Josh Sargent: Toronto FC's record signing steps into star role | OneFootball

By Charles Boehm

TORONTO – Josh Sargent looked relieved, happy to have finally touched down, albeit perhaps not entirely at ease under the spotlights’ glare.

After pursuing him for months, and eventually stacking up a reported $22 million-plus transfer package to Norwich City to seal the deal, Toronto FC had gathered a room full of reporters, cameras and a peanut gallery of hardcore Reds supporters at Scotiabank Arena to introduce their prized acquisition. It was a splashy unveiling event that reflected Sargent’s price and pedigree, if not exactly his personality.

“Hello, everyone. I'm not going to be nearly as long as those guys,” said the 26-year-old striker when it was his turn to address the room after opening remarks from Maple Leaf Sports & Entertainment president/CEO Keith Pelley and TFC general manager Jason Hernandez.

“But just wanted to say thank you all for coming, thank you everyone, for making this possible. Very excited to be here. Very excited to get started and very happy to be a part of the TFC family now. And that's all.”

Great expectations

That drew a round of applause, led by the supporters who know all too well that this huge swing – the latest in a long line of them by Toronto, going back more than a decade – will be measured on the pitch, possibly beginning with TFC's Matchday 3 visit to FC Cincinnati on Sunday Night Soccer presented by Continental Tire (7 pm ET | Apple TV).

“Hopefully a lot of wins and a lot of goals,” Sargent told MLSsoccer.com after the event, when asked what success would look like for him and his new team this season. “I think it's hard to say exactly where we're going to be. I think it's more, we got to take it day by day. Keep working hard, start getting wins under our belt, and hopefully good things come from that.

“The fan base, the club, everything is top here.”

He knows answers like this aren’t ‘sexy,’ don’t make for alluring headlines. Sargent isn’t really the sort to produce mic-drop soundbites. At one point during the presser, he even apologized for the “boring” nature of his responses.

Yes, of course he made this move with his US men’s national team prospects in mind; of course he still dreams of making Mauricio Pochettino’s 2026 FIFA World Cup squad. Sargent appears to be on the bubble in that competition, having endured a snakebit scoring drought with the Yanks dating back to 2019, but sometimes the obvious answer is the inescapable one.

“If I do well here, start scoring goals,” he said, “I don't see why that wouldn't put me in a better position to get with the team. So hopefully that's what happens."

New star in town

Ready or not, he’s in the limelight now. TFC are undoubtedly a ‘big club’ in the MLS context. The Reds have accrued plenty of hardware in the trophy case over their two decades of existence, even if their underwhelming recent results don’t quite show it.

They have topped MLS’s salary table more than once over the past few years, according to MLS Players Association documents, and their place in the MLSE firmament alongside the NHL’s Maple Leafs and NBA’s Raptors ensures them a share of the stage in Canada’s biggest city, with a combined metropolitan population about 33 times that of Norwich.

“I came to Toronto once for a [USMNT] game against Canada, but besides that, no, not much,” Sargent said of his past experiences with The 6. “I didn't know much about it, but it's been amazing.

“It's a lot bigger city than what I'm used to, but it's been really cool so far. There's so many different restaurants and coffee shops, whatever you can think of – a lot of stuff to try. And the people here have been so kind and very helpful from the first day I got here.”

High expectations and media scrutiny inevitably accompany moves like this in markets like this. There are perks, too, like the chance to take in Tuesday night’s Raptors-Knicks game at Scotiabank as a VIP guest and swap jerseys with the home team. Most of all, Sargent can feel confident that his new club will pull every lever at their disposal to fashion TFC into a winner again.

After all, that’s exactly what they did to get him.

It took Toronto months of negotiations and millions of dollars to cut ties with ‘the Italians,’ the highly-paid, underperforming DP duo of Lorenzo Insigne and Federico Bernardeschi, who were bought out last summer. That finally cleared the decks for Hernandez’s roster rebuild to crank into high gear, and in the process, a ‘reach’ signing like Sargent gradually became more attainable.

