The most important signing
Sean Jonnson is headed north. Is he who TFC needed?
Alex Bono is great in training.
Everyone that you talk to will tell you. The man is a beast. He’s an athletic freak who will leave you slack jawed at the saves that he will pull off on the practice pitch. That ability got him drafted by TFC back in 2015 and eventually landed him the starter’s role for the 2017 treble-winning squad.
Although there is truth that the keeper on that TFC team didn’t have to do a lot, he was still solid in the 2017 MLS Cup playoffs. He didn’t lose TFC games.
Then the 2018 CCL Final took place. Although, many TFC fans will look to Mark(y) Delgado’s miss in the second leg of the Chivas tie as the moment that the dream died, that ignores the moment in the first leg where Bono watched as a 40-yard free kick from the touchline sailed over his head and gave Chivas the win at BMO Field.
It was a keeping error of truly disastrous proportions. I’m not sure Bono ever fully recovered from it either.
From that moment forward, he was still the same great training keeper. He just had a habit of letting in a true howler every 3-4 games. It wasn’t ideal, to say the least.
It was also one of those things that can’t be measured by statistics, no matter how advanced they are. When a team loses confidence in a keeper, it almost doesn’t matter how many saves he makes. They are only going to focus on the ones he should have made.
He had to go. And, TFC needed to bring in someone that would instantly be trusted by the players in front of him. Everyone around the team knew this — the coaches, MLSE, the fans, the staff that served me my veggie burger combo at the Liberty Village Harvey’s after every game last year, everyone.
That Sean Johnson was TFC’s priority target this off-season was painfully obvious. I mean, I was Tweeting about it in July.
Oh, and that penalty record is another reason Bono had to go, but I’ll stop bashing him now. He’s gone.
The bottom line is that this was the signing that they needed to get done if they were to be a legit contending team this year. Johnson’s presence, and the calm that it is going to give to the back-line, will make everyone better at defending.
TFC badly needs to be better at defending next season.
His addition alone won’t convince everyone that this re-build is over and the club is ready to shoot for trophies again. I’m not fully convinced.
However…it’s fair to think that they might be ready. Certainly, they are a playoff team now, not that anyone should use that as a end-goal measure.
TFC won’t. There’s still a couple moves to go in this off-season, likely.
The biggest one is done though. So, TFC fans can breath easier now that they have finally got what they were looking for.
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