This article originally appeared in the March 10 issue of Sportsnet magazine.

Pan for gold in a raging global river of talent, and do it on a budget. That’s the job Toronto FC GM Tim Bezbatchenko has signed up for as the 32-year-old corporate lawyer turned sports executive tries to bail water from the sorriest ship in MLS.

It’s a daunting task made more difficult—but also more fun—by the chaotic marketplace of professional soccer. “The uncertainties of player acquisitions [in other sports] are less complex,” says Bezbatchenko, who grew up a Cleveland Browns fan in Westerville, Ohio, and joined TFC in September 2013. “Soccer is like the wild, wild west.”

Having never reached the playoffs in seven years of existence, TFC made a massive splash this off-season when they spent more than $100 million to acquire the rights to established international stalwarts Jermain Defoe, coming over from Tottenham Hotspur of the Barclays Premier League, and Michael Bradley, who last played for Italy’s AS Roma. Convincing widely recognized players to spend their remaining prime years in MLS—which remains a quirky, countrified cousin to the European soccer aristocracy—was no simple feat. But for Bezbatchenko, it was the easy part.

Acquisitions like Defoe and Bradley are possible because the league allows each team to sign three designated players for whatever they can afford. The rest of the roster of 20 has to come in under a roughly $3-million salary cap.

And so Bezbatchenko—“Bez” to his friends—is left with the task of pairing fine Zinfandel with an entree mashed together from sale items at a discount grocery. He relies on a global list of agents and talent brokers to help find players from all corners of the world, the conversations typically going something like: “I want this, this and this,” he says. “Then, the kicker is: And here’s my budget.”

Missing out on a player is the nightmare; finding one who’s been missed is the opportunity. “What you’re looking for is a guy who isn’t in the top one percent but could be if someone helps them along the way,” he says. “You’re looking for someone who fell through the cracks because no one helped them and he didn’t get seen on that one day.”

In contrast, finding NFL players seems easy: There are a finite number of men that big and fast, and most of them are playing NCAA football. Similarly, the average height of an NBA player is six-foot-seven, which creates a fairly effective filter. The hockey universe is limited to Canada, portions of the U.S. and some cold-weather European hotbeds. Baseball? Endless minor-league apprenticeships distill those who can hit a curveball from those who can’t.

But soccer? Finding soccer players for MLS is like fishing in a vast ocean with a shoelace, a safety pin and a dead worm. Estimates put the number of active professional players worldwide at about 100,000 (compared with perhaps 2,500 pro football players) and they’re physically fairly unremarkable. The best player on Earth, arguably, is Lionel Messi, and he’s just five-foot-seven.

Bezbatchenko has big plans to combine analytics and video to identify obscure players in distant places who can fit his needs, and he believes the heavy investment ownership has made in TFC’s youth academy will generate elite talent from the fishing grounds closest to home. He’s also implemented a sport-science department to help fully develop the potential of the players he already has.

But in seeking to sift fool’s gold from the real thing and do it cheaply, Bezbatchenko’s best asset might be the knowledge that the world he’s trying to solve is untameable. “There is randomness, [but] we want to do things in a very deep way that will help us untangle that mess and find that player,” he says. “If it’s simple, then it’s easy, right? And we’re willing to do the hard work here.”