TORONTO -- Toronto FC is entering the navel-gazing period that inevitably follows a season of promise gone awry with conflicted feelings, both about the past and toward the future.
Players, coaches, front-office staff and club executives feel there is plenty of good and bad to take from a 9-13-8 campaign that left the Major League Soccer side still searching for its first playoff berth in four years of existence.
What's clear is that the mistakes and miscalculations ran deep in 2010, from starting out with a roster that was too thin, to not having enough depth to support a gruelling schedule, to hiring a coach who drove his players away from him.
The first house-cleaning came last month, when both director of soccer Mo Johnston and coach Preki were shown the door, and the search continues for their replacements without a timeline for a resolution. Whoever does get the job will be handed an entire organization to reshape.
"The right guy is going to be a function of: what does this team want to be?" said Tom Anselmi, the senior executive at club owner Maple Leaf Sports and Entertainment responsible for the club.
More obvious right now is what Toronto FC isn't.
"I just think we need more stability within the club," said defender Nana Attakora. "You know, five different head coaches in four years isn't the way to get it done, but I think the club has learned its lesson and they know what they need to do for us to be more successful in the future."
That stability isn't coming imminently.
Interim director of soccer Earl Cochrane, assistant manager Jim Brennan, and interim head coach Nick Dasovic have started working on the business of the off-season but have no idea how much longer they'll be in their roles.
Anselmi said he plans to enlist MLS officials and some type of consultant for help in finding a new soccer executive with a track record of success in the league, but added that is a small pool to choose from.
He can try to entice candidates with a core of players to build around, likely centred on the likes of captain Dwayne De Rosario and fellow striker Chad Barrett, midfielder Julian de Guzman, defenders Adrian Cann, Dan Gargan and Attakora, plus goalkeepr Stefan Frei. Doneil Henry and Nicholas Henry, two youngsters promoted from the academy team, also opened some eyes.
Many of them felt Toronto FC is in need of more of a retool than a rebuild, and that given the chance to grow together the current group bolstered by the right moves can make the next step. Whether or not that happens is an open question.
"We have our qualities, the unfortunate thing is we just didn't have that much time to build the team, everything was all in a rush, and once the guys started to get injured we didn't have depth," said de Guzman. "That's one thing we lacked on this squad, that we have depth with the travelling and the games. I don't think MLSE or us expected to have 42 games in seven months.
"Everyone was more focused on the playoff goal and I think that's something we probably could have accomplished if we weren't involved in the Champions League."
Toronto FC's victory over Honduran side CD Motagua in the preliminary round of the CONCACAF Champions League allowed it to reach the tournament's group stage for the first time. That was both good and bad, as FC proceeded to beat top Mexican side Cruz Azul and finished group play 2-2-2, but used up valuable energy needed for the MLS season.
"We'll address the demands of the games and the amount of the games in a season according to the size of the roster," said De Rosario. "It's very difficult to compete for playoffs and Champions League. It's not an excuse, just the reality due to a lot of things like injuries."
While the victory over Cruz Azul provided one of the season's signature moments, De Rosario provided the other by celebrating a Sept. 25 goal by pretending to sign a cheque -- a message that he was unhappy about his contract.
The Toronto native is two years into a four-year contract that paid him US$443,750 this season, a fraction compared to the $1,717,546 that de Guzman made and the $987,337.50 contract Mista signed. De Rosario, who scored 15 of the team's 33 goals this season, didn't want to talk about his contract status, but Anselmi said discussions will take place.
"Earl is going to meet with his agent during the MLS Cup," he said. "Dwayne is our captain, Dwayne's under contract for another two years, he knew what he did was wrong that day and he apologized for it, so we move on. But he's under contract and ultimately Earl and the new soccer leadership is going to determine everyone's future on this club.
"He's not going anywhere, and neither are we."
Beyond De Rosario, the goals were hard to come by for Toronto FC. Chad Barrett was next with seven, Maicon Santos scored four times in 13 contests, O'Brian White added a pair while five other players added a goal each.
The offence improved once Dasovic loosened the reins after Preki's dismissal, but then the defence went leaky.
"In the last six games we played we scored 11 goals, and in 24 we scored 22 goals. With that current rate we would have scored 50-plus goals," said Dasovic. "On the other side, our defending, we allowed too many goals, and that's why you don't win games."
Still, both he and Cochrane said they believed the team has "a pretty good core" of players, and also agreed there were some obvious needs.
"We've identified some guys who are going to help us moving forward," said Cochrane. "We need to get quicker, we need to get a little bit younger, we need to add some width to what we're doing and we need some depth in a number of different roles."
Added Brennan: "We need some pace. It's a young man's game, it's athletic, especially this league. We want guys who can run, guys that are comfortable on the ball, that are hungry for it, and we've started looking for that now."
The right moves will certainly help further calm a frustrated an angry fan base that already drew some concessions from team ownership on ticket prices and packages.
Anselmi and other senior staff heard first-hand the frustrations during a series of Town-Hall style meetings and reacted quickly to try and turn the tide.
"They were expecting the team to be better, but they were also expecting to have a real close dialogue with us and I think we might have lost our way a little bit on the size and packaging of our tickets," Anselmi conceded. "If you make a mistake, you deal with it. If you owe your customers something, you deal with it.
"We thought it was the right thing to do."
The fans can only hope things on the field can get taken care of just as quickly.
At one point this year, Toronto FC looked like a look for the playoffs, only to finish another season buried in frustration.
"We could blame a whole lot of reasons, but we let ourselves down after the World Cup break," said Attakora. "Before the break we were a much more disciplined team, more focused for sure, but I think the break really hurt this club, we came back and we weren't the same group of players we were before.
"The coaches tried their best to get our minds back on track but it just wasn't there. We can't really blame coaches, problems within in the change room, it comes down to individuals -- we didn't get our act our together."
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