President Bill Manning sees better season to come at TFC

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In a sports world that seems to rotate around the well-worn axis of all publicity being good publicity, Toronto FC certainly made headlines this off-season, with the ripple effects reaching all the way across the pond to the so-called home of soccer.

First there was Manchester United hiring the shortest-tenured head coach in TFC history when Chris Armas – or Ted Lasso as he is now been cruelly nicknamed by the players – was brought to Old Trafford as an assistant after his 15-game stint in charge of the Reds ended in July.

Then Toronto made one of the biggest splashes in Major League Soccer history last month, getting Italian international Lorenzo Insigne, fresh off a European Championship victory last summer, to sign a contract to come to MLS when his deal with Napoli expires this summer.

But it wasn’t simply the magnitude of signing that grabbed the attention of the English soccer press, but the manner of it, with TFC president Bill Manning publicly admitting that he looked at soccer deals website Transfermarket.com to discover which top players were on expiring contracts.

“I think the media had some fun with that,” Manning says in an interview. “It was a little blown out of proportion. Everybody knows Lorenzo Insigne, it’s not like I found him on Transfermarket.”

However Insigne found his way onto the team’s radar, the timing couldn’t have been more perfect for Manning and one of the two football clubs within his remit – the New York native is also president of the CFL’s Argonauts. With the Reds having gone from second overall in the regular-season standing in 2020 to second-from-bottom in 2021, Manning knew he was looking at an almost total overhaul of the team that had gone to three MLS Cups in four seasons, winning in 2017.

At a board presentation for team owner Maple Leaf Sports and Entertainment last September, he set out his vision for the club as part of a new five-year plan, one that would take the franchise through to 2026, when Canada will join the United States and Mexico as co-hosts of the men’s World Cup.

Part of that was adding an experienced, top-level head coach, a box that was ticked with the hiring of Bob Bradley last November. The other part was adding a world-class player and turning over a roster that has seen the departure of 17 players from last year, including Jozy Altidore, who scored the MLS Cup-winning goal in 2017.

If Manning has his way, though, the addition of Insigne will be one of the first pieces of the puzzle, not one of the last.

“I do think over the next three or four years, we’re going to add another Lorenzo and we’re going to really push the bar leading up to that World Cup so that Toronto FC is at the forefront of football here in Toronto and within our region,” he said. So much so, he added, that in addition to growing the club’s revenues by 50 per cent over that time, he says that he wants the demand for soccer to get to the point where an expanded 40,000-seat stadium for the World Cup would become a permanent fixture, not just a part-time addition.

As someone who still yearns to add a CONCACAF Champions League title to his résumé – he’s the only MLS executive to have lost in the final twice – Manning is driven to bring his team back to the championship-contending level it reached after his first full year at the helm in 2016.

With two MLS Cup successes already under his belt – with TFC and Real Salt Lake in 2009 – Manning is content to carry on working for an organization that shares his ambition, so much so that he decided not to stay the course rather than pursue one of his dream jobs heading up U.S. Soccer.

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“I aspire to be a big club, to be a championship club, to be a club that swings for the fences,” he said. “And I just felt that we needed to go big.”

Going big is something he learned all about after leaving his MLS job when the Tampa Bay Mutiny folded in 2002, leading to an opportunity with the NBA’s Houston Rockets, a team deep in the throes of Yao Ming mania. Although well outside the orbit of soccer, basketball is one of the few truly worldwide sports and Yao was a player who commanded a global following.

Manning hopes that signing Insigne, who has texted the TFC president after every preseason game to ask how the team has fared, can do something similar in Toronto.

“He’s a global superstar who is bigger than Toronto and he’s bigger than just our fan base,” he said. “He has fans all over the world, back in Italy. And I think it puts our club on a different level on a different standing and that’s what it did for the Rockets.”

While fresh blood was essential to push the team in an upward direction, Manning is also a big believer in what he calls “legacy players.” At Salt Lake, he had long-serving team members such as Kyle Beckerman and goalkeeper Nick Rimando, who played more than 300 games each for the team.

At BMO Field, he says those players are Michael Bradley and Jonathan Osorio, midfield stalwarts who have played more than 200 games each for the team and who have championship DNA running through their veins after playing in all three MLS Cups.

While he admits that Bradley is in the twilight of his career, he’s hoping the team captain can “go out on his terms,” while he hopes Osorio will be with the club through the 2026 World Cup.

“These are things that that I think set clubs apart on how they how they treat those type of players,” Manning says, adding that he hopes both will make what he calls the 300 Club.

With the team losing its way in 2021 – “in some ways it was embarrassing” – the president admits that in hindsight TFC might have been better served by replacing its longest-tenured head coach, Greg Vanney, with one of his assistants to maintain some form of continuity.

“I didn’t anticipate it falling apart as quickly as it did in 2021,” he said, although he added that the MLSE board has never been anything but supportive, with the only extra pressure being pressure that comes from within.

A new MLS season begins Saturday, however, with Toronto FC visiting FC Dallas. For Manning, it presents the opportunity to turn the page on one of his more painful chapters, missing the playoffs for just the third time in his 16-year career as an MLS executive.

“I do believe you have to respect history and learn from it,” he said. “But I try to look forward and I made some decisions and now it’s all about, okay, how do we reset our core of this team? How do we reset the foundation, the culture with Bob and build another team that’s going to compete for championships.”