Excerpted from Come On You Reds by Joshua Kloke © 2018 by Joshua Kloke. All rights reserved. Published by Dundurn Press

LIKE MANY OTHERS THAT MORNING, Tim Bezbatchenko stood bleary-eyed in the darkened lobby of the Sheraton Milan on New Year’s Day. He had arrived early after a red-eye flight from Toronto. As the hung-over crowd sauntered past him, Bezbatchenko kept his eyes on the lobby doors, waiting for his guest.

It could very well have been a simple day for Bezbatchenko. Have introductory meetings with two players of interest. Sample some fine Italian food. Return with a bit more insight into the direction his club would take.

But everything changed when player agent Andrea D’Amico walked in, like a blaze of light to brighten the drab lobby.

Bezbatchenko was looking at the very picture of a classic Italian gentleman: long, flowing hair, a salt-and-pepper beard, a long overcoat trailing from his shoulders, and a tailored designer suit complete with a pocket square expertly arranged and folded.

After exchanging pleasantries, the two men entered D’Amico’s Maserati for the 150-kilometre drive from Milan to Turin. The drive is supposed to take just over two and a half hours, but D’Amico got them to Turin, the home of Juventus, in 90 minutes, driving his Masterati “as fast as the car should go,” according to Bezbatchenko.

As Bezbatchenko sailed through the Italian countryside at top speed, the former lawyer from the relatively unsophisticated northern Ohio city of Columbus had to pinch himself. “What world do I live in?” he asked himself. “This is a completely different world than MLS.”

The two men were headed to Lentini’s Ristorante in Turin to meet a player D’Amico represented. When he met Sebastian Giovinco, the diminutive and insanely-talented creative forward, Bezbatchenko’s whole approach to his day in Northern Italy began to shift. If he could deflect Giovinco from this old-world environment and sell Giovinco on his vision, and Giovinco himself could find a similar vision for his own path, Bezbatchenko could be changing the course of the entire league. His boss, MLSE president Tim Leiweke, was on his way out of the company and had tasked Bezbatchenko and Bezbatchenko alone with bringing home the club’s next DP.

I have to nail this, he said to himself.

Bezbatchenko had gone after TFC’s biggest acquisition, Jermain Defoe, alongside Leiweke. But this time, he was going it on his own. The pressure was obvious, and when Giovinco met him outside the restaurant, Bezbatchenko briefly thought he’d blown it.

Giovinco, himself well-groomed and smartly put together, flashed a disarming smile, pointed at Bezbatchenko’s blazer and jeans, laughed, and made a comment in Italian to D’Amico. “He expected a suit and an old man,” said D’Amico, translating for Giovinco. Bezbatchenko briefly held his breath. “You’re wearing jeans and a blazer,” continued D’Amico. “He likes the way you’re dressed.”

Sensing that Giovinco was not like every other player they’d courted to lead the charge at the club, Bezbatchenko smiled back. “I think we’re going to get along,” he said, as they entered the restaurant, still largely unaware of how a conversation that morning over pizza would help change the perception of an entire league around the world.

Throughout Toronto FC’s history, player acquisitions had been mostly one-sided affairs. Agents would approach the club and pitch their players, as with probably 80 percent of the world’s soccer clubs.

When Bezbatchenko began at TFC, one of his first missions was to create a scouting department that could scour the planet for talent and essentially flip that model on its head. He understood that TFC was different from many other clubs in that they were trying to create a consistently strong, model franchise, but one that had very little success to build on and to sell to potential players. But with the kind of financial resources that few other clubs in his competing leagues could boast, and with a very clear methodology they wanted to manifest on the pitch through Vanney’s vision, Bezbatchenko wanted the club to be able to identify players of interest, and to approach them, rather than waiting to be approached. And by himself recruiting players and selling them on the club’s new vision, Bezbatchenko was seeking to retain complete control over player identification and the building of a winning roster.

Throughout 2014, Jack Dodd, the club’s director of scouting operations, and Corey Wray, director of team operations, had been identifying players who might steer TFC in the right direction: players who could play the aggressive, attacking brand of soccer that Vanney had begun to establish. They worked to find players of the highest quality who were also attainable, and who could provide value within salary cap restraints.

But they also worked in the rarefied world of Designated Players. In that the club was free to find players of even better quality, and was allowed to pay higher salaries and transfer fees.

One player they’d identified through extensive scouting was Victor Vazquez, the passer extraordinaire and former Barcelona midfielder who was tearing up the Belgian Pro League with Club Brugge. In the middle of a season that would end up seeing Vazquez win the Belgian Professional Footballer of the Year, TFC had made a transfer offer for Vazquez before the meeting with Giovinco, but Club Brugge had turned it down.

Bezbatchenko implored Dodd and Wray to think bigger: to find a player who could potentially have even more of an influence on the club and the league than Defoe had. Someone who could not only lead the team both off the pitch and on it by scoring goals, but someone who could be a difference-maker in the league as a whole. “There’s a direct correlation between talent and success,” he said of his vision.

