Federico Bernardeschi is a fraud.

Stop defending him. Just stop.

Photo by Or Hakim on Unsplash

I started getting tips about Federico Bernardeschi early last season. At the time, I didn’t want to believe them. I wanted to stay focused on the undeniable flash that he can occasionally bring.

I wanted to believe that he was a guy who could give TFC some magic and allow them to push ahead into their brave new era of Italian greatness.

Instead, when I was being told was that he was a petulant, disruptive force that was having a net negative impact on TFC’s younger players. It went beyond the fact that he, along with Lorenzo Insigne, were actively trying to get Bob Bradley fired. They were, but that was just a sideshow.

No, this guy was making everything bad. What made this particularly egregious, however, was the glaring fact that he also sucked.

No, not that he was performing below what you need for a DP. That was obvious. What the people I was talking to were saying was that he was a below average MLS player. Actually, some were even stronger in their assessment. Sucked.

There’s a bit of room for subjective interpretation there, but when you look at his underlying numbers they are pretty underwhelming. For a guy who was put in every game and was supposed to be driving the offense (along with Insigne) he was putting up some pretty mediocre numbers.

Chance creation in the 18 is something that teams look to as being very important. TFC was among the worst teams in the league at creating clear opportunities in the box. A lot of that is on the Italians. A lot of the striker issues were on them too. Especially since they only seemed to pass to each other. It’s hard to score when you don’t have the ball and other teams are letting the wingers screw around with the knowledge they’ll give the ball up and create a counter opportunity.

Bernardeschi lead the team in turnovers, by the way. He coughed the ball up 4.6 times a game, Oootra punching bag Mark Anthony-Kaye had just 2.9. But, he was mean to them, so he had to be run out of town.

Perhaps the last bit there is unfair to the (mostly) boys behind the goal, but their blind defence of Bernardeschi while being more than happy to go after pretty much everyone else is a bit unfair to most thoughtful TFC fans. So, we are going to keep that in there.

Bernardeschi’s play — he didn’t draw a single penalty after the first game and averaged just one successful cross per 90 — is all you need to look at to justify moving on.

When you add the rest of the behaviours — behaviours now reported on by multiple people including players who were in the dressing room — this is a guy that needs to be gone. Like, yesterday.

Yet here we are on the brink of 2024 and Bernardeschi remains. This is probably because no one else wants him (look at his numbers at Juve prior to coming over. He’s not close to the level the likely planted transfer rumours put him at) and because Bill Manning can’t justify buying him out.

So, it looks like TFC is stuck with him.

What they aren’t stuck with is the need to play him. If John Herdman wants to set the tone he needs to sit this guy. Hell, send him to NextPro. Make him earn his time.

If he doesn’t like it then he can go count his money while vaping.

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