Who we Were (Part 2): Dominic Oduro

If you have been a fan of Toronto FC for the last few years now, the name Dominic Oduro brings back more bad memories than good. That’s not necessarily because of the time that he spent in Toronto back in 2014, but his sting with the rival Montreal Impact from 2015 to the start of the 2018 season.

It seemed like no matter how Oduro’s season was going, the Ghanaian always scored against TFC. Anyway, let’s take a look at how his career went about at BMO Field, and then we’ll get on to the pain that he’s put us through over the years while he was in Montreal.

Dominic Oduro, a journeyman, has played for eight MLS teams in 12 seasons, playing for the likes of FC Dallas, New York Red Bulls, Houston Dynamo, Chicago Fire, Columbus Crew SC, Toronto FC, Montreal Impact, and San Jose Earthquakes. When he came to Toronto FC (in exchange for Alvaro Rey), he came a with a decent amount of hype because although he had a rather disappointing start with Columbus in 2014, he had a good year in 2013 for the Crew, with 13 goals and four assists in 34 games.

Photo by David Banks/Getty Images

Things didn’t go well for Oduro in 2014 though, first with Columbus, and then with Toronto FC.

In Oduro’s 11 games with Columbus in 2014, he scored zero goals or assists. Then the Crew offloaded him to their rivals, Toronto FC, where he would only score two goals and get five assists in 1514 minutes. He scored, on average, every 757 minutes, and assisted a goal every 302 minutes. The Ghanaian had a shooting percentage of roughly 8%, meaning that his shots had an 8% change of going in for the Reds — that’s not too good; even Tosaint Ricketts, who struggled in 2018, had a shooting percentage of 15%.

That last statistic summed up Dominic Oduro’s shooting in 2014: inaccurate. He was a super fast player who would occasionally get on a breakaway where there would be no one near him besides the goalkeeper, and he would sky the shot. It almost became comical how bad his shots were at times. You know those ‘sitters’ in games where the players should score or else they’ll look really dumb to the fans watching? Oduro missed a ton of those during his time with the Reds, and even missed a few of them against us while he played for Montreal.

One particular thing that I liked about Oduro though was his hair style — how he would change his mohawk colour based on what team he’s on, or some other reason. It certainly added a bit of spice to the hairstyles on the pitch, in comparison to most people’s more conservative choices. It injected a bit of character (visually) into the Toronto FC squad!

At the end of the season, just 24 games into his career with the Reds, Dominic Oduro was traded to our 401 Derby rivals, Montreal Impact, in exchange for some allocation money (the specific amount was not disclosed) before the start of the 2015 season. Funnily enough, although many of the Toronto fans were not too sad to see him go, Oduro became ingrained in the minds of TFC fans after he scored goals against the Reds in crucial games, such as the two that he scored during the 2016 MLS Eastern Conference Finals.

Photo by Minas Panagiotakis/Getty Images

The 33-year-old currently plays for the San Jose Earthquakes, traded midway through the 2018 season to the under-performing team. He hasn’t really had too much time playing there, as he only came off the bench five times for them (including playing against TFC), recording only 30 minutes of MLS playing time.

As I’ve been saying throughout this article, Oduro’s acquisition was not a successful trade by Toronto FC. They traded away Alvaro Rey in exchange for him, who I thought actually played decently for the Reds. Despite Oduro’s decent track record, he didn’t put up good numbers for Toronto FC, despite having great chances. It rubbed even more salt in the wounds when he moved to Montreal and played well against Toronto seemingly all the time.

I think TFC fans are pretty happy to see that he’s moved to the Earthquakes, as now we don’t have to worry about him whenever we play against Montreal — it seems like he must have something against us, because he can’t stop punishing TFC for trading him!