So, when it comes to picking the year’s best stories, I let the numbers speak for themselves. I went back through the analytics and looked at the 11 stories you, the readers, kept reading and re-reading.

The evidence of Aron Winter’s top-down approach to remaking Toronto FC isn’t only seen in the first team’s adoption to the pass-and-move 4-3-3 system. The effects are being felt all the way down to the junior feeder programs that send talent to TFC Academy. “Basically, the club (TFC) has a philosophy, now,” said Michael Stefano, technical director of the West Toronto United FC program, which is the first within the city’s borders to become an official partner of the TFC Youth Academy Program. “The club now has an identity, and let’s run with it.”