Defoe flop set stage for Reds’ success
Toronto FC midfielder Will Johnson was sitting in his living room nearly three years ago, watching as his now-club unveiled the fruits of its much-touted Bloody Big Deal campaign — his childhood friend Michael Bradley and English Premier League import Jermaine Defoe — to fanfare rarely fuelled by soccer on this side of the Atlantic.
“I remember sitting in my living room watching the press conference and was amazed that this is our league, that we’re getting superstar players coming back,” Johnson, who was a member of the Portland Timber at the time, said Wednesday.
Today, that $100-million campaign — which broke a Major League Soccer record for transfer fees — and one of the players that came as part of the package can be more of a punch line among Toronto fans than the revered transformation the club had hoped for.
The city’s relationship with Defoe, who played 19 games for the Reds in that 2014 season which ended without a playoff run, soured quickly. A year nearly to the day after his arrival, the forward was on his way back to England, the introductory campaign leaving more of a mark than his performances.
While Toronto FC’s front office has copped to Defoe’s tenure being a flop overall, today’s Reds players, on the cusp of the club’s first MLS Cup final against the Seattle Sounders Saturday, believe the intent the club showed in that offseason turned the tide for TFC to become the franchise it is today.
It set the stage for what bringing in a superstar could look like, Johnson said.
“The blueprint was there that you could bring in a guy who would fit in this city, this team and in this league.”
The Reds did just that, doubling down on MLS’s big name designated player game by swiftly bringing in not one, but two replacements.
Striker Jozy Altidore, the star of Toronto FC’s current playoff run, came from Sunderland as part of the Defoe deal, while Sebastian Giovinco, last year’s MLS Most Valuable Player, signed days after the Brit’s exit was confirmed.
The Bloody Big Deal paved the way for those arrivals, defender Nick Hagglund believes. It was the first time in one offseason that the team was willing to shell out a lot of money to bring in top players under the glare of the rest of the league and across the soccer world.
He praised his club for not shying away from that notion after the first attempt didn’t exactly pan out.
“I don’t think there’s ever such thing as a mistake. I think you learn from every opportunity that you have. Obviously they learned and they got it right the second time,” said Hagglund, who was drafted by TFC the same January Defoe and Bradley landed at the club.
Midfielder Jonathan Osorio believes Toronto missing out on the playoffs by eight points was a greater failure in 2014 than Defoe’s residence. But he thinks the transaction that brought him to town was “huge,” not just for the club but the league as a whole.
At 31, Defoe was an established name but was also one of the younger star designated players the league had lured across the pond.
“It’s not the first time they brought in a big player, but the kind of player that they brought in, I think that was the start of something new in MLS,” Osorio said.
“It went on to Jozy and Seba coming in in their prime. I think the league is starting to change in that sense, people are going for (designated players) in their prime.”
Between the snowball effect that prompted Altidore and Giovinco’s signings as well as the initial, and sometimes forgotten, acquisition of Bradley — now the Reds’ captain and a driving force behind the team’s success — in that same deal, defender Justin Morrow believes the club could not be where it is today without the Bloody Big Deal period.
“I think it was a starting point,” he said. “The club’s been tremendous in their ambitions to win MLS Cup, and now we’re here.”