Not everyone agreed. Many around MLS, including league executives and other GMs, as well as some within TFC itself, were telling Bezbatchenko to aim a bit lower with his player acquisitions. Partly because of Defoe’s premature-exit debacle, but also because he had set such high expectations while the club was still muddling “in the shit,” he was repeatedly given the same advice throughout the end of 2014: “Why are you shooting to be great when you just need to be good?”

But Bezbatchenko remained undeterred; he had learned from Leiweke, a man who was always dead set on thinking bigger than his rivals. Bezbatchenko and Leiweke had gone to the MLSE board after it was clear Defoe would not return to Toronto and Leiweke himself had told them, “We are not giving up.” Bezbatchenko, too, had given the board explanations for the Defoe exit, and presented research that suggested another high-profile acquisition was necessary for the club’s continued ascent. In short, Bezbatchenko had had to explain why, in his words, “this time, it’s going to be different.”

The board was convinced, and, buoyed by the financial investment MLSE was prepared to make, Bezbatchenko continued his search. Had he listened to the naysayers, given up, and returned to the MLSE board to say that he now didn’t want the large-scale financial investment he’d asked for, and that another venture like the one that had almost derailed the club with Defoe would bring too much pressure, he was sure that Leiweke would’ve fired him. Leiweke and MLSE wanted him to be bold. The once pragmatic lawyer had had to shift his way of thinking to embrace the boldness required for the job. “If you give me a Ferrari I’m not just going to be driving it around the neighbourhood at 25 miles an hour,” said Bezbatchenko. “Our board was saying, ‘Go. Be great.’”

Dodd and Wray had seen Giovinco play for Juventus. He fit the profile in terms of the type of player the club needed, as well as his age and global appeal. Though the Turin-born forward was once looked upon as the heir apparent to Alessandro Del Piero after coming up through the club’s academy ranks, after two loan spells at Empoli and Parma, Giovinco was frustrated with the lack of faith in him and playing time he was getting, after spending more than half his life with the club.

His obvious quality, vision with the ball, and attacking flair had featured for Italy in the 2012 Euros. In the 2012–13 season, his last season of regular minutes with Juventus, he finished fourth in the club in goals across all competitions. But his lack of playing time through the 2013–14 season may have caused him to miss out on being selected to play for the Italy in the 2014 World Cup.

Some commentators in Italy looked at Giovinco as a case of unfulfilled potential, but Bezbatchenko and TFC saw a player whose potential had yet to be properly tapped. “With the resources we had, it would have been silly not to shoot for a player like Giovinco,” said Bezbatchenko.

But would a player of Giovinco’s quality and age, still in his prime and playing for one of the biggest clubs on the planet, have any interest in MLS? Corey Wray got the answer when he was originally approached by D’Amico at the Wyscout Forum in 2014. D’Amico had no idea that TFC had been scouting Giovinco previously, but said simply, “I have a player

that might be of interest to you.”

Wray and D’Amico exchanged ideas and very preliminary financial details that led to a common synergy. Wray immediately phoned Bezbatchenko and told him about the fortuitous meeting.

On Christmas Eve 2014, as Bezbatchenko was driving home to Columbus with his family, he spoke with D’Amico on the phone. “If you’re serious, I’ll fly over on New Year’s Day to see if it’s real,” Bezbatchenko told him.

When he finally sat down with Giovinco, his brother and father, as well as D’Amico, Bezbatchenko learned of the then 27-year-old’s urge to change “everything” in his life.

Bezbatchenko outlined the possibilities for him. “This is going to be hard. But if you come out glorious, you could go down in history as a legend for the club,” Bezbatchenko said.

That type of mindset intrigued Giovinco. He didn’t just want to dabble in a new league and then retire. The only problem? TFC had been the first club to present a transfer option to Giovinco for that winter transfer window, and even if Giovinco liked their bold approach, he had never heard of the club previously and had never visited Toronto.

Bezbatchenko tried his best to relay information about the club, the city, and its thriving Italian population. But it was only when he pulled out an iPad loaded with videos of the city and fans in Giovinco jerseys, that Giovinco was sold. Giovinco said he believed he could be a pioneer in the game in North America.

Bezbatchenko had a few brief words of reminder. “This isn’t an adventure,” he said. “Jermain viewed this is as an adventure. You have to view this as a crusade.”

Giovinco smiled. He was up to the task, and wanted in.

D’Amico drove Bezbatchenko back to his hotel and they began talking financial terms even during the ride. Bezbatchenko phoned Leiweke to inform him of his successful meeting with a prospective DP. And yet, as good as Bezbatchenko must have felt in luring Giovinco to Toronto, he was still only halfway there. That was just one DP: he wanted two.

(Photo: Steve Russell, The Toronto Star via Getty Images)