Winter introduced as Toronto FC coach

Published Jan. 6, 2011 11:46 p.m. ET

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Aron Winter likes to think of it as Toronto's own twist on Total Football.

The former Netherlands national team midfielder, who also played for European clubs Ajax and Inter Milan, was officially introduced as the new coach of Toronto FC on Thursday.

The Major League Soccer team, seeking a free-flowing playing style reminiscent of the ''Total Football'' philosophy developed by Ajax, hired Winter this week to implement it.

''It is a big challenge,'' Winter said at a crowded news conference at the Air Canada Centre. ''It is a young club. The feeling given to me was that we can build something together and (play) an attractive style of soccer.''

In Total Football - which the Dutch national team also adopted - a player will leave his position with another player seamlessly filling in that spot.

That style, Winter insisted, will be unique to Toronto, but admitted it will strongly resemble the fluid game of interchangeable players perfected by his former Dutch club.

''We want to be attractive, we want to dominate, with a lot of movement also,'' Winter said.

Completing its new management staff, Toronto also hired Bob de Klerk as Winter's first assistant and Paul Mariner the team's new director of player development.

The team also announced that interim GM Earl Cochrane, interim head coach Nick Dasovic, plus Danny Dichio, Jason Bent and Stuart Neely will all remain with the club. Cochrane becomes director of player and team operations while Neely will be TFC's academy director.

The club hired former German star Juergen Klinsmann in November to help turn around the struggling squad, and his first order of business was to determine a style the team wanted to play. The next step was finding the right person to implement it.

The team has been without a full-time head coach and GM since Preki and Mo Johnston were fired in September, with the team about to miss the playoffs for the fourth consecutive season. Toronto went finished 9-13-8.

Winter, 43, scored six goals in 84 appearances for the Netherlands from 1987 to 2000, making three World Cup appearances. He coached a junior Ajax team before taking the Toronto position, and is also a former assistant coach with the Dutch under-20 team.

The new coaching staff will head south to Fort Lauderdale, Fla., next week for the MLS combine, and then the MLS Superdraft on Jan. 13 in Baltimore.

Toronto will take the field next month in Turkey with three matches to open training camp. The team will then return home before heading to Orlando then Charleston, South Carolina, for the Carolina Challenge Cup to wrap up the preseason.

Toronto FC opens the 2011 season in Vancouver on March 19 against the expansion Whitecaps.