We triggered his release clause after the Belgian winter window closed. That is fine because usually the deal would be finalized in the following window but Poz and TFC wanted the switch right away. That was the problem and why it ended up costing an extra $2M. Look at it the other way, some people here say the spending days are over and we're back to old TFC. Instead they paid $2M just to get a player 3 months earlier. They easily could have arranged for a summer transfer and saved the bucks but lost face.
You would think the TFC FO were elected officials spending tax payer money the way dialogue goes on here.
I think it's possible to see the Pozo story both as a success (we got the player and he is a damn good player) and a sign of incompetence (we did a bunch of rushed, reactionary stuff that wasn’t right, and hurt our team's reputation with other teams in Europe). They are both true.
The extra $2M isn’t precisely the issue. It’s MLSE's issue, but for us, more of a symptom. The issue was triggering the release clause without ever talking to Genk. Manning has gone to some lengths to whitewash this, he knows it's not good. Did Pozo know he'd have to endure the Genk supporters burning effigies of him in the stands while that showdown went on? That weeks long thing can’t have been great for him. And yeah, we got the player, Genk got their money, Pozo got paid, and the caravan moved on. But it doesn’t quite end that neatly.
Say we had had interest in Kevin Molino (which we should have, btw). What do you think our reputation is out there based on the last two years overall? Where the only players you went out and signed were Pozo (in a screwed up thing) and this total failure, Gallardo? What in the totality of our management's acquisition story would make TFC look better than Columbus to Molino's agent? (Note: I am discounting the deals that wound up being Gonzalez for Hagglund because Gonzalez came back via allocation. It doesn’t take much acumen to do those deals. But I do think that was good business.)
Then you have the fights with Jozy, a highly respected player. Add the fact we take every re-signing to the wire.
That is the real problem. Our rep sucks. Not that we paid $10M instead of $8M for Pozo.
Last edited by ensco; 02-23-2021 at 08:07 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 don't buy that reputation is an issue at all. This completely discounts the fact that the team has a consistent track record of taking care of its own - Bradley, Jozy, Oso, Marky, Mavinga etc... None of these guys have walked and are long tenured. This far outweighs one bumpy transfer where for some reason we're framed like a Chelsea-esque big bad bully.
In the grand scheme I doubt the Pozo transfer made any noise, or enough of it for any team we'd ever do business with to give a shit. Outside of this forum the "fiasco" is non existent. 6 months in an eternity in football.
^All our success came from moves move by Leiweke, Bez and Vanney.
You could argue this management’s rep is simply a question mark, but I don’t think so. There are 10+ teams guys would rather play for now. Nothing like it was, when Drew Moor, a huge difference maker, or VV chose to be here.
"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
Yup, that's pretty much what went down. Genk were blindsided by Poz agent talking directly with us.
Now, the real feces show is NYRB & Kaku - guy is playing for a side without an ITC - there are ramifications for all that & I suspect FIFA is going to come down hard on the Saudi team - oh who am I kidding they are going to roll over for oil money.
Of course there are 10+ teams players would rather play for. We're in Canada. It's always been that way. That's why even at our peak we couldn't get prime A list DPs. What we did get were USMNT players who were on the outs and B listers. That's our market.
People can look fondly on the Bloody Big Deal era but Defoe was a fiasco too and his Mom and him had a lot of negative things to say about Tim L & how he was treated afterwards in UK media. That's more damaging than a out of window transfer. Much like the Genk thing, it amounted to nothing because most teams don't know or care who TFC are and what we do in our little "American" league.
This is one of those things where the immediate damage won’t necessarily show but longer term, can become an issue.
Ali Curtis is clearly a details guy as opposed to a deal maker. He picks out Poz cause he’s willing to trigger that release clause at a price that looks good. He targets Borre because it’s a unique situation that doesn’t necessarily require a transfer fee.
The problem is, he doesn’t think beyond the details to the larger implications of doing business in the long run. Why should Giovinco get a contract extension when he can play out the last year of his deal? The piece of paper we have says he’s under contract for another 12 months! Why should I approach the Belgian club for transfer of Pozuelo? The contract says I can just trigger the release clause!
When you become this sort of business person your counter-parties either: 1) start to avoid you because they feel your willingness to go outside social norms leads to undesirable business outcomes, which makes it harder for you to do deals. 2) You start to get cut off at the knees yourself because nobody cares when a guy who plays outside social norms suffers indignities. I’m not surprised MLS continues to have players picked off with multiple one-year contract options (like Kaku, supposedly). FIFA has said those are unenforceable but the league continues to use them. It’s their own fault for playing dirty.
