Toronto FC Manager, Director of Soccer Mo Johnston is setting his sights on attracting an experienced MLS coach to join the club for the 2010 season. Johnston met with the media on Tuesday morning to announce Chris Cummins departure and outline plans for the future.
"The search for a new coach started yesterday," said Johnston at BMO Field. "Within the league, we have to wait until the dust is settled with the Playoffs before we would ask to speak to anyone. We want someone in the position very quickly. Whoever comes in has to have MLS experience. We will look all over."
<p style="font-size:10px; margin:0 auto;">Watch Johnston's press conference.</p> |
"It is a big job and is not just about the coaching of the team. It has to be someone who can deal with the attention this club receives. When you look within MLS at the stable clubs they have coaches who have been in place for three or four years and hopefully that is what we can do."
Johnston answered questions about his own position and revealed he has agreed a new contract to stay with the team for another two and a half years. "I know where the buck stops," he said. "I felt this year we were very close. I came into this job with pressure and I will always have pressure. I have never quit and I never will. I have the backing from our owners and I will move on and try and find a head coach. I agreed a new contract in August and it is just waiting to go through finance."
Johnston praised the contribution made by Chris Cummins since taking over as interim head coach in April, and offered him the opportunity to stay with the team as an assistant. "When John Carver went it left us with a hole and we didn't want to go outside because there weren't many candidates. I think under the circumstances Chris did a hell of a job."
"We would have loved to keep Chris on as an assistant coach but he wants to be closer to his family and we respect that. I think he is going to be a very good coach one day but I've known for a couple of weeks now that he wanted to be closer to home. We have spoken at length over the last couple of days and tried to get him to change his mind and to stay and be an assistant coach. We want all of the other members of our coaching staff to stay."
