Gee Pozo, why did you leave?
The one thing you can be sure he is not going to say is: “they increased my salary 300%, gave me term, gave me security in case I get injured, gave me enough total dollars so that no matter what, I will never have to work again, I couldn’t be sure I would get that deal in the summer, and my family comes first, before my job. All of that matters more to me than Genk's season. Any of my teammates there would have done the same. Hell, I expect any of my new teammates here would do the same.”
Questions like that are kind of pointless gotcha exercises. If he spoke better English he could have fenced a bit, but Pozo was probably smart to play dumb, and just make something up, or answer a different question, or do whatever it is he did there.
Last edited by ensco; 03-26-2019 at 05:53 AM.
"There are some people who might have better technique than me, and some may be fitter than me, but the main thing is tactics. With most players, tactics are missing. You can divide tactics into insight, trust, and daring." - Johan Cruyff
I think it was more a "It was time for me to leave..." than anything else. I think he tried to give more detail than what his english could articulate.
I'm sure you've been at a job where you didn't agree with the way things were going and didn't like how you saw your role in the company playing out. If someone came and offered you triple the salary, I'm sure you would've taken it as well.
Heres a great stat I came across on Twitter yesterday, in the 2018 calendar year, only one player in the world had more assists then Pozuelo.... Leo Messi.
https://twitter.com/MessiStats_/status/1074609615793467392
I can imagine a scenario where we are top 3 by the end of the MLS season. Just need to sort the defense and I guarantee we will have another championship within 2 years.
We will make a championship run this year. Last year, was not about a lack of quality but about being tiered and injured. But this dude will have to be the linchpin in attack.
I hope that we are also looking a CDM to eventually take over the reigns from Bradley.
One more stat to add to the Pozuelo hype:
https://twitter.com/StatmanDave/stat...02053566631936
Weather update
3 degrees, feeling like 0 - 40% chance of rain - winds turning around then to be out of the north but not that high at 10 km/hr with not much gusts
So, Toronto March football
Oh, and the BMO field guys said this week some grass started to grow of its own volition.
Check out the latest Come On You Reds podcast - oral history of the Pozuelo transfersoap with Manning and Curtis as guests. I found it quite interesting. They went into about as much detail as they could reveal. For example they said another MLS club had Pozuelo on their discovery list and they had to manage that nonsense before the whole thing even started.
https://www.torontofc.ca/post/2019/0...st-episode-158
Good find..thanks.
Another interesting tidbit in all that - they had another target of a big player in LigaMx.
KJ had posted that Eduardo Vargas was signed by TFC back on the 4th of feb. but took it down pretty quick. i wonder if anyone else saw that. i believe there was actually something going on there, mexico that is. i wonder if he would comment on that if asked? when you have money like mlse has you have the luxury of picking and choosing. glad they picked Poz.
I went back into the preseason transfer thread to try to find it & found nothing but it does sound vaguely familiar.
Reading that thread is interesting in light of the interview with Manning & Curtis done by Wheeler (I think it was actually done last week prior to Pozo getting here) about the whole process.
We didn't find out about Pozuelo until the 8th but they had been in serious discussions since before the end of January.
They talked about guys TFC were never connected to - I suspect that was the Sharaway rumours.
We all sounded so innocent back then - and it was only 7 weeks ago.
I know that series against Independiente changed my perspective on TFC, but I didn't realise by how much.
There are holes in the narrative the Manning/Curtis tell in that podcast that were interesting (to me anyway).
They spent a lot of time and energy explaining how much they worked in a spirit of cooperation with Genk, and how they never said “the player is ours”, so much so that I believe getting that messaging out there was the whole point of this.
Methinks the lady doth protest too much. I believe Tanenbaum is highly sensitive to any charge of improper aggressiveness,and Manning seems very aware of that potential message track. Nevertheless, based on the fact that Manning/Curtis never addressed this, and Wheeler didn’t ask (like most sports reporters, he wouldn’t know enough to ask)...
