Plastic Pitch Spring 2015 by Rethink Management Group

PL ASTIC PITCH Winter 2015 Spring

Issue No. 5

Five Canadian Dollars

THE PRIMER THE HANDSHAKE

If Canadians can’t be treated as domestics on U.S. teams in MLS and the NASL, maybe it’s time to force Americans to be treated as foreigners on Canadian teams. 2

HATE THE BALL

MLS goes for five years of labour peace; 100 days till the Women’s World Cup, concussions in soccer and looking at the format of our Canadian Championship.

Canadian Soccer Association President Victor Montagliani said this country’s relationships with MLS and the United States Soccer Federation were non-existent when he took office. Even though we already had teams in MLS and NASL when Montagliani was elected, he said Canada was widely ignored by our supposed partners to the south. 26

LOOK BACK IN ANGER

PROMISES, PROMISES

We look back at nearly a decade of promises made to Canadian soccer supporters by American officials and Major League Soccer brass. And we examine just how few of them have been kept.

STARTING FROM SCRATCH

Before Montagliani, Dominique Maestracci was the president f the CSA. In this tell-all interview, he says the current MLS Canadian-player policy is not what he and the CSA agreed to in negotiations with the league. 28

WHEN IT WAS OUR GAME BYE BYE, BRYCE

After signing as a Generation Adidas prospect, Canadian Bryce Alderson never got into an MLS game with the Whitecaps. They asked him to play with their USL affiliate in 2015; he tells us why he refused. 14

Players and officials looks back at the late and sorta great Canadian Soccer League. Had our premier national league survived, how would it have changed the state of soccer in Canada?

THE DISTINCT SOCIETY

If a national league was ever to be resurrected in Canada, the toughest market to crack might just be Montreal. We asked soccer supporters there to talk about whether or not they would support a national league, and if the Canadian national team holds a special place in ther hearts. 38

CANADIANS NEED NOT APPLY

Through first-hand accounts from our players, we show just how difficult it is for Canadian talent to find (and keep) jobs on American MLS and NASL teams. 18

SHORT-TERM SOLUTIONS

Is the agreement between the CSA and the NWSL working as well as it could? Does it fit into our long-term plans to develop the women’s game? 42

TRIALS AND ERRORS

Easton Report contributor Richard Whittall looks at the history of Canadian professional leagues. Why don’t they succeed? What lessons can we learn from the past? 46

YOU’RE BETTER OFF WITHOUT US THE LONELY CANADIAN

There was a time when you could confuse Toronto FC with our men’s national team. In 2015, Jonathan Osorio looks to be the only Canadian who has a real chance at first-team minutes with the Reds. 24

American soccer expert and former NASL employee Kartik Krishnaiyer says that Americans are well-intentioned when it comes to inviting Canadian teams into their leagues. But he says the reality is that it’s difficult to administer a U.S.-based league that has Canadian teams in it. He says we’d be better off coming up with unique Canadian soccer solutions. 50

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PLASTIC PITCH

THE HANDSHAKE

Foreign relations IT WAS YOU, the readers of Plastic Pitch, who spurred this special theme issue of the magazine to life. How? We looked back at the readership numbers for our first four issues. Issue 2, which featured our 16-page look at Canada’s bid for the 2026 World Cup, was our most popular. So, Capitalism 101 tells us to give you another theme issue. What you’ll find in Issue 5 is a collection of stories and essays that, hopefully, will get you thinking critically about the pyramid that we share with the United States. This issue isn’t meant to be antiAmerican, anti-MLS, anti-NASL or anti-NWSL. It simply asks our readers to consider if we need to change our relationship with our neighbours, or if we possibly need to politely tell them that, thanks, but it’s time for us to be on our way. One bone on which to chew: In December, MLS Commissioner Don Garber reaffirmed his position that Canadians could not be treated as domestic players on American teams because of U.S. labour law (even though this position has been refuted by the U.S. government department in charge of labour equality, see P. 12). Then he said that he hoped to see a day when only Canadians could be domestics on Canadian teams. When we’re, ahem, “good enough.” So, there was an admission there that the current rules, which allow Canadian teams to count American players as domestics, but not vice versa, aren’t ideal. Yet, without hard deadlines, Garber’s recent statements come off like yet more empty promises from MLS headquarters. Right now, the way the Americans see us is sorta like how the Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy saw Earth. Mostly Harmless. With Canadian teams in Major League Soccer, the North American Soccer League and USL-PRO, our pyramid is married to the American system. And, the Canadian Soccer Association foots the bill for 16 of our players to be employed in the NWSL. But, there’s a problem here. With the Americans calling all the shots when it comes to our development, the “we’re not good enough” excuse becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. Our players don’t play much 2

