Diego Frolan to TFC?

I got a text this morning from a good friend of mine.

"Did I just hear that TFC is signing Diego? Fancy!".

I asked said friend what she (take note of the gender) thought of the signing. The response was basically "Well he is an MVP and he's sexy LOL".

Now don't get me wrong here, I'm not going to slag my friend at all. She's not exactly a soccer fanatic and she probably represents a large portion of the population. It's clear she has the perception that TFC is signing a star player (well he was 4 years ago in reference to her MVP comment). I even saw a New England fan tweet this morning that he would like to purchase a Forlan TFC jersey.

The stats speak for themselves. From 2007 to 2011 he played 134 league games and score 74 goals. He also played 62 international games and 22 goals. That was all part of his stay with Athletico Madrid. In this time frame he won the Golden Ball (best player of the tournament) at the 2010 FIFA World Cup and became Uruguay's all time leading scorer.

From 2011 up until the end of the 2013 season (in Brazil) he played 37 club games and scored 7 goals. Meanwhile he only had 2 appearances on the international stage, no goals. This time from was spent between 2 different clubs as well, Inter Milan and Internacional.

So now that I've laid out the stats to back it up, here's my opinion on this signing:

Stupid.

Yup, that's it. It clear that he's at a stage where he's older and more injury prone, This is not his fault, this is a common occurrence for players who are coming towards the end of their career. You can't blame the player for this, you can only blame TFC management.
I mean, a simple look on the internet would have told you his stats and that should be enough to think "maybe this isn't going to be a good idea, he obviously isn't as productive as he used to be.".

Now, If TFC comes out and says "look, we realize that he's not as productive as he once was but we wanted to bring in a player that has name recognition" then I'll be less upset. But who am I kidding? That's not going to happen. This is TFC trying to make the big name signing in order to get some more butts in the seats. That's fine too, but I have no disillusions of this being anything other than that and I think if TFC tries to sell us on this being a tactical signing then they are stupid.

I hate when players like this come into MLS. It's a wasted roster spot. If MLS has a grand vision of being one of the top leagues in the world by 2020 (tm: Don Garber) then they have to stop signing old players who aren't worth the insane amounts of money they sign for. We've seen this story with TFC before, Danny Kovermans (who by the way, I really like), Toresten Frings (another player I liked but was injury prone) and, Mista. They play so little because they are injured half the time and usually it all ends with a player being waived and a career ending. If TFC is going to be bad on the field, I'd rather they use that roster spot to sign a young Canadian player and let that player develop in MLS.

This signing may sell some more tickets but it's probably not going to help the team win at all.
It's starting to feel like nothing ever will.
That sincerely makes me sad.