TFC seemingly never asked Genk what the status of Pozo's release clause from Genk's perspective was prior to moving ahead with Pozo's agent, nor were they aware of the press Genk had done saying Pozo would stay.
Manning also glides through the process of paying 2M over the release clause, and implied he had the freedom to do that on the spot (ie on his own authority)... I highly doubt that, that's not credible. The commitment was 24M euros before increasing the transfer, that's higher than his annual operating budget. Who is he kidding? He would have had to “get” that authority in advance, and that must have been interesting...
I also found the part about Manning's relationship with D'Amico really interesting. That sounds credible to me. People want to blame agents, but I think Seba just wanted top dollar.
Last edited by ensco; 03-29-2019 at 03:45 AM.
"There are some people who might have better technique than me, and some may be fitter than me, but the main thing is tactics. With most players, tactics are missing. You can divide tactics into insight, trust, and daring." - Johan Cruyff
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=vNqIUb2RdGQ
skip to 1:36 ....there’s gotta be a chant in there somewhere
I noticed that too Ensco but my guess is that while the wording of the reserve clause supported Pozuelo, it was amended orally (according to Genk)which can be binding but needs to be proven it happened. That is why we got this whole he said, she said shenanigans. Perhaps the TFC crew reviewed the wording, deemed it to be good, were not warned of any amendments and declared, "we're good!!"
The more likely scenario is that they just weren’t ready. Manning thought Seba would accept TFC's offer, Curtis was new, and they really weren’t ready when Seba moved.
So they broke some eggs to make an omelette, and moved on Pozo in a way that was a violation of the code (ie without even consulting the club, let alone seeking the consent of the club).
But that is not the story TFC, MLS, or Tanenbaum wants out there. So Manning has some wood to chop.
"There are some people who might have better technique than me, and some may be fitter than me, but the main thing is tactics. With most players, tactics are missing. You can divide tactics into insight, trust, and daring." - Johan Cruyff
"There are some people who might have better technique than me, and some may be fitter than me, but the main thing is tactics. With most players, tactics are missing. You can divide tactics into insight, trust, and daring." - Johan Cruyff
I listened as well. I've got a different level or version of cynicism on this.
I didn't take Manning had the authority to do what he did on the spot and just assumed the board had given him authority on that first bid. While the phrasing was left open he quickly refers to the board of directors. I did not get any impression he was without constraints but I guess we hear what we hear.
Overall I completely agree that there was WAYYYYYY too much time trying to look transparent. At some point the producers had to look at that show and think this went way too long to feel like a peak into the window of those in charge and like you allude to that it was an overexplanation to prevent an apology or something like it later.
Thanks as always for your insight man.
FORMER FULL TIME KOOL-AID DRINKER
So I am traveling and only saw the highlights...
Given our PK history, for this guy to deliver the all time eff you slow motion panenka on his debut, that was one of the sweetest/cheekiest things I have ever seen!
What's amazing is how dominant he appears to have been without really doing what he was doing at Genk, the long through balls (there were none in the 8 minute highlight package), holy smokes, when he and Jozy add that...!
"There are some people who might have better technique than me, and some may be fitter than me, but the main thing is tactics. With most players, tactics are missing. You can divide tactics into insight, trust, and daring." - Johan Cruyff
They cut those highlights to only focus on him, so it made it look like the whole game was going through him, but strangely it wasn't, despite him having 2 goals and an assist (they don't even show Morrow's goal that got called back, for example).
While he was obviously good, the whole midfield really worked together well to control the game. Bradley, Oso and Delgado were all good, and Auro had probably his best game yet as well, with him and Morrow pushing up the wings.
I actually thought Pozuelo looked a bit tentative at times, like he didn't want to run full out or didn't want to embarrass NYC too much or something (but then he got his two parting shots in at the end).
But if this was him at 50 or 75%, I can't wait to see what he'd do at 100.
Last edited by James17930; 03-30-2019 at 05:45 AM.