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in MLS; the commissioner of the league tells is that the roster rules will become more favourable when Canada produces more players. But, the current system doesn’t encourage this country to produce the best players it can, when Americans can be signed as domestics by the Canadian clubs. Sure, you can develop academy players as a decent public-relations exercise but, for the practical purposes of playing MLS games, it’s easier to find a bunch of American players to fill the gaps. So, under the current system, our players will never be good enough. In order for our teams to produce more players, the rules have to change... first. Garber should set a deadline. Put it in the rulebook that, by 2018 or 2019, Americans will no longer be domestics on Canadian teams. It gives these teams time to prepare and not compromise any current contracts. And, it lights the fire under our butts that we need to fix the system. Deadlines, not promises, spur people to action. And, if MLS changes the rules, then NASL will follow suit (USL-PRO already sees Canadians as domestics across the board, so no issue there). Sure, you can argue that forcing the Canadian teams to treat Americans as imports by 2018 or 2019 would put them at a competitive disadvantage. And it would be an argument that would hold water if any of the three Canadian clubs were any good. But, under the current rules, they have zero playoff wins between them. The competitive advantage argument is false. And, one thing that sets soccer apart is the fact that most teams around the world have philosophies that they try to live by. A lot of clubs work hard to develop local players and strengthen ties to their communities. By forcing Canadian teams to only use Canadians as domestics, they would find their souls. Because, let’s face it, cheering for a club in MLS, where contracts are centrally controlled, it’s kinda like cheering for a corporation. It’s kinda like rooting for the bank or an oil company. We need to challenge ourselves to be better. And, every time Canadians have to hear the “we’re not good enough” argument, we need to respond with “yet.” P² — Steven Sandor

PLASTIC PITCH Editor and Manager Steven Sandor Contributors Keil Hunka, Les Jones, Kartik Krishnaiyer, Martin MacMahon, Rob Notenboom, Mark Polishuk, Duane Rollins, Marc Tougas, Richard Whittall, Mike Wyman Plastic Pitch is fully owned by TeamWork Press. All material copyright TeamWork Press. Redistribution of this magazine, in whole or in part, is prohibited without the written consent of TeamWork Press.

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If you like Twitter, you should follow us @PlasticPitchMag. Follow editor Steven Sandor at, you guessed it, @stevensandor. You can also subscribe to the mag via our Shopify store. Thanks to all of our Day 1 subscribers who have re-upped for year two. Your loyalty and support are appreciated.

STARTING LINEUP A lifelong lover of soccer, Kartik Krishnaiyer is the senior writer at World Soccer Talk. He served from January 2010 until May 2013 as the director of communications and public relations for the North American Soccer League (NASL). Raised on the Fort Lauderdale Strikers of the old NASL, Krishnaiyer previously hosted the American Soccer Show on the Champions Soccer Radio Network, the Major League Soccer Talk podcast and the EPL Talk podcast.

Richard Whittall is an award-winning writer, researcher, and editor with a special focus on football analytics and finance. His work has appeared in publications including the Guardian, ESPN, and Howler magazine, and he is a regular contributor to 21st Club, which works with leading clubs to help improve football operations with better planning and data analysis.

