Federico Bernardeschi has had enough.
The Toronto FC star vented his frustration with his club’s situation and coaching staff after a 1-0 loss to Austin FC on Saturday, which left TFC rooted to the bottom of the MLS Eastern Conference.
Despite the presence of the high-paid Italian duo of Bernardeschi and Lorenzo Insigne, TFC has gone scoreless in four straight MLS matches. Insigne has also struggled to stay fit, having played in just half of his team’s games so far.
Bernardeschi sounded off after the game at Q2 Stadium, revealing his frustration with his club’s lack of a clear direction.
“Sincerely, this team, this city, the fans, everybody don’t deserve this, and I think maybe we need to change something,” Bernardeschi told reporters. “We need to [have] a little bit more tactics. We need an idea of how we play because this is the real problem for me. It’s impossible to play like this when we play without [an] idea. This is the big problem for me.”
When asked to elaborate, Bernardeschi quite explicitly put the blame on head coach Bob Bradley and his staff.
“We don’t have a construction in the game. When the player has the ball, we don’t know how to pass the ball,” the 29-year-old said. “This is the real problem, because we don’t train about that.
“We lose every game. We tie, we lose, we tie, we lose. Sometimes we win. But I can’t believe this sincerely. This is no good for the young players. They need to get better, no? And grow up with an idea of football, and the players with personality, they need to help, help us to understand and follow the idea of football. But we need the idea of football. This is the real situation.”
Bernardeschi and Insigne were added at midseason last year with TFC in a dire league position. Though the club was unable to make the postseason in 2022, expectations were high heading into the pair’s first full MLS campaign.
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