FC Tampa Bay Terminates Veteran Midfielder Tony McManus’ Contract
Tony McManus
After starting six of FC Tampa Bay’s first seven games, the team announced late Thursday afternoon they have terminated the contract of midfielder Tony McManus and released him from the roster, effective immediately.
“We believe this is the best decision for our club moving forward,” said Owner/President Andrew Nestor. “We wish Tony best of luck in the future.”
The 30-year-old McManus has started FC Tampa Bay’s first six matches of the season logging in 528 minutes with one assist. In fact the team had played the veteran midfielder all but 12 minutes up until Saturday evening’s 3-0 victory against the Montreal Impact.
According to Jeff Kamis, Executive Vice President of Business Development at FC Tampa Bay, McManus was released because of “a material breach of contract” (failure to perform the contract).
He also told IMS that McManus missed Saturday evening’s game because of “personal reasons.” He would not elaborate.
When pressed on the question if this was a decision made by head coach Ricky Hill, Kamis said, “This was a decision made by the entire organization. I would not classify it as coach Hill’s decision.”
Kamis said he was not at liberty to talk about specifics of the situation and couldn’t expound other than to repeat that McManus was in breach of contract.
Before coming to Tampa Bay, McManus played for the Portland Timbers from 2009-2010 where he made 51 appearances. That included the 24-game unbeaten streak of Portland’s in 2009 when they won the USL-1 Commissioner’s Cup.
Previous to his 2 years at Portland, McManus had played for the Atlanta Silverbacks from 2005-2008. He made 156 appearances there and scored 7 goals with 3 assists.
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I hope that everything eventually works out for the player. There really appears to be something very serious going on. I wish the guy well.
Soccer and the law! I can’t wait to hear the rest of the story. (Although it does involve contracts, which was not my strongest class in law school.)
I know I am cynical, but you don’t just go out and terminate a guy’s contract that has started 6 of your 7 games and is very integral to your entire offense. Part of me thinks that the team was looking to get out of a hefty contract and they found a reason to end the contract.
There is something about FC Tampa Bay that doesn’t smell 100% correct to me. Perhaps Bart and I can go and have a beer over this one, but I just have the feeling that the team is a little under the water.
I could be 100% wrong on this, but I have seen it before…as has every Div. 2 soccer fan in the country.
You don’t just fire a guy like this…unless he is dating the owner’s daughter and didn’t bring her home by 10pm.
Alright I will jump to conclusions, the vague talk has me wondering/worried Tony may be dealing with personal demons, if so I hope he can defeat them.
@smatthew: That is the same conclusion that I jumped to, as well.
Yeah, that’s my interpretation. And if so, then whatever they are, I hope everything works out well.
As a Seattle Sounders supporter, I feel obligated to note that Portland won the 2009 Commissioner’s Cup, not the USL-1 Championship.
You know when I wrote that this morning I was thinking something was incorrect. Big error on my part. I will fix that right away. Thanks Edward.
In all seriousness, how do you guys jump to that conclusion?
@thesuperrookie
I don’t think terminating one player is a financial factor in this issue. I would think a morals clause was violated as a result of some personal demons that need exorcised.
Now sure, I have grave doubts about the financial stability of those boy wonders that call themselves owners of FC Tampa, but not even those graduate degree wannabees are that stupid to think the termination of a star player would provide them with any financial windfall.
Here is to hoping Tony can get it back together again…..
@superookie: It’s the wording that is being used. If he was being released to pursue a better opportunity than it would probably indicate that he requested to be released. It might even mention what club he was going to move onto.
With HIPPA and privacy issues, things have to worded very carefully, due to the employer’s potential liability.
Of course, we are speculating. When a guy plays that many minutes and has that sort of resume at this level, nless he just wants out and hates the coach (which I have seen)–he doesn’t just walk in the middle of the season unless something is seriously wrong.
He missed a match due to “personal reasons”. That usually indicates some sort of illness, either personal or family. Or a very serious legal problem of some sort that requires his complete attention and/or the franchise to want to distance itself from the player.
