TORONTO – Toronto FC and the Seattle Sounders know they’re playing a different game than most of MLS.
They’re two of the biggest clubs in the league, and two of the biggest spending. Toronto had the highest payroll of any team in MLS this year, splashing $22 million on their roster according to numbers released by the MLS Players’ Union. Seattle didn’t come close to that number, but their $11 million outlay still ranked sixth in the league.
They don’t stop with their rosters, of course. TFC and the Sounders spend more on technical staffs, academies and scouting than most of their counterparts, and sink significant dollars into relatively underfunded areas like sport science.
As has been clear to anyone not living under a rock, all that investment is paying off. Seattle have been one of the top teams in MLS since they entered the league in 2009, and Toronto have joined them in the upper echelon in recent seasons. They’ll square off in their second straight MLS Cup final on Saturday, with Toronto looking to avenge last year’s defeat to Seattle at BMO Field.
Toronto and Seattle are the class of the league, but they’re not the only big spenders in MLS. Atlanta, NYCFC, LA, Orlando and Portland all throw plenty of cash at their rosters and infrastructure, but they haven’t been able to get past TFC or the Sounders in the last two seasons.
Money Plus Moneyball
Gustav Svensson and Will Bruin, two of Seattle's more affordable additions in 2017, celebrate a goal in Houston during last month's Western Conference Championship series / USA Today Sports Images
How do Toronto and Seattle do it? How have they separated themselves from the rest of the league’s upper class?
Players, coaches and tactics are naturally the driving factors, but both clubs’ organizational commitment to finding and exploiting market inefficiencies plays a role, too. Call it Money plus Moneyball. Toronto and Seattle spend, sure, but they’re also stretching their dollars further than the rest of the league’s richer clubs and constantly looking to invest and be experts in areas neglected by other teams.
In a salary capped league with as many rules and restrictions as MLS, that’s where the competitive advantage is. Toronto and Seattle are good at finding it, and that’s part of the reason they’ve been better than NYCFC, LA, Portland, Orlando and Atlanta in recent seasons.
“You can’t waste in this league, you’ve got to maximize every dollar that you have to the best of your ability,” TFC head coach Greg Vanney told me on Wednesday.
They spend on their stars, but finding value in the middle and back of their roster is where TFC and Seattle stand above NYCFC, LA, Portland and Atlanta. Those teams have plenty of star power, but they’re not as deep as TFC or the Sounders. You don’t need to be a genius talent evaluator to know that Sebastian Giovinco or Nicolas Lodeiro is going to be a star in MLS. You do need a lot of skills and tools at your disposal, however, to land the next tier of players that have been so crucial for both teams this year.
In Toronto, that means bringing in Best XI defender Justin Morrow, Steven Beitashour, Drew Moor, Chris Mavinga and Marky Delgado on affordable deals. For Seattle, it’s acquiring Will Bruin and Harry Shipp for peanuts, landing Gustav Svensson on a cheap contract from China, bringing Nouhou into the team from USL and persuading Kelvin Leerdam to join the club from his native Netherlands.
Know Your Rules
From left: TFC president Bill Manning, Maple Leaf Sports & Entertainment chairman Larry Tanenbaum, and TFC general manager Tim Bezbatchenko pose with the Supporters' Shield on Oct. 15 / USA Today Sports Images
Acquiring those types of players requires extensive international and domestic scouting networks and a solid understanding of how they’ll fit in with the current roster.
For TFC GM Tim Bezbatchenko, it also involves knowing the MLS roster rules like the back of his hand. Understanding and manipulating those guidelines is one area he feels that he and Seattle GM Garth Lagerwey, who Bezbatchenko worked with during his years at the league office, have an upper hand on the rest of the league.
“You’ve got to know all the rules, you’ve got to know the regulations, the competition guidelines, you’ve got to know them inside and out,” Bezbatchenko said on Wednesday. “Not only just know them, you’ve got to work through them. I was the person that Garth worked through at the league office for a couple years and he, along with a handful of other technical directors and sporting directors at the time, asked a lot of questions and they tried to figure out if there’s other ways to look at a problem. That’s an advantage, being inquisitive, not just accepting something at face value.”
“It’s just not the sexy thing,” he added later. “The people that don’t know the rules, it’s one of those ignorance is bliss things. They don’t even dig into them; maybe they don’t know how to. It’s not front and center for a lot of people, they just think, ‘Hey, the most important thing is scouting, get the best players and those best players are going to win you games.’ And that is probably a focal point for success, but there’s so many other things and I think the rules is one of the biggest.”
Lagerwey agreed with the overall philosophy, but pointed to developing players in-house as one of the best ways to find value for a roster. Seattle haven’t done as much of that as other clubs, but they did triple their investment in their academy over the last two years and have a few high-profile success stories. DeAndre Yedlin was a Sounders Homegrown that was eventually sold to English Premier League club Tottenham. Jordan Morris is another Seattle academy product currently producing for the first team, while Nouhou came through the S2 pipeline before earning a starting job in MLS.
“The reality is, like most businesses, if you’re able to develop your players those are almost always good values. I think that’s true if you’re making widgets or if you’re trying to develop soccer players,” Lagerwey said. “It’s the idea of taking business concepts and not pretending that the soccer team is so special. Do you have a good organization? How are the people and are they held accountable? Those management principles I think are critically important to having success.”
RSL Roots
Current Seattle GM Garth Lagerwey, shown in his former role as the GM of smaller market club Real Salt Lake, introducing then newly hired head coach Jeff Cassar in 2013 / USA Today Sports Images
Vanney, Lagerwey and TFC president Bill Manning learned how to get the most out of every resource through sheer necessity. All spent years at lower budget Real Salt Lake, where Vanney was the club’s first academy director, Lagerwey the longtime GM and Manning the president. Vanney later left RSL for even lighter spending Chivas USA. RSL and Chivas weren’t throwing big money at players when Vanney, Lagerwey and Manning were around. To succeed, they had to try to win in the margins. Bezbatchenko, who wrote his undergraduate thesis on MLS player salaries and spent part of our conversation nerding out about the challenge of managing the cap, is all-in with that philosophy, too.
They’ve brought that approach to their bigger clubs, combining their new, increased resources with their goal of being as efficient as possible. They even share best practices every winter. The two clubs have held a pre-draft combine together in Las Vegas in each of the last four seasons, and the technical staffs typically spend at least one night of that trip talking shop.
Add their resources to their goal of exploiting every potential market inefficiency, throw in the natural ability of their players, and it’s not hard to understand why TFC and the Sounders are a cut above the league’s other wealthy clubs.
They might not be playing the same game as most, but Toronto and Seattle still beating everybody, even the teams that are in the arena with them.
“The best teams that have had the most success over the long term aren’t just the ones that have the most ability to spend,” said Bezbatchenko. “They’re also… doing everything to get the competitive advantage. They’re squeaking out every last dollar. You have to be frugal, no matter what area. You have to look and spend wisely, no matter what.”
ExtraTime Radio Podcast
LISTEN: The 2017 MLS season comes down to this... Seattle vs. Toronto, an MLS Cup rematch that might just be the best final of all-time, depending on who you ask. Will the Sounders repeat? Will the Reds lay claim the best season of all-time? David Gass and Sam Stejskal get things started from the Six, and Andrew and Matt finish things off from the Green Room back in NYC. Subscribe so you never miss a show! Download this episode!
