"Stop loafing Frings, that windmill ain't gonna build itself!"The biggest investment in
Toronto FC this year will not come in the way of a Designated Player but in a group of buildings
and pitches in the city's north end. The new TFC training facility, due to open this May in
Downsview Park, will arguably be the finest club training facility in North American professional
football.
One of Pico Union's many murals (intersection of 7th and Westlake) A couple years ago, I helped
establish an adult men's soccer league in a neighborhood just east of downtown Los Angeles. Our
league was affiliated with the American Youth Soccer Organization (AYSO) and only lasted two years.
It has taken me a little time to gain some distance on what was both an incredible and depressing
experience.
No club in world soccer is perhaps as beloved by the cognoscenti as St. Pauli. To some, the
smallish team from the Reeperbahn, Hamburg's red-light district, is a kind of anti-corporate
utopia. St. Pauli celebrated its centenary last year, but it was in the 1980s when it became the
darling of non-conformism in soccer.
Those are top quality Academy prospects!
There have been few Toronto FC press conferences that have been as momentous as last week's
introduction to Aron Winter & Co. There was the club unveiling in 2006, Dwayne De Rosario's signing
from Houston, "The Great Mo & Preki Escape" of 2010... Oh, and maybe Jacob Peterson's Amish Hip-Hop
album release.
