TFC Notebook: Will Toronto FC make any moves before the Primary Transfer window shuts?

It’s time for another TFC Notebook.

A new notebook will be released every weekend throughout the course of the 2023 Toronto FC season, featuring news and updates from training during the week, exclusive interviews, tidbits and more. It's supported by BET99 Sportsbook so if you're interested in responsible gaming, please check out their special welcome offer.

Without further ado, let’s dive in. 
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LAST TFC NOTEBOOK: THE CHARACTER THAT IS FEDERICO BERNARDESCHI THROUGH THE LENS OF HIS TORONTO FC TEAMMATES
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Marshall-Rutty on being compared to Alphonso Davies: “I just want to be the best version of myself”

Jahkeele Marshall-Rutty is one of the more popular names in Canadian soccer, despite being just 18 years old.

That’s because since he turned pro, fans, media, and even the team have been hyping up the young prospect, likening him to the generational talent that is Alphonso Davies.

“Do you think that’s fair?” I asked Marshall-Rutty in a 1-on-1 interview at the BMO Training Ground on Thursday.

He paused for a second and shrugged his shoulders.

“I mean, you guys [the media] are the ones making that, so maybe I should ask you guys. I don’t say those things,” Marshall-Rutty respectfully replied, with a slight chuckle.

The comparisons between Marshall-Rutty and Davies as a promising Canadian winger may not be fair, but they come naturally, especially given that Marshall-Rutty broke Davies' record as the youngest player to ever be called up to the Canadian men's national team, surpassing the Bayern Munich star by 10 days.

There also aren’t many Canadians that land on the cover of The Guardian’s Next Generation list, honouring the best young players around the world born in 2004. Nor are there many Canadians who have earned the opportunity to train with Premier League giants Arsenal, Liverpool, and Club Brugge in Belgium (the latter of the two are still closely monitoring Marshall-Rutty.)

So sure, there’s reason to buy into the hype, but it’s also fair to suggest that Toronto FC didn’t do him many favours by building him up and touting him at such a young age, obviously, with hopes that he’d be able to replicate the pathway carved out by Davies in MLS.

Ahead of the 2020 MLS season, Marshall-Rutty, who signed at the age of 15, became the youngest player to ever strike a first-team contract with Toronto FC.

At the time of his signing, ex-TFC General Manager Ali Curtis said: “Jahkeele is the top player in his age group across Canada and the U.S, and he is among the top young players in all of North America. […] He had interest from many top clubs in Europe.”

Last offseason, there was a report by Marshall-Rutty’s agent via TSN’s Matthew Scianitti that TFC were valuing the then-17 year old at $20 million, though TFC President Bill Manning refuted that report, telling Room 4-4-2 last season that $20 million was never the price tag and that “the market” dictates Marshall-Rutty’s transfer value.

All of this is to suggest that ever since turning pro the teenager has been under a lot of external pressure from all parties concerned, including the media, though Marshall-Rutty doesn't seem to be bothered by noise.

“I’ve said this from when I was a young age, it’s an honour to be compared to these players, but I don’t like to read those things. When I go home, that’s not what we talk about. It’s just how are you getting better every single day. When I come in, I just want to be the best version of myself and keep learning from these players,” he said.

The Brampton, Ont., native added: “Honestly, it’s one of those things where you smile and [say] ‘okay yeah, that’s nice,’ but I don’t look into all those things. 

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“I’m just trying to continue to keep improving and where I am right now is TFC and I’m just going to give everything to this club. For sure, it’s a good feeling to be compared to a player like that, but I don’t really look too much into it and really feel the pressure because I really don’t read into things, so I’m just living in the moment.”

Marshall-Rutty got off to a strong start to the 2022 season before an unfortunate knee injury derailed a promising year. It would be easy for any young player, especially with the pedigree that Marshall-Rutty has, to view it as a setback, but he chooses not to.

“I’m someone that believes strongly that everything happens for a reason, but I don’t have any regrets,” he said, reflecting back on the injury. “Of course, I started the season off well, and then I picked up the injury, but I worked on things that maybe I wouldn’t have worked on if I was to just continue to keep playing, like my body and my mentality.

“It was good for me to be so young to see that injuries are part of the game.”

