January 11, 2011 MLS--Ajax Meets The New World (from TorontoFC.ca)

Ajax Meets The New World
Winter will face many challenges foreign to his European taste.
Mike Ulmer
TorontoFC.ca
January 11, 2011

You can use Google to find a DVD called ‘Heroes of the Future, The Ajax Playing Style.’

The DVD, an in-depth study of the  Amsterdam Football Team, touches on attacking in a triangle formation and training different players out of position. That there are no videos trumpeting ‘Win Like Toronto FC' goes a long way in explaining last Thursday.

The club unveiled two Ajax alumni, Aaron Winter, the team’s head coach and technical director,  Bob de Klerk (first assistant coach with Toronto FC) and old hand Paul Mariner (director of player development) a Brit schooled in the English game as well as Majore League Soccer.

When MLSE’s consultant Jurgen Klinsmann began the head hunting process, he didn’t ask Chief Operating Officer Tom Anselmi what kind of coach he wanted. He asked him what kind of team he wanted.

The answer, not surprisingly, was entertaining soccer. Winning is the end goal but even in games in which Toronto FC were outscored, they would have at least played and attacked with flair. They call it sports and entertainment for a reason.

It's the Ajax mentality that starts Toronto's search for a potent squad ahead of the 2011 MLS SuperDraft on January 13, and the league's transfer window set to open two days later.

“The challenge,” said Winter, “is helping people have a team that plays attacking football.”

For the last seven years, Winter, a native of the tiny South American country of Suriname has worked with the Ajax development teams and as an assistant coach with the first team.

Only three of 16 MLS teams scored fewer goals than Toronto FC. The roster has been laid bare by off season moves. There are 10 spots remaining but with a salary cap of $2.5 million constantly in play, dramatic upgrades wrought by big-name signings seem unlikely.

There isn’t much about Toronto FC that isn’t up for change and no real success to build on.

Now, with the first four years of the franchise spent comfortably out of the playoffs, you might wonder if it wouldn’t a better goal be to make the playoffs?

And in the grey of that question lives the difference between a goal and a plan.

When you put pen to paper and create a blueprint, your only limit is your vision.

You don’t worry about where the steel will come from or what the price of mirrored window will be five years from now.

You shoot for something that works, something better than what stood before.

And you don’t worry if you are starting over.

"The goal," Klinsmann said, “is soccer that is aggressive but still technically minded.”

It is also the flourishing of the team’s development system. One of the central elements of the Ajax style has been the development of players who learn and implement the same attacking system.

Winter, 43, arrives from Europe for the same reason so many have. What was mature leaves limited room for invention. But the idea of bringing those elements to the new world is intoxicating.

“It was a big challenge for me. I want the feeling that comes with bringing something with style and excitement to Toronto,” he said.

There are, of course, scores of challenges that might prevent a wholesale transplant of the Ajax way. They include, in no particular order, the salary cap, the team’s multiple commitments outside the MLS schedule and travel time that dwarfs what European teams face. 

But what has been recognized is there is little point in molding this year’s team around the talents of their present players. For one thing, many of those players might soon be gone. Second, the best time to begin installing a new template is Day 1. Each day you wait makes things a little bit harder.

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