Mo Johnston has left the building. But his legacy, for better or worse, will remain with Toronto FC for a good while yet. With change coming in the form of a new management team in the off season I thought it would be an interesting exercise  today to take a look at the individual contract status of players on the Toronto FC roster so that you could get some sort of general appreciation at least as to the scale of the job the new regime will have ahead of itself to rebuild this team.

For the record I will tell you that my list is not as complete, not by a long shot, as I would like it to be. Mo was not exactly known for proactively putting information out into the public domain was he? Furthermore with MLS being a single entity league which technically holds all player contracts, usually the length of specific deals is generally not always released. For those players that have an “unclear” contract status is would be a fair guess in my opinion that a good majority of those listed as such are probably going to be looking for new deals in 2011 either here or elsewhere.

Under Contract For 2011

• Chad Barrett  – Still under contract until 2012
• Julian de Guzman  – signed a three year deal in 2009
• Dwayne De Rosario – One more year on current deal
• Emmanuel Gomes – Signed to a deal of at least two years in length in April 2009. Unsure if it expire at the end of this season or not
• Doneil Henry – Homegrown player under contract – length of deal not announced
• Raivis Hscanovics – Out of contract at the end of 2011
• Nicholas Lindsey – Homegrown player under contract – length of deal not announced
• Amadou Sanyang – Signed to a deal of at least two years in length in April 2009. Unsure if contract expires at the end of this season or continues into 2011
• Maxim Usanov –  Out of contract at the end of 2011
• O’Brian White – Signed to a deal of at least two years in length in January 2009. Unsure if contract expires at the end of this season or not

Out Of Contract

• Nana Attakora  – Out of contract I believe
• Adrian Cann – Deal expires at year end
• Nick Garcia – Out of contract at the end of the season
• Milos Kocic – On loan, under contract until the end of 2010
• Mista – Out of contract at the end of the season

Contract Status Unclear

• Gabe Gala – Unsure of his contract status
• Jon Conway – Unsure of his contract status
• Stefan Frei – Last year of Generation Adidas eligibility I think
• Dan Gargan – Unsure to the length of his deal
• Ty Harden – Unsure of status
• Fuad Ibrahim – Unsure of status
• Nick LaBrocca – Unsure of his contract status
• Joseph Nane – Signed a contract in April of this year. Unclear as to the length of the deal
• Jacob Peterson – Unsure of his contract status
• Maicon Santos – Still technicaly on loan from his Brazilian club. Unsure of 2011 status
• Martin Saric – Unsure of contract status after this season

On top of this there are two contracts of players not with TFC today that are coming off the books as well. The Reds will not longer be paying part of Carl Robinson’s contract at season end and the salary cap hit from the release of Ali Gerba will also drop off the bools as well.

Apparently only ten players can be confirmed as being under contract with the club for 2011 and of those ten there is no guarantee that all of them will be back in 2011. Perhaps a number of those deals will be renegotiated or even bought out. Of the five players out of contract I think that TFC will try and move heaven and earth to re sign their defensive centre back combination of Nana Attakora and Adrian Cann. Of those whose status is unclear I think only Stefan Frei is an absolute keeper (no pun intended). The others on that list are, with due respect to all of them, journeyman MLS players that should only be back if they can be had at a fair price.

Nobody really knows about the allocation situation either.Ah allocation money, that nebulous system that allows MLS clubs to notionally go over the salary cap by exchanging additional dollars that gives clubs additional cap space is also just about impossible to even guesstimate. As an example when Sam Cronin was traded to San Jose this season for allocation dollars in return there was no confirmation on how long those allocation dollars would be on the books for. Do they expire this year? Or next year? No one knows for sure. In 2009 TFC used a large chunk of allocation space Mo acquired in his multitude of deals to field a more expensive side than 2010 and with a ton of those dollars expiring at the end of the year there had to be a of player movement to get under the cap again.

Mo Johnston was without a doubt a very poor manager of TFC’s salary cap space in his time here.  He also had a penchant for grossly over paying for talent. Whoever takes over in the coming months must take a hard look at the pieces that are here and decide if they are worthy of remaining. Of those out of contract a good chunk of them will be gone and some that stay will either see big  jumps or big cuts on what will be offered to them in salary.

Toronto has had about 80 players through the doors in four years. I think it will take at last one more year to undo many of Mo’s mistakes and bring some sort of roster stability to the franchise. In any case there will unfortunately have to be at least one more year of the revolving door at BMO Field.

What do you think? Your comments are always welcome and appreciated.