In 2023, Marshall-Rutty has picked up where he left off last season, showing promise early on. Following a strong performance against the San Jose Earthquakes a few weeks back, he was named to the MLS Team of the Matchday, and last weekend, he contributed a crucial assist in Toronto's 2-2 comeback draw against Atlanta.

He's making strides in-game, but even more than his on-field performance, Bob Bradley is pleased about the way that Marshall-Rutty is maturing off the field.

“Jahkeele’s going in a good direction. He’s had a really good mentality, I think his level of concentration in training every day, he’s been more professional, so, I think that those things are good,” said the TFC Head Coach and Sporting Director. “I think we all feel that Jahkeele has been in a good way, and we’re happy for him. He has worked hard.”

Marshall-Rutty, who still has dreams of playing at the highest level overseas, has his eyes solely set on Toronto FC this season. He says he’s trying to start as much as he can this year and hoping to continue improving, believing that everything else will fall into place as long as he’s zeroed in on the task at hand.

“As a team, we want to make the playoffs. I want to win some silverware – Canadian Championship, MLS Cup — and just be the best version of myself every single day. I'll start with that, because if I’m the best version of myself every day, it sets me up for success,” he said.

He’s been a part of the first team mix since he was 15, so sometimes it’s easy to forget that Marshall-Rutty is still just 18 years old and that he is, quite literally, still growing.

“I mean, I’m getting older, you know? I’m turning 19,” he said laughing.

The future is still extremely bright for the young Canadian.

Perruzza: “It sucks going into the stands on Saturdays, but it’s part of the job”

Jordan Perruzza has the potential to one day emerge as a prominent leader for Toronto FC. That is, if he’s able to put it all together on the field.

The 22-year-old striker checks a lot of the right boxes. He works hard, he gets along with his teammates, he’s humble, he says all the right things, and as a kid from the Toronto area, he understands what it means to represent his hometown club.

“[It’s] always exciting to play at BMO. My whole life, I’ve dreamt of playing there so every time I play there it’s emotional, an emotional day, an emotional build-up leading up to it, so it’s always exciting to play there,” the Woodbridge, Ont., native said earlier this week, reflecting on his first appearance of the season last weekend.

Perruzza was called upon to make his first start of the year in Saturday’s eventual 2-2 draw vs. Atlanta United at BMO Field. He played 45 minutes, and while he didn’t find the back of the net, TFC head coach and sporting director Bob Bradley praised the No. 77’s work rate after the match.

“Jordan worked hard. Not every touch is perfect, but you see it every day in training. Jordan comes out with a good mentality. He works hard. He tries to make runs. He runs in the box, and you hope that if he can get a ball that sits for him that he can finish it. On his left foot, he’s a pretty good finisher,” said Bradley.

Perruzza added: “I thought I had a good appearance. My touches weren’t the cleanest, but I was active, I created chances for the team, I was pressing a lot, I thought I brought good energy to the team.”

Seeing his name listed as a starter for just the second time in his young MLS career, Perruzza was happy to see that he was rewarded for his efforts in training, and hopes that he showcased enough to warrant more opportunity moving forward as minutes have been hard to come by for the left-footed attacker.

Since signing a first-team deal with TFC back in March 2020, Perruzza has logged just over 400 minutes with the senior side.

In a way, he has become a bit of a forgotten soldier for Toronto FC, but prior to signing, he was regarded as one of the most promising young attacking talents in Canadian soccer thanks to his impressive goal-scoring record at the youth and reserve levels.

It’s a large part of the reason why the club chose to sign him to a long-term contract extension last offseason – a deal that runs through 2024 with an option for 2025.

“We hope he is ready to make a big step in 2022,” said Bradley in a release at the time of Perruzza’s new deal.

It’s fair to say he didn’t take that “big step” Bradley was hoping for last season, totalling just 223 league minutes, with no goals to show for it. He made 13 appearances in 2022, but the majority of those were late in matches. His lack of playing time can be, at least partially, attributed to where he stood on the team’s depth chart, behind incumbent starter Jésus Jiménez and Canadian international Ayo Akinola.

While it hasn’t panned out the way some might’ve hoped, that doesn’t mean he won’t be able to fulfill his potential with TFC one day, but instead, perhaps serves as a reminder that every player develops differently. As the old cliché goes, development isn’t linear.

