TORONTO – Michael Bradley is in. He’s all in, lest you had any doubts.
He might not wear the captain’s armband (Steven Caldwell does), but Toronto FC is Bradley’s team. He is both the pulse and the face of the franchise.
And while Jermain Defoe’s future at the club remains in serious doubt, there’s a reason why nobody of any stature is seriously questioning Bradley’s commitment to TFC: it’s because he is committed.
Not that he had to, but Bradley provided more evidence of this on Friday at the club’s Downsview training facility, as the midfielder spoke to local reporters for the first time after undergoing surgery in New York last Tuesday to correct a lingering nerve issue in his foot.
Toronto finished seventh in the Eastern Conference in 2014 with an 11-15-8 record, and failed to qualify for Major League Soccer’s playoffs for an eighth consecutive year despite a major off-season overhaul that saw the club spend big on a number of new players—including Bradley and fellow DPs Defoe and Gilberto. Bradley battled through the foot problem for most of 2014 to appear in 25 of TFC’s 34 regular-season games, scoring two goals and adding four assists.
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Bradley said he had been bothered by the injury for “about a year,” and explained there wasn’t any time during the regular season to permanently address the issue. He managed the pain via injections and other methods as best he could, putting off the surgery until after the MLS campaign was over.
“For a football player your feet are your livelihood. When your feet feel good, you feel good. There were certainly days where it bothered me a little bit, but as an athlete you learn pretty quickly there are so few days where you feel perfect. … You learn to train, you learn to play and you learn to get on with it,” Bradley said.
He later added: “Don’t get me wrong. I felt very good. Because it was a minor thing, there was always the ability, especially at times if it was bothering me during games, to just numb it up, and be able to play and feel 100 percent. No need to paint this picture that I was walking around with one foot all year.”
You could hardly have held it against Bradley had he quietly left town after the last game of the season and snubbed the media like Defoe did. Instead, the American international flew back from New York and gave up valuable personal time with his wife Amanda (she’s pregnant with the couple’s second child and is due in two weeks) in order to speak to reporters and face the growing scrutiny over another failed TFC season one last time—all this while still being hobbled and needing crutches to get around.
Defoe took a different approach. Unlike Bradley, the Englishman snuck out of town and headed back to Europe after the end of the season under the guise of having a medical appointment. In doing so, he avoided answering pressing questions about his future and commitment to TFC.
Bradley on Friday went to great lengths to point out that the Defoe saga—is he staying or is he going?—didn’t prove to be a distraction down the season stretch, and that “inside the locker room, there were never any issues” with the former Spurs star.
It’s clear, though, Bradley feels that Defoe has to make up his mind one way or another about whether or not he wants to be back in Toronto next year.
“For me, he needs to decide at this point where he is in his life, in his career and what he wants,’ Bradley said.
As for the team’s off-season plans, Bradley insisted that the roster doesn’t have to be blown up. He feels the team is headed in the right direction and he’s excited about the future.
He also downplayed the need to bring in more marquee players, or a No. 10 playmaker who can pull the creative strings in midfield. He explained it’s not about adding stars, but about getting the team chemistry right, and having everybody committed.
“We need to find a way to get the right types of players in, and also get the right types of men in. Everybody who’s here—coaches, players, staff, management—everyone is on the same page in terms of where we need to take this. There’s a huge desire and a big commitment to make sure we can get there,” Bradley assured.
“We need more guys with personality. More leaders. More competitors. More men.”
Bradley said he’ll be fully fit and be ready to return to action by the start of Toronto FC’s pre-season training camp in January. However, he won’t be able to play for the U.S. in a pair of international friendlies against Colombia (Nov. 14 in London) and Ireland (Nov. 18 in Dublin).
