TFC announced today in a terse press release that they have ended their relationship with Ali Gerba. So now he is off the books and is free to sign with Montreal and score against us in the Voyageurs Cup (God, please don’t let that happen!!!).

I want to quote the release it in its entirety. It is so short on details to be almost unbelievable.

Toronto FC announced Monday they have reached an agreement with forward Ali Gerba to terminate his contract.

“We want to wish Ali all the best, and thank him for his contribution to the club” said manager, director of soccer Mo Johnston.

Gerba, 28, was signed by Toronto FC June 23, 2009. He started five of 11 games he appeared in logging 534 minutes and scoring one goal.

Here is the link for you to see it yourself if you don’t believe me:

http://www.torontofc.ca/news/2010/04/toronto-reaches-gerba-agreement

Three sentences. No information on the terms of the buyout. No information on at least if this clears some cap space for us. At least the quote from Mo was professional and classy.

I think that this pick has to rank up there with the biggest busts in the history of our club. The hall of fame busts include Pablo Vitti, Laurent Robert, Andy Welsh, Colin Samuel and of course the regrettable Carloz Ruiz. I would have to add that this is perhaps the worst bust in the club’s history for two reasons. First is the potential cap hit and how it really hurts our ability to restock the club for the season ahead considering how shallow the roster is right now. Second in retrospect is the fact that Gerba managed only one goal (in his opening game no less) and disappeared down the stretch when one more goal in one or two games would have been enough in and of itself to get us into the playoffs last year.

Mo gets a lot of stick for many things and one of them is from fans that have been critical of him not signing enough Canadian players considering that our club needs domestic players to fill out our roster under league rules. And signing him to guaranteed money is another thing to be critical of (another argument for another time).

The next time TFC gets criticized about not signing available Canadian talent I hope that fans remember that in this case this is what we wanted:

And this is what we got.