Kevin Payne did some very important things while in charge of Toronto FC.
Relieved of his duties as club president and general manager last week, Payne trimmed the club’s bloated roster of exorbitant player contracts and freed up significant salary cap space, allowing for his eventual successor to operate with a lot more breathing room.
Payne also made some very astute signings, including Canadian Jonathan Osorio and Argentine Matias Laba, who look poised to serve as the team’s midfield backbone for many seasons to come.
All that being said, Payne made mistakes: from questionable acquisitions (Danny Califf and Julio Cesar) to shooting himself in the foot with his ludicrous claims (Tal Ben Haim), to his abrasive and sometimes cocky demeanour that rubbed a lot of people, both inside and outside of the organization, the wrong way.
But Payne’s biggest mistake? That would be hiring Ryan Nelsen. Thinking outside of the box can be a good thing, but Payne ripped the box up, lit it on fire and then danced on the ashes when he selected Nelsen.
Simply put, Payne should not have hired Nelsen in the first place, and MLSE president Tim Leiweke is making an even bigger mistake in gambling on a rookie coach who hasn’t delivered in the slightest.
Riding a six-year playoff drought (soon to be seven), TFC needed a stable hand, a coach with a track record of success of earning results on the field. Considering the state of TFC, the situation called for someone who had turned around a troubled franchise before or who, at the very least, had coaching experience.
Nelsen didn’t fit that profile. He was still an active player with Queens Park Rangers in the Premier League in January at the time of his hiring. At his introductory press conference in Toronto, Nelsen was grilled about his managerial inexperience, and admitted that he hadn’t earned any coaching badges or taken any coaching courses like a lot of players looking to get into managing do in their off-season.
Were other teams really beating down Nelsen’s door, was he in such high demand for his coaching services, that the Reds felt compelled to hire him despite his lack of experience?
It’s difficult to believe that was the case.
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If Payne truly believed in Nelsen, surely it would have made far more sense to bring him in as an assistant coach, allowing him to gain some seasoning and be mentored by a more experienced manager. Instead of grooming Nelsen, Payne decided the future was now and gave the former New Zealand international the reins.
But it hasn’t worked out with Nelsen at the helm. He’ll tell you the team is more defensively organized, and that the club has improved compared to last season. Considering TFC was coming off one of the worst campaigns in MLS history by any team in 2012, that’s not an impressive feat. Nor is it anything Nelsen should be hanging his hat upon.
Nelsen will also tell you (repeatedly) that TFC has made progress over the course of the current season.
But here we are in September and we’re talking about the exact same problems that plagued the club at the start of the season: an inability to put in a complete 90-minute performance, a failure to put opponents away, and committing game-changing defensive errors that result in dropped points.
Nelsen can offer all the explanations he wants, and hint that his team is better than its record suggests. At some point, though, results on the field have to support that claim. Otherwise it’s just cheap talk.
TFC is not the most talent-laden side in MLS, to be sure. But Nelsen has had enough to work with that this team should be better than 4-13-10 and 22 points. There’s no excuse for that record with the quality of players Nelsen has had at his disposal. None.
Also inexcusable is the culture of complacency that Nelsen has cultivated. Nelsen’s post-match press conferences don’t give an honest evaluation of his team’s performances. Instead, excuses are trotted out about poor officiating decisions, while at the same time he pats his players on the back and gives them far more credit than they deserve after another laboured and meek outing.
Although he doesn’t use the word explicitly, it’s clear that Nelsen naively believes TFC often “deserves” better. What he fails to realize is that “deserving” has absolutely nothing to do with it.
Pro sports isn’t a meritocracy. You don’t earn points based on merit, but by imposing your will on games. TFC hasn’t done that during Nelsen’s tenure. The Reds seek to contain and destroy, not to create. The team is reactive, not proactive. Opponents hardly quiver at the prospect of playing Toronto, comfortable in the knowledge that it’s only a matter of time before they will break through the Reds’ feeble resistance.
Quite why Leiweke has thrown his public support behind such a coach and is hitching TFC’s wagon to Nelsen’s star remains a mystery.
Is Leiweke prepared to let a quality GM candidate slip through his fingertips over Nelsen? Is retaining a coach of Nelsen’s calibre really a deal breaker in finding Payne’s replacement? If so, that’s staggering. Let’s be bluntly honest here: We’re talking about Ryan Nelsen, a coach with just four wins to his credit. Bruce Arena, he ain’t.
Now Nelsen has traded away a young prospect in Maximiliano Urruti for Bright Dike, who is recovering from a torn ACL and hasn’t played a game all season. Were two substitute appearances totaling 37 minutes really enough of a sample size for Nelsen to determine that the young Argentine wouldn’t fit in at TFC? Honestly, the haste with which Nelsen acted to get rid of Urruti beggars belief.
Even if Leiweke is looking for the new GM to simply be a “capologist” who carries out Nelsen’s plans, he’s putting a lot of trust in an unproven coach at a critical juncture in the franchise’s history. After seven years without a single playoff appearance and the fan base growing more disenfranchised by the day, Leiweke can’t afford to get this wrong. He simply can’t.
Now more than ever, Toronto FC needs a coach who can turn things around in quick order and inspire it to greater things.
Nelsen is not that guy.
John Molinaro is sportsnet.ca’s chief soccer reporter. Follow him on Twitter.