Where there is smoke, there is often (but of course, not always) fire…
If the reason is for “personal demons” ( read – not of significant illegal activities) I would hope that a team would stand behind an employee that they wanted to keep rather than terminate the contract.
We can only speculate although most contracts are not worth the paper they are written on especially at this level.
Yanki and Bart-
I appreciate your responses and I seem some valid points, but I am a little bit like tomASS in my thinking. If it was for an extremely personal matter in which a player needs to time to work out I would hope the employer (FC TB) would stand in support.
Let us not forget that for an extremely personal matter facing Marco Terminesi the Impact stood by their player for the 2010 season. Although, I have yet to see any mention of the M-Train for the Impact in 2011, I did find it very admirable that the Impact were willing to work with the M-Train during his scare last season.
Perhaps this is why I am a little fearful of this situation. Something doesn’t just add up. Unless, he jumped on a plane to Brazil, or something. I know we are in the dark on this and as always my thoughts and concerns are opinions from behind a computer screen.
Look at the bright side, an Anthony McManus hasn’t shown up in the Tampa Bay metro area jail system.
/internet sleuthing
I am amazed at this. I’ve met Tony and I can’t think of a nicer, more morally straight forward guy. I hope he’s ok and gets work somewhere.
* pours out g2 *
Hope to see him back on the pitch soon.
We have an opening on my Tuesday night men’s league up at the NSC. McManus can come play on my team.
The wording is very guarded in a way that, to me, implies that they regret feeling like they have to let him go and that they don’t feel it would be appropriate to give any details. It’s likely either something he’s struggling with on a personal level, or some sort of major legal hot water he’s about to get into; I’d rather assume he has something to struggle through than that he’s in major trouble.
Could be neither, of course.
Or maybe it’s as simple as they play better without him in the center of their midfield and the 7 year D2 player decided to quit after being told he would not start on Saturday vs Montreal.
@jw7 – another very good possibility…..do you know inside info?
Tony is back in Portland looking for work right now. I can’t think of any player I have seen come through Portland that I would trust more, with just about anything.
You guys suck. Why don’t you wait for some credible information to come out before you start slurring a man’s name in a public forum.
And I always heard about Southern Gentlemen, well I do know one. Tony McManus 12.
Easy there Cochrane. If you’d actually followed anything else on this site you’d know that first of all this situation was very curious with no answers. I would love to talk to Tony and get his side of things if he’d like to talk to IMS.
Secondly, I have said many times here in comments but more so on our NASL Podcast that everything everyone says about Tony is he’s a great guy. Quality through and through and that this is a difficult situation. Everything Tampa has said about the guy is they wish him the very best.
I am curious however how he ended up back up in Portland rather than in Atlanta?
@Cochrane: Yep. I do suck.
This is a sports forum. You have probably visited them before. Kind of like talk radio and the bar stool, there is a lot of speculation that goes on here.
We speculate about players not getting played. We speculate about players moving on.
Nobody through the player under th bus. Nobody “slurred” his name.
We generally speculated about what was going on, based on a very limited amount of information available.
So let me get this right: We are supposed to discuss a player, but only on your or the players terms?
Sorry but it just doesn’t work that way. Nobody accused him of anything. We did refer to other, previous player-club seperations, speculating about what possibly could have taken place.
So yeah. I suck. I suck for continuing to care about the player enough to discuss him after he had moved on.
Guilty as charged.
But I plead “not guilty” to the charge of slurring his name”.
Thanks for the scathing indictment, though…
Yes, curious situation with no answers….Brian. I will be following the situation just like the rest of you. If I find out anything for sure here, I will post it. Whether is favors Tony or not. Portland>Atlanta? Tony has family here, about 3000 of us. plus, ever been to Portland in the summer?
Yankiboy, I do know sports forums. I do know how fans talk about things they know nothing about. I stand by my comments.
@Cochrane- So here is what we agree on:
1) You know sports forums and how they work (which was never in question).
2) We both stand by our statements.
3) (And by far, the most important) We want the best for the player (everybody says he’s a good guy).