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There are people who believe that the role of a captain in football is largely a ceremonial one.

 

They believe that the captain leads the team out of the dressing room, tosses the coin at the start of the game and takes on a more prominent role in dealing with the media. They also believe that there is nothing more to the job, and that it can be done by just about anyone who is assured of a spot in the starting line-up every week. 

 

I'm not one of those people.

 

A tough job

 

My experience has taught me that the role of a captain at a football club is equally as important as the role of the coach. I would go as far as to say that the single biggest decision a coach will ever make during his time in charge of a team is who he selects as his skipper. 

 

Which brings me to Toronto FC. 

 

I have written about what defines a captain in the past, so I am not going to go over old ground. What I will do is tell you that when it came time for Toronto FC head coach Preki to choose a successor to Jim Brennan as captain, he had only one option: Dwayne De Rosario. 

 

It wasn't that De Rosario was the ideal candidate - far from it. He leads by example, and he desperately wants to win every time he steps on the field, but his tactical understanding of what is required to do so is often lacking, and he doesn't yet understand what his new role requires of him. 

 

It was more that there wasn't one other player in Toronto's squad who could be seriously considered to take over the captaincy. 

 

After Nick Garcia and Julian de Guzman, both of whom need to focus all of their attention on their own performances right now, what other player can be looked at to provide any experienced leadership in that dressing room? 

 

No one.  

 

The first thing a good captain needs is a few good lieutenants: reliable, honest, hard-working senior players whose performances and professionalism have earned them the respect of their teammates. How many of those players are there in Toronto's dressing room? 

 

It is that core group of players, the captain and his lieutenants, who determine the success or failure of a team. It is that group who determine what is acceptable, both on and off the pitch. They set the rules of the dressing room, the code of conduct and the standards that are expected of the players. When those rules and standards are breached, they are the ones who determine the repercussions.  

 

Not pulling your weight out on the pitch? Expect to get an earful from not just the skipper, but from each and every one of his lieutenants. Late for a team meeting? Expect to get pulled to one side by those senior players, told to shape up, and fined for breaking team rules.  

 

Captain has influence

 

A very good coach once told me that a team is only as strong as the four walls of the dressing room. By that, he meant that there is only so much influence a coach can have on a group of players, and that the biggest influence on any team comes from the players themselves. 

 

When the players are in the dressing room, in the absence of the coaching staff, it is then that they form a bond. It is then that they become a family, where they make a pact to fight for each other. While a coach has a crucial role to play, when the players walk over that white line at the start of the game, they are on their own. There is no coach there to hold their hands - to tell them what to do - and they have only each other to rely on. 

 

Which is why it is so important for a coach - or a general manager, whichever is responsible for signing players - to get the right characters into the dressing room. 

 

A dressing room full of selfish players is doomed to fail, because the only way to succeed in football is as a team. A dressing room bereft of leadership is like a rudderless ship - wanting to get to its destination but powerless to do so. 

 

And that is what Toronto FC is right now - a rudderless ship. There is only so much that Preki can do with the squad of players he has at his disposal. Dwayne De Rosario needs some help, in the form of a few lieutenants, because he can't win games all on his own just because he's wearing an armband. 

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