TFC Friday News Round Up

By: Sairax | December 10th, 2010

The Re-Entry Draft came and went pretty quickly as most people predicted. Almost every team passed on the chance to sign a player except for DC United, who picked up Joseph Ngwenya from Houston, and Columbus Crew, who selected Aaron Hohlbein from Sporting Kansas. Toronto FC opted not to grab a player, but that doesn’t mean they won’t try in the second round. It’s doubtful they would, but still possible. Keep in mind that some of these players had expensive contracts, so many clubs will be waiting for Stage 2, or even just wait until the draft is over and the player they want becomes a free agent. Stage 2 will take place on December 15th, so make sure to come back here, or twitter, to see if there has been any activity.

MLS came out yesterday with an initial list of college seniors invited to the MLS Player Combine. There have been 54 players named from 36 Division I schools. More players will be added to the list soon from other schools as well as players from Generation Adidas. The combine will be held from January 7-11, 2011 in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida in advance of the 2011 MLS SuperDraft. For more details and the initial list of players, visit this link.

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Toronto FC goalkeeper, Stefan Frei, is currently on tour with the Generation Adidas team in Spain. This is his second time participating in the GA offseason tour. They won all three of their matches against the reserve sides of Real Madrid, Rayo Valleacano and Atlético Madrid. Here are the match highlights from their 4-1 win over the Atlético Madrid reserves:

Frei played the full 90min in that match, but only played in the first half in the 2-1 win over Real Madrid’s reserves and did not concede a goal during his 45min. Frei did not feature in the 1-0 win over the Rayo Valleacano reserves.

Finally, some great news from the TFC camp. Earl Cochrane spoke with GolTV last night about team plans for friendlies during the offseason. First, the team will report on Jan 26th in Toronto and then head out 2 days later to Turkey for 12 days where TFC have planned 3 friendly matches. The most exciting news is that the 2 teams they already have lined up are currently participating in the Champions League and the Europa League. Regardless of who the teams end up being, they will definitely be a different class of opposition. It is a great chance for the players to face some formidable opposition from Europe. TFC will be lining up the 3rd club that the team will face within the next couple of weeks.

After that, the TFC squad will be back in Toronto for a couple of weeks and then down to Orlando for a couple of friendly games. The team’s final stop will be in South Carolina to participate in the Carolina Challenge Cup in Charleston. It is sounding like a pretty busy preseason and hopefully the team will be able to gel a bit before the first game of the new MLS season.

Cochrane also talked a bit about the Re-Entry Draft and the squad rebuild. You can see his entire interview here.

That’s all the news this week. Time is flying by and we should be hearing more coming out of the club in the next couple of weeks, especially since Klinsmann has hinted that there may be an announcement before Christmas regarding the head coach situation. Have a good weekend!

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