Welcome back to the Guardian’s MLS Power Rankings, where I have a beef with your specific team and your specific team alone. Unless you’re the last-place San Jose Earthquakes, in which case you have enough to worry about without me getting all up in your face.
Now, as a reminder, these aren’t your standard, run-of-the-mill power rankings. We’re still ranking teams from worst to first. But along with the rankings, we’re diving deep into a handful of teams from around the league who are doing particularly interesting things.
“Complete rebuild”
29. San Jose Earthquakes
28. Chicago Fire
27. Sporting Kansas City
26. New England Revolution
25. Nashville SC
24. Toronto FC
“TFC is a complete rebuild … Everything is on the table,” Keith Pelley told the Canadian Press.
Pelley is the president and CEO of Maple Leaf Sports and Entertainment, the company that owns Toronto FC. Only in the job since April, it hasn’t taken long for Pelley to recognize a big ol’ rebuild has to be on the cards for Toronto. TFC missed the playoffs this year and don’t have a game on Decision Day, either, so their year is over. That means they have the freedom to start tearing things down.
Really, that process has already begun. Pelley and general manager Jason Hernandez have been working with Marco Neppe, a former Bayern Munich technical director, for the last couple of months as they put together a “full organizational review”.
Pinpointing problems in Toronto isn’t hard. There’s the stalled academy pipeline that has seen them fail to develop a top Canadian talent, despite operating in a populous, talent-rich area. Then there’s the problem of the overpaid, underperforming Italians. Federico Bernardeschi, who has the sixth-highest salary in MLS, put together a fine season with eight goals and six assists, while Lorenzo Insigne, who makes more than anybody but Messi, notched just nine goal contributions and played only 1,352 minutes.
Really, though, the biggest problem is the one that Pelley is trying to address: Toronto FC don’t know how they want to go about winning soccer games. Is their on-field direction going to be fully set by manager John Herdman? Is his tactical approach informing the kinds of players they want to sign in the transfer market? For…