.
The only time younger players with real value and options have ever left a River Plate type team to come to MLS was to play for Atlanta, with a promise that they would be showcased for Europe. It was a pretty mixed bag, in terms of outcome. It worked out for Almiron (only sort of, given how he has done at Newcastle) but didn’t at all for Barco and Pity. Nobody coming behind them will look at that and be overly impressed.
Atlanta had numerous key elements TFC doesn’t;
- a recent ex Barca manager
- a recent ex Paraguay national team manager
- an Argentine manager
- did I mention they had Tata and not Ali Curtis or Chris Armas?
- a deep pocketed rich owner (corporate ownership is not an asset in this game)
- being located in a city and country with a sizeable Hispanic population
- being located in a city connected to South America, with 10x more direct air service from there than all of Canada would have
- a more attractive climate
Plus, cmon, who is on the ground in Buenos Aires winning deals like this for TFC? That is the most competitive, complex and maybe corrupt player market in the world. You don’t just show up with a chequebook, like we did in Belgium.
Plus, cmon, Toronto isn’t a market where a River Plate player has caché. We would be bidding against others for whom a River Plate player very much has meaning to their fans. (This was an important factor with Pozo, he didn’t have much marketing value to anybody. Made it easier for us to win.)
I don’t buy it. If TFC are spending serious time on this, I would say they are most likely getting played/used as a stalking horse. Manning is a grown up, maybe they are cool with that, and/or just developing the “we are trying bigly” narrative for the restless natives. Maybe the reward for helping an agent get Borre his deal in Europe is that Borre's agent will make something work for TFC for a different player, one that makes more sense. Maybe another Nacho Piatti circa 2014, that's the end of the pool we should be working.
Just my $0.02