Are you suggesting it's outside of football's norm to wait out an expiring contract to sign that player for no transfer fee? This is a very easy one for River to avoid; resign Borre to a contract he will agree to. Otherwise it's no different that what's going to happen this summer in Europe with a bunch of players.
Not defined correctly. I already mentioned Vazquez and Moor. The list of guys who chose TFC would also include Cheyrou and vdW (whatever you think of him, he had options when he came). Even guys like Jason Hernandez in 2017 mattered. Hasler and Endoh had options too.
That's at least three key guys from the 2017 team that could have easily gone elsewhere, they all chose to come.
Last edited by ensco; 02-23-2021 at 10:09 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
A lot of TFC's DP deals have been like this (more recently at least). Seba also had an expiring contract and we paid an additional fee for Juve to release him early. Jozy was a unique swap since he was underperforming at Sunderland and Defoe wanted out.
I don't have a major issue with the Poz deal. It could have been cleaner, but sometimes transfers are messy. However it makes sense that TFC first negotiated with Poz. There's no point approaching a team for a transfer if the player has no interest in joining you at the price you're willing to offer. In TFC's view, once they came to an agreement with Poz since there was a buy-out clause, the transfer would be relatively simple. I'm sure Poz and his agent agreed otherwise their actions would have been different.
Post 2018, I'd argue Gonzalez had choices, as did Piatti (less because of his injuries) - same with Gallardo & Westberg. Laryea was a last gasp chance for him. Mullins was a trade within the league. Rest were homegrown/draft people.
Have we made any other moves?
BTW, by far our best move the last couple of years was Westberg.
Eight TFC players named to the Olympic Qualifying team. We will be lucky to field 18 players for the Canadian Championship at this rate.
https://twitter.com/joshuakloke/stat...639692803?s=20
"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
What on earth were Defoe (however it turned out) and a *current Italian international and squad rotation player at f'n Juventus* Giovinco if not prime A list DPs, are teams out here signing Mbappe or something!? Those are two of the biggest DP signings in MLS history in terms of the prestige/age/status of the player at the time of the signing. Bradley was a pretty big one, too.
Defoe was older and Giovinco was A list to maybe people who follow Serie A closely. I loosely follow it and I didn't know who he was prior to us signing him.
Generally A listers are the names that sell tickets to average folks who loosely follow the sport. Defoe was one I guess but he didn't last a season and started speaking out before fall. Rooney, Lampard, Higuian, Zlatan, etc are the big A listers. Worldwide superstar types. I don't see us getting any as a full time player. Cesar was our brush with the A list.
What matters here is market norms. And what we did with Pozuelo was outside market.
You can’t really contrast this with Leiweke or his deals. It’s night and day. We sold Giovinco, in his prime years, on leaving Europe and playing for TFC. Despite the past guy taking that deal calling it dogshit within 12 months and everything at the club prior to that being an unmitigated tire fire.
And Juventus ... was fully on board. We took the time to thank them for letting Giovinco come early and made a big deal of it. If you look at the press around that time, the contrast could not be more stark than our experience with Genk.
The whole thing with Giovinco was a quantum leap forward. It makes it easier for people like Curtis to do their job today. What Ali is potentially doing, if he continues on in this vein, is the opposite. Having guys play out their contracts or busting out release clauses without notifying the selling club, is not going to help you open doors in the future.
It wasn't an inactive clause, it was a badly written one. The clause assumed that the only windows that mattered were the top 5 Euro windows and the Arabian windows. Since 99 percent of clubs willing to pay a release clause that size reside there it seemed a reasonable assumption.
We exist outside those windows and had the money. Genk was upset that they made a poorly written contract. All of the posturing and fiasco was on their end. They had the short end of the stick. We only paid more to avoid this becoming a legal battle. Genk could have tried to drag this out but they would have lost.
In the end I will bet you Genk is more upset at their lawyers than they are at TFC.
I don't really see how this was outside the market norm. We negotiated with Poz, agreed to a contract, and told Genk we're going to acquire him by exercising the release clause. That's how transfers happen these days, you agree to terms with the player then negotiate with the team.
TFC management changes: "like adding a new fish to your aquarium of failure." - Shakes