Edmonton artist Keil Hunka, who also drew the “Walking Reds” cover from Issue 3, returns. And he did some fantastic work in a pinch. We had a scheduling issue and asked Keil to step in and take on this rather, ahem, interesting cover. Just like the comic books do in their back pages, we’re presenting what the cover looked like before the colours were applied.

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PLASTIC PITCH

HATE THE BALL!

A MONTH BEFORE the start of FC Edmonton’s training camp, Frank Jonke was awoken by a terrible pain in his gut. The Canadian striker was in agony. Not only was the pain severe, he couldn’t keep food down. By the time the North American Soccer League team’s camp opened, he was down 15 pounds. But, the pain went away as quickly as it came. And doctors never were able to diagnose what was wrong. A virus? Food poisoning? The only thing they were able to rule out was a food allergy. Jonke missed the first couple of days of training camp. Jonke sees the silver lining. “Now that I lost that weight, I am quicker and lighter,” he says. And he isn’t sure if he’s going to try and put that weight back on. Maybe the change will be good for Jonke, because he desperately wants 2015 to be the year where he proves 2014 was a fluke. Jonke arrived in Edmonton in 2014, after playing for Canadian national team interimcoach Colin Miller, who is also FC Edmonton’s boss. Jonke decided to leave Finnish football behind for the NASL, and hopes were high that the forward nicknamed “Bully” would terrify opposition centre backs. But, in 17 NASL games, Jonke didn’t score; that came in stark contrast to Canadian Championship games, where he was one of the Eddies’ most effective players. And, in the second leg of their Canadian Championship semifinal against the Montreal Impact, Jonke scored twice, including a penalty-kick conversion. To add injury to the insult, Jonke spent much of the NASL fall season on the sidelines, trying to regain focus after a concussion. “Frank and I have spoken about what happened last season,” says Miller. “That’s the one thing about Frank, he’s very honest. I didn’t have to tell him how disappointing last season was. He knew it was.” And, with the lost weight and the urge to make fans forget 2014, Miller feels the re-energized Jonke will almost be like a new signing for the club. “Last year was so disappointing; I didn’t realize my goals as a player and as a team4

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Tony Lewis/FC Edmonton

Exorcising the ghosts of 2014

mate,” says Jonke. “It was tough. But you have to realize that not every day is going to be a sunny day. Now, I feel that I can only go up. There will be positives, because I have experienced all of the negatives.” Jonke said that the concussion only compounded the frustration. He wanted so badly to get onto the pitch and redeem himself, but was forced to watch the games from the sidelines, as the Eddies made a late-season charge for a post-season slot. Maybe it’s a show of confidence, but Miller didn’t do much to change the mix at striker. Jonke, Tomi Ameobi, Darul Fordyce and the young Sadi Jalali remain the options. Where Miller made additions was in the slot behind the strikers. Miller said Icelandic winger Oskar Orn Hauksson can

be used on the wing or as a number 10. (He can also drop Fordyce back to use as the 10.) And former MLSer Sainey Nyassi adds speed either down the middle or on the wing. Jonke is enthused by the changes. “It’s going to be a tremendous help. That’s not to say we didn’t have good players last year. But each of the new players brings a new element to the team. That’s the coach’s job, to identify what’s missing and to fill those gaps. And I think that’s what’s been done.” Now, Jonke just wants to bury those chances. He’s dropped 15 pounds — now he just has to take the weight of the world off his shoulders. P²

Counting down to WWC

At the end of February, the six Canadian host cities marked the 100-day-toWomen’s World Cup countdown. In Edmonton (above), local WWC 2015 event General Manager Trish Zimmerman and Mayor Don Iveson marked the occasion, while the local chapter of the Voyageurs (right) came up with a few songs. Edmonton hosts the opening match on June 6, and will stage more tournament matches than any other Canadian city. The pressure is on, but Iveson said he was confident that Commonwealth Stadium will be filled for what he called the “big matches.”

