{"id":20775,"date":"2026-04-26T23:25:36","date_gmt":"2026-04-26T23:25:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/20775\/"},"modified":"2026-04-26T23:25:36","modified_gmt":"2026-04-26T23:25:36","slug":"teenager-antone-bossenberry-impresses-in-toronto-fc-debut","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/20775\/","title":{"rendered":"Teenager Antone Bossenberry impresses in Toronto FC debut"},"content":{"rendered":"

Seconds after Emilio Aristiz\u00e1bal scored his first MLS goal on Saturday afternoon<\/a>, another Toronto FC played reached a career first. Seventeen-year-old midfielder Antone Bossenberry came off the bench in the 73rd minute as part of a triple substitution from Robin Fraser, replacing Alonso Coello to make his first MLS appearance.<\/p>\n

In about 20 minutes of action, Bossenberry \u2014 who had been placed in a difficult situation down a goal \u2014 hardly put a foot wrong. The 2008-born talent is not the most physically imposing player, but his reading of the game and technical ability were already visible in a small sample size.<\/p>\n

He became the eighth-youngest player to take the pitch for the Reds at 17 years, eight months and 12 days old, as well as the seventh player so far to make his debut for the club in 2026.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m really happy that Tony got in,\u201d Fraser said after the match. \u201cHe\u2019s a kid who, I remember when he first trained with us last year, I was like, \u2018Who\u2019s the 12-year-old and why is he at our training?\u2019, and in a few minutes, I was like, \u2018Wow, he\u2019s pretty interesting.\u2019 So then he came to preseason, he spent the whole preseason with us and Tony grew leaps and bounds in the five or six weeks.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m pretty excited about his future, I\u2019m glad that he had the opportunity to get in. The very first possession he had I think he got stripped, but imagine getting thrown into these conditions in a game like this and you\u2019re down. I think that might have been the only time he lost the ball, and then other than that, I thought he was really solid.\u201d<\/p>\n

Bossenberry\u2019s best moment might have been a shifty move moments after entering the pitch, freeing up Malik Henry for a run into the Atlanta box. Henry missed the bottom left corner of the net by inches in a play that would have tied the game.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was good to see him get in and good to see him in the environment,\u201d Fraser added. \u201cA great little dummy to get Malik in for the cross that he hit across the goal, so you see bits and pieces of not just his ability with his feet, but his ability to think, and that\u2019s why I think Tony has a pretty big future.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"Photo: Shaun McLeod\/Waking The Red<\/p>\n

Fraser is far from the only person who rates Bossenberry highly. He has been involved with the Canadian youth national teams, and was included on The Guardian\u2019s list of 60 \u201cNext Generation\u201d players<\/a> in 2025 alongside many of the top young talents in world football. <\/p>\n

Toronto FC head coach Gianni Cimini described him to The Guardian as \u201cthe type of player every coach dreams of working with.\u201d<\/p>\n

Bossenberry was born in Canada but grew up south of the border in the United States and Mexico, as well as time in Toronto. He spent time in the Inter Miami youth setup for three years before joining TFC in 2022, making his way to Toronto FC II in 2025, and now the first team in 2026.<\/p>\n

He, like teammates Reid Fisher and Jackson Gilman, was on the bench on Saturday using an MLS Short-Term Agreement, which can be used to call players up from MLS Next Pro a limited number of times in a season. <\/p>\n

It is unlikely that Bossenberry will break into the first team with any regularity in 2026, but if he can continue to impress with the reserves, a first team contract could be in his near future.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Seconds after Emilio Aristiz\u00e1bal scored his first MLS goal on Saturday afternoon, another Toronto FC played reached a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":20776,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[5310,17,318,359,5312,48,330],"class_list":{"0":"post-20775","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-toronto","8":"tag-bmo-field","9":"tag-canada","10":"tag-major-league-soccer","11":"tag-mls","12":"tag-tfc","13":"tag-toronto","14":"tag-toronto-fc"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20775","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20775"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20775\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/20776"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20775"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20775"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20775"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}