Trying Out in Toronto

I'm only flagging this Toronto Sun article about Toronto FC's open tryouts because it contains an interesting line of thinking. For those unfamiliar with the story, Toronto FC invited the locals down to strut their stuff, but they did so with the lowest of expectations and using a strange-ish format: a series of 60-minute, 6-a-side games - and the axe fell damned quickly after for the overwhelming majority of players.

With that in mind, I find the essential conclusions from the day simultaneously intriguing and predictable:

"Assistant coach Bob Gansler was blunt in his assessment of the talent he had seen in the first half of the three-day tryout."

"'I didn't see anyone who was even close to having the physical conditioning to play at the MLS level,' he said."

I just strikes me as odd that "physical conditioning" was the chief thing mentioned. Why not look for flashes from a good soccer brain first and look into conditioning second? Maybe having 1,000 invitees rendered that impossible, but with lack of fitness almost a given why not look for something else?

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