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THE CANADIAN SOCCER Association moved the Amway Canadian Championship — this country’s official pro soccer championship — later in the calendar, beginning with this year’s tourney. The CSA confirms that the logic behind moving the final to later in the summer is to eventually create a schedule where more teams can gain entry into the tournament. As it stands, the ACC is only open to the three Canadian Major League Soccer teams and the two North American Soccer League teams. It’s hard to go to CONCACAF and ask for more than one spot for Canada in the Champions League when the tournament to determine which team gets that sole berth has only five teams in it. There are now viable Division 3 semipro leagues up and running in Quebec and Ontario. The three MLS teams all have local affiliates in USL-PRO. But, when will the ACC grow to more than five teams? That’s the million-dollar question. Because it’s not on the CSA’s imminent to-do list. This is a statement made to Plastic Pitch by the CSA: “The focus right now is to build the Championship into a solid competition with the clubs in place, and potential development will be considered and debated on an annual basis by our Professional Soccer Committee.”

Andrew Soong/Canada Soccer

ACC not ready to grow... yet

Montreal Impact captain Patrice Bernier cradles the Voyageurs Cup in 2014. This year, the tournament will begin in April with a preliminary series between the two NASL sides — FC Edmonton and the Ottawa Fury. The winner of that two-legged series will face the Vancouver Whitecaps, while Toronto FC and the Montreal Impact will meet in the other semifinal.

The winners will face off in a final that won’t kick off till August. Because of the late-summer finish, the champion will qualify for the 2016-17 CONCACAF Champions League. From now on, the holder of the Voyageurs Cup will go into the CCL that kicks off a year later. P²

Concussions fuel Canadian defender’s love of science Oliver Spring was just 13 years old, trying out for TFC Academy, when he suffered his first concussion. A ball, travelling at high velocity, careened into his skull. Spring dropped to the ground. Later in his teen years, playing for the Ontario provincial side, Spring suffered his second concussion; his head crashed into the shoulder of an opponent, then into the ground. Since then, Spring has been abroad; the Toronto-born centre back has trained with the youth wing of Dutch giant, Feyenoord; he also spent two years with the youth team of Israeli side, Maccabi Tel Aviv. Spring is now at Duke University in North Carolina, and is preparing for his freshman soccer season at the school. He hopes to major in physics. Why physics? Because the science of collisions fascinates him. He studied concussions in high school; during his final year at an international post-secondary institution in Israel, he wrote his research paper on how concussions are handled in various professional sports. He can speak to the causes of a 6

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concussion; how fast the players are moving; how much distance they’ve been able to cover — and how much momentum has been built up. As a centre back, always fighting to win crosses, the risks of concussion are higher. And it’s a concern for Spring. “What concerns me is the conditions that concussions lead to down the road,” says Spring. “They have been linked to early onset of dementia, Alzheimer’s and depression — even suicide.” As a soccer player who has suffered concussions, Spring understands the hesitancy to change the way they are treated on the field. Under FIFA protocols, all players who suffer head injuries are supposed to be examined, but we saw in the most recent World Cup that players and teams often kept their players on the pitch. Spring says that in the heat of the moment, you don’t think of the effect that the concussion can have on your life. “Especially at something like a World Cup, where the stakes are so high. As a player, you want to stay out there.” P²

MLS

Promises,

PROMISES We look back on a decade of promises, pledges and calls to action. Gathered in one place, they show that those who want to see Canadian soccer succeed really can’t be sure what to make of MLS, even though the league has been playing games on our soil since 2007. Compiled by STEVEN SANDOR

