TORONTO – It wasn’t that Toronto FC didn’t want to hold on to Danleigh Borman, who was taken Monday in Stage 1 of the Re-Entry Draft by the New England Revolution. Quite the opposite, in fact.
The two parties simply couldn’t come to an agreement to keep Borman north of the border, with the left back/midfielder turning down an offer from the Reds before he was made available in the draft.
“We offered Danleigh a very good deal in the window and he turned it down, which was disappointing to us,” TFC director of player development Paul Mariner said Tuesday. “But he indicated what he wanted to do. Good luck to him. I hope he has a good time in Boston.
“There was nothing we could do about it. We offered him an excellent deal. I’d be surprised if other teams would offer him such a good deal, but good luck to the lad.”
Toronto acquired the 25-year-old on April 1 as part of the trade that sent midfielder Dwayne De Rosario to the New York Red Bulls. Borman started 18 of the 22 games in which he played for TFC and had three assists.
“When you offer a player a contract, you think something about them,” Mariner said. “What we think is a good deal and a player thinks is a good deal is sometimes not quite right. It goes back to the salary cap. We’d all love to pay our players more money, but we can’t do it. It’s simple mathematics.”
Reds closing in on deals to keep Plata, Eckersley
The Reds are making inroads on an agreement to bring Joao Plata back to Toronto.
Mariner said that deal was “getting close, but it’s not done yet.” Plata played for TFC in 2011 on loan from Ecuadorian club Liga Deportiva Universitaria de Quito. He scored three goals and added five assists in league play.
On Friday, FutbolMLS.com quoted both Plata and a representative of Quito as saying the deal was close to being done.
“We don’t want to announce something that’s not ready to announce,” Mariner said. “Negotiations are moving along. Until that’s agreed upon and signed off, we don’t want to say too much.”
TFC also hope to keep right back Richard Eckersley, who played in 2011 on loan from English club Burnley. Mariner said he was “very optimistic but a little bit cautious as well because it’s not signed off.”
