Vukovic not ready to make jump, says TFC

The mystery has been solved.

Toronto FC supporters were thrown for a bit of a loop last week when news emerged that academy forward Stefan Vukovic played for the Montreal Impact’s under-21 side.

Vukovic was considered by some as one of TFC’s top prospects from its academy program, so his substitute appearance for Montreal’s youth team, where he is currently on trial, caught fans and members of the media alike totally off-guard.

But it turns out the Reds quietly released Vukovic back in March, as confirmed by TFC youth academy director Thomas Rongen in an interview with sportsnet.ca.

Rongen revealed the promising young forward was cut after Toronto FC returned from pre-season training in Florida where nine academy players, including Vukovic, trained with the first team. Rongen made the decision in consultation with head coach Aron Winter and his assistant Bob de Klerk and Paul Mariner, the club’s director of player development.

“After coming back (home), we had individual meetings with all of our youth players and the first-team coaching staff. We talked about who is ready (to graduate to the senior team), and we felt at that time that nobody was ready… Two weeks after Orlando we shook hands (with Vukovic) and said this is not a good situation any more,” Rongen said.

Vukovic, 19, seemed to be on the fast-track to joining the senior team after he finished the 2011 season as the top scorer in the Canadian Soccer League, with 18 goals for TFC’s academy side.

TFC’s academy currently stops at the under-18 level, which meant Vukovic was technically too old, although Rongen concedes they could have stretched the rule and kept him in the youth system. But if he was going to stick around, the Reds felt it would have to be with the senior team.

“He was at an age now where we had to make a decision on him. He’s too old for our (under-18) team. So with players like that we have to make a decision whether or not to move them on to our first team, which didn’t happen,” Rongen said.

The other issue for Rongen was that Vukovic had not developed into a more complete forward.

“Stef’s a goal poacher. If you look at the changes in the world game now, the poacher is dying out because the modern centre forward has to bring a lot more than just hanging out in the box and scoring goals. We felt that Stef was a talented player (but) he had some shortcoming playing with his back to goal. He’s not as athletic as modern football dictates,” Rongen explained.

Vukovic’s one-dimensional style also meant he struggled to create scoring opportunities for himself, according to Rongen.

“He can’t really get behind defenders so he’s totally reliant on service from other people. If we tried to play through him, far away from goal, there was a very high rate of turnovers,” Rongen explained. “I told him if he continues to lose the ball 50 yards away from goal, he’ll never get in a position to score where his bread and butter is in the 18-yard box. He had to be able to link up a little better.”

Because they felt Vukovic wasn’t ready to make the next step, the club decided it would have been counter-productive to keep him around, as it would have stunted the progress of two other academy prospects, including Jody Hamilton.

“At the end of the day we drew the conclusion that we need to continue to push Hamilton because he needs as much playing time as possible,” Rongen said. “We have another very talented kid with the under-17 team that we want to bleed into our under-18 team in a few months. That would have meant Vukovic would have stood in the way of the continuation of the development of kids two or three years younger than him.”

So what it really came down to is a numbers game, one that Vukovic lost.

“We feel we have two very young players that have a higher upside and that can be better than Stef in two years, no disrespect to Stef,” Rongen said. “We have some alternatives (at the forward position) that we wanted to put more time and resources into, giving them 90 minutes all the time and not having to worry about giving Stef playing time. “