Originally Posted by
Auzzy
But I'm absolutely certain that TFC's scouting sucks. We've had some decent finds recently: Jiminez, O'Neill, MacNaughton and a few others that can play a decent role on an MLS team. But I still think it's completely nuts that Manning boasted about scrolling through Transfermarkt looking for out-of-contract Italians. Of course lots of top teams use Transfermarkt, but is it the team president doing that, especially at the initial phase of searching for prospects? Ogthedim can tell us more about organizational theory, but it seems completely bananas. A team president doing that is either not doing a very good job as a president, or as a scout, or both. Unless the president happens to have a very strong background in international scouting and kind of does that as a hobby -- but that's not the case for Manning.
There are people you can hire for a few $100k, that aren't under the salary cap, that don't need to search through Transfermarkt for out-of-contract players in the big leagues -- because they already know those players by heart. And that also know the players that will be out of contract in 6 or 12 months, that can be had for minimal to no transfer fees, because both the player and team are ready to move forward to clear space for the next player -- and because the player wants more playing time, change of scenery, etc.
TFC seems to do very lousy job of finding value, instead throw money at things, and trust so much in certain agents. Sure I'm happy and surprised that Insigne is here. Maybe he's always a good deal and very marketable. But overall they could find better value and performance for the current budget. And yes we do end up paying for it somehow, e.g. by running out of cap space. But even if they're DPs not under the cap, we pay for it in ticket & concession prices; in telecom & content prices and lousy services; in returns on our pension plans or stocks & mutual funds (since Rogers and Bell are some of the biggest holdings in many of those).