So much of Toronto FC’s five seasons has been spent looking toward next year.

No wonder. The team is yet to finish with a winning record or make the playoffs.

But with just three matches remaining in 2011, there are signs the future looks brighter.

After another dramatic overhaul of the roster, the Reds have established a solid core to take into next season. Since mid-July when designated players Torsten Frings and Danny Koevermans were brought in, the team has a respectable 6-6-5 record in all competitions. And, a victory at FC Dallas next Tuesday would send them into the quarter-finals of the CONCACAF Champions League next March, a first in the club’s short history.

While those two veteran Europeans have keyed the turnaround, a host of young players, including several graduates from the TFC Academy, have made big contributions.

With the benefit of an entire pre-season together, there’s optimism for TFC for 2012.

On Tuesday, the club offered another reason to feel good about next season. It will have a permanent training ground, ending the routine of daily busing around the GTA.

Over the din of construction equipment already at work, TFC held a ceremony to mark the groundbreaking of its new 15-acre academy and training facility at Downsview Park.

“This is a whole new day and whole new era in soccer in this country,” said Tom Anselmi, chief operating officer of Maple Leaf Sports & Entertainment, TFC’s owner.

Established in 2008, the TFC Academy is designed to develop young players for the first team. To date, six have graduated and signed professional contracts and play for the Reds, including defender Ashtone Morgan, who has just debuted with the national team.

Moving the academy from BMO Field to Downsview has TFC thinking bigger.

“The academy has done a lot with the resources and facilities it has now,” said Matt Stinson, a 19-year-old graduate who has become a regular at midfield for the Reds in the latter part of this his rookie season. “But we can only get better and start producing more players for the first team with this (facility). It’s great.”

From a current stable of 50 teenagers on senior and junior teams, Anselmi sees a future with kids as young as 9, a possible residency program, top coaching, training facilities, physiotherapy “and all the stuff you see in the great academies around the world.

“That’s what we’re getting to,” Anselmi said. “This is a $21 million investment in the bricks and mortar behind that.”

TFC head coach and technical director Aron Winter, who came here from Ajax of Amsterdam, which has a renowned youth academy, said he was “proud” of the plans, which he called “the best facilities in North America.”

When it opens next spring, the facility will have four grass fields, one FieldTurf pitch with a bubble and a 45,000 square foot fieldhouse, which includes locker rooms, training facilities and the club’s offices. Several fields will be for public use and the club also plans youth camps and clinics as well as bringing local teams in for coaching by TFC staff.

Downsview Park, a former Canadian Forces Base, already houses soccer, with both indoor and outdoor public fields and, for the past few months, TFC’s training ground.

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“That was part of the appeal for us,” said Paul Beirne, TFC’s senior director of business operations. “There’s already a critical mass of soccer activity happening here.”

TFC is putting up the entire cost of the construction, which began three months ago with underground work on infrastructure such as sewer and gas lines and drainage. The club will pay what Beirne said is “the going market rate” to Downsview for renting the land.