Big Story
The dramatic failure of Toronto FC this year, after a struggling season was concluded as the club blew its chance of making the playoffs by getting torn apart 5-0 by Red Bull New York, has thrown the entire direction of the team up for debate as well as the future of general manager Mo Johnston.

Paul James in the Globe and Mail says TFC have been ignoring the basic requirements in the recruitment of the team, concluding that “without a clear vision as to where you are going and then a plan as to how you are going to get there, you really have very little chance”. Meanwhile, TFC’s owners, MLSE, are forced to defend Mo and the two-year contract extension they oddly granted him in the middle of a mediocre season saying that “the direction is the right direction”. I barely dare ask if TFC fans agree: the club may be profitable, but failing to make the playoffs in its first three seasons is obviously unacceptable performance-wise.

Johnston is lucky that TFC do not have the same system as Seattle, where the supporters’ membership get to vote on their general manager every four years and can call a special election in between. Drew Carey, the Seattle Sounders celebrity part-owner, is interviewed by the Sports Business Journal, and says it was this system itself that prompted him to get involved in MLS, as he discusses the highs and lows of ownership.

Self-aggrandizing perhaps, Carey says he loves being involved with Seattle because “you can see which teams are run by people who love the game and which teams are run by accountants. There are a lot of teams out there strictly run by accountants,” pointing at the riches being made by the ever-struggling Detroit Lions in the NFL.  Carey continues, “Joe Roth, me, Adrian Hanauer, Vulcan Group, we’ve all got plenty of dough. We’re only in it to win and to put out a good product. Nobody buys an MLS franchise thinking, “Oh, I’m going to make so much money.””

Toronto fans may beg to differ as they consider the business plan MLSE has demonstrated so far. Perhaps it’s time MLSE demonstrated some commitment to the fanbase that’s making them a lot of money and gave them a say in who runs the club.

Worldwide News

• Sid Lowe in the Guardian asks if Athletico Madrid are Europe’s worst-run club, ahead of their clash with Chelsea today — that would be quite an achievement, but he makes a pretty good case.
• The financial mess at Hull City is broken down by Matt Lawton, who reveals the alarming fact the club spent £5.5million in agents’ fees in the two years Paul Duffen was the club’s chairman and chief executive”, with a £40 million wage-bill threatening the future of the club. New Hull City chairman Adam Pearson tried assuage fears by saying the club was in “no danger”, but it remains unclear how the £22m the club owes can possibly be repaid.
• A Member of Parliament on Tyneside has called for Newcastle owner Mike Ashley to reconsider selling the naming rights to St. James Park.
• UEFA boss Michel Platini again discusses his plans for reform and regulation of European football, believing it would ultimately benefit English football’s financial model. His more than reasonable explanations of his reasoning deserve more consideration than screaming tabloid headlines about the Frenchman’s plans to destroy English football.
• In what could have been an interesting article but ends up being a bit of direction-less ramble (as is common on goal.com), a strangely uncredited author looks at Kawasaki Frontale’s disappointing failure to live up to their promise once again after the defeat to FC Tokyo in the Nabisco Cup final. We need more articles like these in English on Asian football, but we do need them to be edited a little better.
• EPL Talk looks at the surging ratings for EPL games on Fox Soccer Channel, which have grown a remarkable 69% in the past year with highs of almost 300,000 viewers becoming a regular occurrence despite its continued niche status on cable networks, reaching only 34.7 million homes. With the channel going HD in January and the Premier League rights sewn up for a few years ahead, the future looks very bright for FSC. MLS ratings grew even faster, up 89% and averaging 51,000 per broadcast.
  
• One of the better blogs out there, Some People Are On The Pitch, celebrated its 1,000th post today. Keeping a blog going with good quality posting for three years is a tremendous achievement. Check it out as they move towards the next thousand.

The Sweeper appears daily. For more rambling and links throughout the day every day, follow your editor Tom Dunmore @pitchinvasion on Twitter.

Indeed, the man behind it is an active member of MyFC himself. You’ll notice I haven’t given them an active link: if you want to check it out, copy and paste to your address bar. But I’m not giving them google pagerank by linking directly to them until I get some answers from them. In any case, though their site was working slowly earlier, as the screenshot to the right shows, those fires must have started up again in California tonight and knocked out their site.

Their basic idea is to launch a team in the semi-professional National Premier Soccer League (NPSL), which is below the USL, which is below MLS. Which is a pretty low rung world soccer wise, and would cost perhaps $50-100,000. Still, I think it’s a more admirable idea to start a fan owned club from fresh than to take over an existing one, so kudos on that front. Here’s what they say:

In 2009, a bold initiative will come to fruition, a soccer team with a ready-made fan base of thousands from across the country, where the fans are also part-owners in the endeavor and where THEY will have a voice in how major issues are handled within the operation of the franchise. This is My Soccer Club USA, and a new way of running sports, built upon a club of the people, by the people, and for the people, is on its way.

Unfortunately, to say their operation is slapdash would be me being very kind. For some weeks they’ve been accepting sign-ups (at $50 a piece) to a paypal address. If they’re registered as an actual business somewhere, it’s not evident from their website.

They’ve been claiming for some time they are in the process of applying for non-profit status, but if there’s a genuine reason for the delay in getting it, it hasn’t been revealed. I got in touch with them via email of course, but my follow-up questions have not been addressed. You’ll also notice, if you do check out their site that there aren’t any real names being put publicly to the venture.

I’m not cruel enough to reveal the name of the fan behind it myself, as I think this is a case of gross naivety rather than malicious scamming, as best I can tell. But they claim to have signed up over sixty members, and what will happen to their money is unclear if the venture falls through.

Maybe we should leave fan ownership on this side of the Atlantic out of Dwight Schrute’s grasp and in Drew Carey’s hands.

Update, December 6th: Three weeks after sending the founder follow-up questions, I received a response on their non-profit status. The email stated that “We are also on our way to having non-profit status.” This is something they said many weeks ago, as well, but no details have been provided on why it is taking so long. Further follow-up questions on this have not been responded to in the last week.

Update, December 26th: No further reply has been received from the founder of mysoccerclub, which has received further attention thanks to a piece in the New York Times.  Should we receive answers to the questions from the founder about the financial set-up, we will be more than happy to publish them; once again, we see this venture as well-meaning but retain concerns about the lack of transparency.