IT WAS AN announcement that changed not only the professional sports scene in Toronto, but the destiny of Canadian soccer. In the fall of 2005, Major League Soccer announced that it would no longer a league exclusive to American-based franchises. In 2007, Toronto FC would begin play in the circuit. With TFC came the new BMO Field, a soccer-specific stadium that would rise on the Canadian National Exhibition grounds. The new venue would be oh-so-close to the site where that famous “mistake by the lake,” Exhibition Stadium. once stood. With the new Toronto stadium also acting as the centrepiece of the 2007 U-20 World Cup, the sentiment then was that the rise of a Canadian pro soccer franchise and the real estate that came with it represented a win-win scenario for Canadian soccer. Now, a decade after the TFC franchise was approved by MLS, its safe to question if the rise of Canadian teams in American leagues has been good for the game in this country. Our men’s national team is arguably further away from qualifying for a World Cup now than it was in the mid-2000s. When TFC’s membership was greenlighted, the Canadian soccer system was locked in with the Americans. True, through the 1990s. the Canadian and American teams mixed in the United Soccer Leagues’ then named A-League, but the Canadian clubs participated with rosters that were dominated by Canadian players. MLS was a different level, with pressure to sign

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American and international talent. How to describe marrying the Canadian and American systems? The Americans regularly qualify for World Cups and compete against the best in the world. Canada hasn’t qualified for a World Cup since 1986 and rarely gets a friendly with a top-20-ranked nation. It was like asking a Tour De France contender to team with a cyclist who still needs training wheels. After TFC came the Vancouver Whitecaps and the Montreal Impact. There is no doubt that Toronto FC, the Whitecaps and the Impact have enjoyed great business successes since joining MLS. They consistently finish in the top third of the league when it comes to attendance. But, outside of two one-and-done playoff appearances by the Whitecaps — and one for the Impact — the Canadian MLS teams have not succeeded on the field, despite being allowed the, ahem, competitive advantage of only needing to have a minimum of three Canadians on each of their rosters. And, when it comes to the promotion of soccer in the United States, MLS is clear in its mission; to help lay the foundation for a strong American national team. But,when it comes to Canada, there have been promises, pledges, excuses, more excuses, contradictory statements, put-downs, patronizing comments — and very little action.

The Montreal Impact played its first MLS regular-season game in March, 2012 at BC Place. But, in what was dubbed an all-Canadian affair, only one Canadian-national-team-eligible player started the game between the Impact and Vancouver Whitecaps combined.

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PLASTIC PITCH

Promises, Promises ...

July, 2008 In Toronto for the All-Star Game, MLS Commissioner Don Garber says Ottawa is in running for an MLS expansion franchise. But he warns that Eugene Melnyk, who is looking to bring MLS to the nation’s capital, will be in tough. “The passion is not enough. It needs to make business sense,” Garber says. Garber also says that there is no guarantee that MLS will ever have more than one Canadian franchise. A year-later, Melnyk’s plan to bring a team to a suburban yet-to-be-built soccer stadium is dashed as the City of Ottawa opts to support the centrally located stadium at Lansdowne Park. Six years on, the new TD Place becomes the home of the North American Soccer League’s Ottawa Fury — owned by the Ottawa Sports and Entertainment Group.

Canada Soccer

March, 2010

March, 2009 A year before, Garber said there was no guarantee of more than one Canadian team in MLS. In March, the league approves the Vancouver Whitecaps as the second Canada-based MLS franchise. The Caps, currently playing in the North American second division, are set to begin MLS play in 2011.

May, 2010 MLS confirms that the Montreal Impact will join the league in 2012. Once again, Garber reiterates his stance that MLS is not done when it comes to expanding to Canadian markets.

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In Toronto for a press conference to announce that Canada’s largest city would be hosting that year’s MLS Cup, Garber — who is currently negotiating with Joey Saputo to have Montreal move up — says he envisions an MLS that has more than three Canadian teams. “I think there are opportunities for other markets,” he says. (In 2014, when Garber announces MLS plans to expand from 20 to 24 teams, he makes it clear that the league does not plan to have more than three Canadian teams). Garber, pictured above with then-Toronto mayor David Miller and Maple Leaf Sports and Entertainment COO Tom Anselmi, also says Canadian national-team success is extremely important to MLS. “We want to have Canada in the World Cup.” At the same press conference, he hints that MLS might open a Canadian office, and the league needs to find better ways to promote itself in Canada. The league still has yet to open a Canadian office.

