I have to imagine a scene like this.

The day is Jan. 13, 2014, and just minutes earlier Tim Leiweke had been the smiliest man in Canada. On a dais representing a combined net worth of nearly $2.4 billion, with Jermain Defoe to his immediate left and Michael Bradley next to him, Leiweke’s Drake-fueled charm offensive had landed him here. Next to two immediate MLS behemoths, men who had yet to play an MLS game (in Bradley’s case not for nearly 10 years, anyway) and yet were part of the league’s biggest two-player splash in history.

After the popping cameras and the meaningless chatter and the Bloody Big Deal tropes had washed off the facade of the whole thing, Leiweke is alone in his dusk-lit office, a cigar clamped between teeth he’d spent the entire day baring. Two fingers of scotch on rocks is sweating on his desk, where his crossed feet rest. Contemplation now, and on some long-forgotten level Leiweke knows how Caesar felt with the Rubicon receding on the horizon and a war-hardened legion at his back. An irreversibly powerful march. It was a good day. It was an incredible day.

Toronto FC, which had never made the playoffs in its history, and Lewieke, on the job for less than seven months, were seemingly entering a new era. And, whether they knew it or not, they were testing the limits of MLS’ salary system. There has never been a true megaclub in MLS history, and certainly not one bought in one cloudburst of thunder. The Beckham Galaxy are the closest thing the league has had, but it took Beckham four years to win his first MLS Cup, and it was partly possible because of a strong supporting cast and team depth.

What TFC was attempting to do was build a superclub from scratch in a way that still shoehorned everything into MLS’ restrictive rule set. Nobody had ever quite attempted it before. Along with Defoe and Bradley, who cost a combined $100 million, there was Julio Cesar and Gilberto and former MLS MVP Dwayne De Rosario and Bradley Orr and Jackson. So many new pieces. So many serrated edges.

Eight months later and the mood in Leiweke’s study must be quite different. Julio Cesar is gone. Jermain Defoe is injured and wants out. Michael Bradley’s form has dipped and curved and boomeranged. Gilberto is often stranded. De Rosario is a shell of his former self. TFC’s postseason hopes are struggling to stay tethered to a bronco that bucks harder with each passing week. Ryan Nelsen was fired. And Leiweke himself is leaving his current position at MLSE by June 30, 2015 for “other opportunities.”

This is what MLS does to spasmodic periods of big spending. It is a league of depth and shrewdness and smart money, not big money, and TFC walked into a knife fight with an ammo-less .50 cal machine gun.

Some of the broken machinery with this team is practically stitched above the crest. Defoe can’t stay healthy, TFC isn’t getting what it hoped it would out of DeRo and Bradley hasn’t been able to shield a porous, disjointed back line. Yes to all that. But there seems to be a deeper issue at work here, one of pure identity. What is this TFC side? In a 2-1 win over the Sounders in March, Nelsen appeared to set this team up as a classic quick-strike counterattacking side.

Look at Zone 14 here. No action. Two goals.

With Bradley’s ability to bomb from deep, it was a natural conclusion. There isn’t a better pinpoint long-range passer in MLS than Bradley – Wil Trapp is close, but he isn’t there yet – and the Sounders’ surfeit of possession in this game in spite of the scoreline was kind of case in point as to why Nelsen wanted this setup.

TFC was relatively successful with this formula through July. It wasn’t particularly fun to watch, but the spadework had kept TFC in places of relevance. As of the morning of July 2, TFC was third in the East, four points behind second-place D.C. United and was unbeaten in six. TFC’s loss of identity since started as a gradual decline and, mostly recently, accelerated to light speed. And then Defoe stopped playing regularly and TFC’s midfield was essentially pushed in on itself.

The last time Defoe played a full 90 was on July 16, a 1-1 draw against Vancouver, and in a lot of ways it was the last time TFC looked remotely coherent. Like themselves, like the team the mind’s eye envisioned on the dais. This is a pretty typical mode of operation in Nelsen’s setup. It looks disjointed but only because TFC was comfortable with its weaknesses and knew it could play up its strengths.

