Aron Winter guarantees Toronto will make playoffs; I say “fat chance”

Apr 25, 2012, 11:05 AM EDT

Oh, it’s on! It’s me against Aron Winter.

Toronto FC’s increasingly embattled boss has done the guarantee thing. He is guaranteeing that his bungling bunch from BMO, the winless Reds, the same team pressed precariously up against historically barren season starts, will make the playoffs.

And that’s a real hoot.

I have an abiding respect for what Winter has accomplished in the game. I distinctly remember sitting at the 1994 World Cup quarterfinals, at the epic Netherlands-Brazil thriller, working out in my mind exactly how a Dutch 4-3-3 worked.

Winter played in that game. He scored in it for Pete’s sake. So, he clearly has a tremendous head start, and I know he’s an authority on the game in ways that I can’t be.

Then again … we all have strengths, weaknesses and blind spots. Or, perhaps this is just what Winter believes he needs to say. Otherwise he undermines team belief and risks creating a self-fulfilling prophecy. I think that’s probably the case.

Otherwise, here’s what’s going on: When he says Toronto is going to make the 2012 MLS playoffs, he’s found himself in one massive black hole of awareness, a dreadful place from which no light of cognizance can escape, apparently.

Because I guarantee that Toronto will not make the playoffs.

OK, there’s a bit of SEO hyperole there. But I will say this for the record: I have serious doubts that it can happen.

It’s not just that Toronto is awful – it’s how awful they are.

More to the point, TFC seems so distressingly far from figuring things out. There simply are not enough shovels, personnel-wise, to dig out of this hole.

Winter’s sounded completely tone-deaf Saturday when he said Toronto might need better defenders. Well, it’s not like these defenders landed at BMO in some random player draw. Winter and his men picked these DOIs (defenders of inadequacy). And they do have an opportunity, five to six times a week, to make them better.

There’s a real manager-player personnel disconnect, it seems, with players ill-suited for Winter’s Dutch style.

Goal.com’s Kyle McCarthy has an exceptional take on that, and on Toronto FC’s failures as they reach higher up the management and ownership chain.

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7 Comments (Feed for Comments)

footballer4ever - Apr 25, 2012 at 12:03 PM

It’s a “Winter-freezing” MLS season for TFC so far which i hope it warns up sooner than later. Best wishes to TFC fans from a MLS fan in Florida!

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footballer4ever - Apr 25, 2012 at 12:51 PM

To guarantee playoffs that loosely is not a sign of confidence, but a sign of desperation to assure fans of better things. Why doesn’t he guarantee he’ll win next game instead? That’s be more reasonable and less ridiculous than guaranteeing playoffs this early in the MLS season.

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- Steve Davis - Apr 25, 2012 at 3:02 PM
  
  Maybe because the next game is at Real Salt Lake … (It would look pretty strange, wouldn’t it, to guarantee we’ll “win the one after next!”)
  
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footballer4ever - Apr 25, 2012 at 4:10 PM

LOL- true, but one game at a time is how you build up to make it to the playoffs. Nobody gave TFC a chance to beat LAG at HDC in the concacaf champions, yet they did. Why would RSL be the exception? Anyways, TFC can start a “new” season by beating RSL at RioTinto stadium.

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footballer4ever - Apr 25, 2012 at 4:19 PM

Mea culpa, TFC did not beat LAG at the HDC, but they did not lose (2-2). A win or at least a tie result would stop the TFC hemorrhage.

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trhendricks5966 - Apr 25, 2012 at 11:14 PM

You still have 28 fixtures, I would guess TFC won’t make the top half of the table, but you never know. One could have written a piece in December on how Wigan could not beat Man United and Arsenal in back to back fixtures, but they did.

Now after reading this, and while I am not a TFC supporter, part of me wants to see them in the upper half just to see the writer eat his words…

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footballer4ever - Apr 28, 2012 at 11:07 PM

TFC was minutes away from stealing a point at Rio Tinto stadium against RSL, but guess what, the got scored on stoppage time. Anyone speaking TFC playoffs still? I don’t think so. If TFC keeps playing like this, that BMO stadium will become a cavernous stadium and the will be relegated back to the USL. . I like TFC and feel for their fans misery.

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