“Typically, like most clubs, we have, call it the target list: the long list, the short list,” Hernandez told MLSsoccer.com when the transfer was completed last week. “And we always keep a handful of names that are probably outliers, by either their pedigree or their cost, or maybe their situation at the club, that we call long shots.

“As we began doing the work, we felt more and more the ability and the opportunity existed to go for one of the long shots. So that's where the conversation really began with Josh.”

Top-tier striker

After leaving his native St. Louis at age 17 to join German side Werder Bremen, Sargent had methodically proved himself in some of Europe’s top leagues, racking up goals and assists in the top two divisions of Germany and England. He was named to the EFL Championship Team of the Season last year and was awarded Norwich's Player of the Season honors.

Packed with clubs vying tooth and nail for a place in the vaunted Premier League, England’s second tier is a bear pit, a ferociously demanding competition. Hernandez & Co. harbored little doubt that a best XI-caliber player from there could be a difference-maker on this side of the Atlantic.

“Certainly from data and metrics, but even from the eye test, you understand the Championship has a level of demands, a level of duels, a level of physicality that I think is quite correlated to MLS,” he said. “Essentially, there are a lot of parallels between the two leagues.

“So us using that league as a barometer of success, and if you're telling us we're getting arguably the best striker in the Championship, I'd like to think we're getting a really good striker for MLS.”

TFC wanted to move on from the era of bloated DP salaries. Hernandez said “we will look much different” when Insigne and Bernardeschi departed, noting the fallout from the vast wage disparity between the imported stars and their teammates. Yet MLSE’s heavy investment would continue, just mobilized differently.

A vital factor that opened the door further for Toronto was Sargent’s own life planning. He’d left home as a teenager and proved he could survive, even thrive in the European gauntlet. Now he and his wife Kirsten – his high-school sweetheart back in STL – were raising children of their own. The kids’ grandparents and the support structure of extended family in St. Louis were an ocean away, and then some.

“It's something me and my family have been thinking about for a bit now, getting closer to home,” explained Sargent. “That, along with Toronto reaching out, explaining their vision for this club and the direction it's heading, I think got me just very excited. Of course, I know a couple of guys on the team as well.

“I understand that it's a big deal for the club. They worked so hard to get me. They obviously believe in me a lot and have put a lot of trust in me. But that just makes me want to work even harder for the club.”

Their desire to return to North America grew steadily and became urgent when they welcomed their third child in December. Sargent made clear to Norwich his desire to leave, with TFC his chosen destination, and did not waver despite NCFC’s heavy-handed tactics in response.

“A lot of this came down to his commitment to wanting to be here as well,” head coach Robin Fraser said on Wednesday. “You look for good players, you look for good people, look for people who want to be here, as opposed to somebody who's just a mercenary looking for a paycheck. And when you find all three in one, it's pretty incredible, it really is. And we feel very fortunate, very excited to have someone of Josh's caliber here.”

Ambitious rebuild

Sargent is the crown jewel of Toronto’s renovation project, though just one of eight new signings, along with the likes of Walker Zimmerman, Dániel Sallói and Chilean defender Benjamín Kuscevic.

Hernandez and Fraser sought out “integrity” and “character” as well as “complementary pieces” – Zimmerman, for instance, is a World Cup veteran, leader and proven MLS standout. But his age profile leaves runway for the Reds’ prized youngsters Zane Monlouis and Nicksoen Gomis to grow into starters.

Is there enough talent to contend in a competitive Eastern Conference, where two road losses have already pushed TFC towards the bottom of the table?

“One hundred percent,” said Zimmerman. “We have a lot of guys who are now just coming into the team, and unfortunately, we didn't have that time to get some more games and reps in, but it's a group that I think can contend.”

Match Trailer | FC Cincinnati host refreshed Toronto FC