“Everyone has their own path, and you see with me, I’m still trying to work into getting consistent minutes. It’s not that I’m content never playing. I want to play every week. It sucks going into the stands on Saturdays, but it’s part of the job. If that’s how I’m helping the team at the moment, that’s how I got to help the team, and when my chances come, I’ve got to take advantage,” Perruzza said.

He added that it has been a mental challenge at times to go for extended periods of time without seeing his name on the team sheet and not knowing when his next opportunity will present itself. With that comes an added pressure to really take advantage of the moment when he does get a shot.

But that hasn’t deterred Perruzza from working diligently to keep improving on the training ground. This season, he says he’s worked on his defensive abilities and defensive work – his pressing, his positioning, always staying engaged, focused, and aware.

“The things that need to be done as a striker,” he said, “that maybe in the past I didn’t focus on as much, so now I see the importance of it.”

One of the reasons I wrote above that Perruzza always “says the right things” is because, from my experience, he’s always been a team-first guy. Oftentimes, we see young players prioritize their minutes, concerned with their own personal development as opposed to team success. Understandable with the way soccer is growing in this country and the opportunities that are starting to present themselves overseas.

But Perruzza has a different view on it. He sees the two – team success and his own personal development – as going hand-in-hand.

“When the team is doing well, more opportunities come, and you get noticed more when the team is winning. No one notices a losing team, a losing player. They only notice when you win championships, and that’s what everyone on the squad is here for: to win championships.”

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It helps that he’s also extremely, extremely grateful for the opportunity to play professional soccer in his own backyard, in front of friends and family at BMO Field – a place that he’s gone to since he was nine years old.

“My dream is to play as long as I can for Toronto,” said Perruzza last season. “As long as I can keep playing here, I’ll be happy.”

At 22 years old, Perruzza bleeds TFC and is just scratching the surface on what will hopefully be a long and successful professional career. You can’t help but root for the young homegrown striker.

Will Toronto FC make any moves before the primary transfer window closes?

The 2023 MLS Primary Transfer window is just days away.

It closes on Monday April 24, meaning teams will have to hold off on making any trades or incoming transfers until the summer window re-opens (July 5 to Aug. 2).

Barring a tempting last-minute trade offer, it’s unlikely that Toronto FC make any moves before then, but speaking to media on Thursday, Bob Bradley didn’t dismiss the notion entirely.

“I think that there will be calls and discussions that’ll go on until the end of the window. I can’t say whether or not it’s likely that anything happens at this point,” said Bradley.

The TFC Head Coach and Sporting Director re-iterated that the club doesn’t have much salary budget space to “go out and get players,” meaning that for Toronto FC to make any additions, there’ll likely need to be a corresponding subtraction.

But it’s not like Toronto has many expendable pieces on its roster that would either free up salary budget space or bring back allocation money in return.

One name to watch on that front, however, is Deandre Kerr. Toronto would likely rather not trade the 20-year-old homegrown striker, who has shown plenty of promise, but it may be the best way for the team to recoup assets to acquire a more established striker – the same way that they dealt fellow homegrowns Jacob Shaffelburg and Luca Petrasso.

Kerr was mysteriously absent from training this past week. Bradley said that Kerr was “in the building” on Thursday but was “still recovering from not feeling great for a few days,” however, he wasn’t listed on the team’s weekly injury report.

Last season, he offered a similar explanation when Ralph Priso was absent from training, just hours before trading away the young Canadian to the Colorado Rapids in a trade for Mark-Anthony Kaye last season. I haven’t heard anything directly linking Kerr’s name to a trade, but it’s just something to monitor.

Another interesting name to watch is Ayo Akinola. The Canadian national team striker has been shopped by Toronto FC for almost a year now, but there hasn’t been another team in MLS that’s been willing to fork up much in return.

The 23-year-old striker, who was recently one of the most promising young players in the league, has yet to re-find his form since recovering from an ACL injury and there’s a sense that his overall transfer value has diminished. For what it’s worth, Akinola is hoping that he can prove his doubters wrong – and maybe that includes other teams around MLS – this season.

Could Toronto hold off this window and wait until the summer, when only 50 per cent of the salary of incoming players counts towards the cap, to make a further addition? Even then, there’s no guarantees, and it appears Bradley isn’t a big fan of going the route of making mid-season acquisitions.

“The other part of the summer window that’s a challenge is just the history in MLS shows that when you get guys in the summer, by the time they get here, have they been playing? Have they been training? Are they fit? Adjustment to the league. It’s not always perfect, that’s for sure. We saw that last year,” said Bradley.