There was no real central attacking impetus in this setup, but with Bradley operating like X-Men’s Cyclops, sniping laser-beam balls to Defoe (a large portion of that green blotch on the upper lefthand side) and his partner-du-jour, TFC realized it didn’t particularly need one. They’d climbed near the top of the East on the back of their ability to ground and pound, and here they were. No reason to put lipstick on the Beast when it’s how you’ve been built.

By mid-August it was clear Nelsen had lost control. The back line was a putrid shade of confused. Michael Bradley no longer had outlets beyond whatever midfield understudy had decided to stick on his hip. In lieu of playing on the break and attacking smartly from range like an English longbowman at Agincourt, TFC was suddenly playing more and more through the midfield. This, it should go without saying, has had disastrous results. This is not a team built for possession.

Nelsen’s last game was a 3-0 beating at home administered by New England, and I want to show you how far and quickly TFC had fallen from a relatively effective, rigid quick-strike team to a shapeless mass of nothing. A sieve of a defense, an apathetic midfield and a headless attack.

First goal. You can see Bradley’s body sigh when this ball passes him. It’s a full-body sigh. You didn’t think it was possible, but TFC.

Second goal. I’m not a reactionary, and I never ascribed to the subversive belief that Bradley’s disappointing World Cup (Julian Green feed aside) was due to his MLS move. But it’s hard to argue there’s been a troubling sheen of apathy that’s glossed parts of his game this season, for whatever reason. This is partly down to the fact that Bradley has had little help in the central midfield, either next to him or above him (and his center backs have been barely sentient for much of the year).

But to see this half-attempt to stop an attack – spurred by an unbelievably bad ball by Bradley Orr, it should be said – doesn’t look like Bradley. Soccer IQ’s like his don’t dive into challenges like this. They shade the attacker perpendicular to the touchline until reinforcement arrives. Part of the trouble is that there is no cavalry. Bradley often has to bite off attacks by himself. The other part of the problem? Unidentified.

The third. A comedy of errors Shakespeare might not believe touched off, fittingly, by a Bradley deep ball that caromed off his defender.

I want to show you this picture because I don’t think you’d believe me if I put it in words.

There are two players, two, left so completely alone either could’ve done a brief tango with the ball before walking it into the net. I hope it registers. I could point to Vanney’s similar struggles, but then we’re piling on.

One of Nelsen’s primary mistakes, once Defoe went down but even before, was to misdiagnose Bradley’s role. Bradley has largely been deployed in the same way Seattle deploys Osvaldo Alonso or LA deploys Juninho. A bulldog recycler who can sit in front of the back line and provide the stem of the attack. Bradley is an in-betweener, in that he is neither a No. 8 or a No. 6. He cannot be left alone in front of the back line, as he often has been, nor can he be expected to provide the driving creativity that No. 8’s bring as they pound into and around Zone 14. We’ve talked about this before, but Bradley is a sniper, not a close-range brawler. In TFC’s setup, Bradley needs help. And he hasn’t gotten it.

There’s little question in my mind that TFC’s chase for the playoffs is the most compelling storyline in MLS’ final month. This is how it looks now. TFC still has an avenue to the postseason, but it is blinking away with each passing result. An insider on the outside.

Nobody really expected TFC to be the Manchester City of MLS out of the box (NYCFC doesn’t start up until 2015, after all), but surely you expected them to be in the race for the Supporter’s Shield? At the very least, you expected them to not need to win down the stretch just to squeeze into a final playoff spot? And surely you didn’t expect them to lose all sense of tactical identity in the face of injury. If you did, I may send you my cynicism card.

What is certain is that TFC’s experiment echoed big-money grabs from seasons past, although in a more spectacularly explosive fashion. In its current format, the league will systematically examine the money you’ve spent and then ask whether it has bought you reinforcements. When you inevitable say that, no, you’ve simply bought the king’s vestments without buying the castle, well, the league will cast you aside. You’ve been found wanting.

There may some day be an MLS megaclub once allocation rules are relaxed and the cap is deflated. Until then, you cannot beat the system. You can only work with it. TFC tried to beat the system. And the experiment’s foundation is cracking.