TFC spent heavily in the offseason to sign big-time free agents Sean Johnson, Raoul Petretta, Sigurd Rosted, Matt Hedges, and re-sign Jonathan Osorio. All of those players are signed to Targeted Allocation Money (TAM) contracts and have proven to be important additions to the team. You don’t make those additions without investing greatly, and so far, they’ve all been worth the price.

But that also left the team with little budget space to play with. They’ve even had to do some cap gymnastics, classifying Osorio as their third Designated Player, in order to fit all those pieces under the cap.

Would Toronto FC have been better off not signing one of those players and instead investing in a striker? It’s hard to say, but the team is well aware that they need to get more production out of the No. 9 position. The only question is how?

Added Time: News and Notes

–      Toronto FC have lost their last three visits to Subaru Park, having been outscored 12-0 over that span. Their last road victory in Philadelphia came back in March 2019, a 3-1 victory thanks to a brace from skipper Michael Bradley. Which is why Philadelphia (-163) are heavy favourites on the weekend against Toronto (+433), though Jim Curtin’s side are winless in their last five (3L, 2D), as they’re focused on a Concacaf Champions League run. The Union play LAFC on Wednesday in the semifinals of that competition.

–      Toronto FC are unbeaten in their last seven MLS matches (W1 T6) but have collected just nine points over that span.

–      Speaking of Michael Bradley, it was a strange week for Toronto FC, as Bradley, who did not miss a single training session last season, was absent, and the TFC captain will not be named to the team’s matchday squad for the first time in over year as he recovers from a lower-body injury. The last time Bradley was left out of a matchday squad was back on October 31, 2021 – a 1-1 draw vs. Atlanta United.

–      Lorenzo Insigne (groin) had a “good week of training” and will definitely play “more than 15 minutes” on Saturday according to Bob Bradley.

–      Adama Diomande and Victor Vázquez (lower body) were limited in training this week, but Bob Bradley said there’s a slight chance that both players could feature in an extremely limited capacity this weekend. Matt Hedges (concussion protocol), Cristián Gutiérrez (non-covid illness), also won’t be available. Hedges and Gutiérrez worked out on their own on Thursday.

–      Federico Bernardeschi (lower body), meanwhile, was a surprise addition to the injury report Thursday afternoon. The Italian, who is listed as questionable, trained all week, and Bob Bradley made no mention of him when asked about the team’s current injury situation. Bernardeschi has been involved in 11 of Toronto FC’s last 18 MLS goals (seven goals, four assists), dating back to August 27, 2022.

–      Richie Laryea made his 100th appearance for Toronto FC in all competitions, becoming the 16th player in club history to reach the milestone, joining Jonathan Osorio, Michael Bradley, Justin Morrow, Mark Delgado, Jozy Altidore, Ashtone Morgan, Alex Bono, Eriq Zavaleta, Chris Mavinga, Sebastian Giovinco, Nick Hagglund, Auro Jr., Drew Moor, Alejandro Pozuelo and Doneil Henry.

–      Speaking of Laryea, for the second time this season, the pacey fullback was named to the MLS Team of the Matchday. It’s the seventh time that a TFC player has been named to the TOTW: Sean Johnson (MD2), Laryea (MD4 + MD8), Federico Bernardeschi (MD4+MD6 Bench), Jahkeele Marshall-Rutty (MD5), Mark-Anthony Kaye (MD7 Bench)

–      Sean Johnson started in goal for the USMNT in Wednesday’s 1-1 draw vs. Mexico. It was the first goal that the TFC ‘keeper conceded for the U.S. in over 10 years (11 starts). Johnson will be available vs. Philadelphia, per Bob Bradley.

–      BMO Field was named a host venue for the 2023 Concacaf Gold Cup, but will only host one match: Canada vs. the winner of prelims 7. That means Canada will host one of Guyana, Trinidad & Tobago, Guadeloupe, or Grenada on June 27. The MLS season will not halt for the Gold Cup, which runs June 16 – July 16, 2023.

–      Toronto FC II (0-0-3) are back in action on Sunday, still searching for their first win of the season. The Young Reds will play the Philadelphia Union II at Subaru Park a day after the first team, and it’s likely that a few of the younger senior players – like Hugo Mbongue and Themi Antonoglou – stick around for that match.

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