November, 2010 Garber says that the success of the Canadian national team is still a priority, but the league has to correct the competitive imbalance between the teams based in Canada and those inside America’s borders. Toronto FC has yet to make the playoffs, and the Whitecaps are set to enter the league in 2011. The Impact will follow in 2012. “We have no intent of having any competitive imbalance between our American-based teams and the Canadian-based teams,” says Garber. “With three first-division teams, they will be able to drive increased quality and, ultimately, success of the Canadian national team.”

January, 2011

Canada Soccer

Terry Dunfield was a member of the Vancouver Whitecaps’ MLS First Kick 2011 starting XI, but didn’t last the season with his hometown club.

MLS, under pressure from the front offices of its Canadian teams, makes major changes to its roster rules. When TFC entered MLS, Canadians players continued to be considered as import players on the rosters of the American teams. Likewise, American players were imports on the Canadian club (TFC). TFC had 13 international slots — with a catch. TFC had to use five of its 13 international allocations on U.S. players. Now, the new rules require Canadian teams to carry just three Canadian players each — and those players don’t have to be Canadian citizens. Landed immigrants would also count. As well, Americans would now be considered domestic players on Canadian teams — but Canadians will still be treated as imports on U.S. teams. Since the rule was introduced to help address the competitive imbalance, Canadian MLS teams have yet to win a playoff game, and TFC still has yet to qualify for the playoffs.

April, 2011 FC Edmonton begins play in the North American soccer league. The NASL, like MLS, recognizes Americans as domestics on the rosters of Canadian teams, but Canadians are considered imports on the rosters of American teams.

March, 2012 The Montreal Impact faces the Vancouver Whitecaps in an, ahem, all-Canadian First Kick opener at BC Place. Of the 22 players on the field at kickoff, only one would be eligible for Canadian call-up. MLS president Mark Abbott, at BC Place for the game, says he is sure that Canadians will contribute more in the future. “It is something that will continue to grow over time.” He compares where Canada and MLS stand in 2012 to where MLS and U.S. Soccer stood in 1996, when the league first began playing matches. Abbott feels MLS has contributed to the improvement of the U.S. national program. But, he stresses that the process took 17 long years, and is still evolving. Canadian teams have only been in the league since 2007, so the league’s contribution to state of soccer in this country can’t yet be measured.

Abbott also says a task force has been created with the Canadian Soccer Association, the goal of which is to improve the game in Canada. Three years on, there is no sign such a task force ever existed. “If you have players, day in, day out, plying their trade, they are going to get better,” Abbott says in 2012. But are Canadians playing more? In 2009, an average of 1404.1 minutes were played by Canadians per MLS team. By 2013, that number will dip to 1025.2 minutes. Despite claims from Abbott and Garber that, eventually, Canadian soccer would improve because Canadian players would see more time, the changing of the roster rules have had the opposite effect. Canadians have less chances to play in MLS now than they did five years ago. Maybe a task force is needed. SPRING 2015

PLASTIC PITCH

Promises, Promises ...

March, 2013 In an interview with TSN’s Jason deVos, Garber says that U.S. labour law prevents MLS from allowing Canadian players to be considered domestics on American teams, even though Americans are allowed to be treated as domestics on the Canadian sides. In response, The 11 contacts the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, the U.S. agency that oversees the labour market in America and addresses the issues of labour inequality. It says that the rulebook of a sports league “is not a

topic we cover.” USL-PRO also confirms its longstanding policy that Canadians are considered domestics on its American teams, placing the legitimacy of the labour-law claim in doubt. From USL-PRO spokesman Nicholas Murray: “As long as they [Canadians] are legal workers in the United States, under a visa or green card, then teams can sign them. While they would be considered foreign to the government, they would be considered domestic for our purposes.”

July, 2013 Responding to rising criticism on the issue of roster inequality in MLS — Garber says that MLS is looking to make changes to its rulebook. “We are working on a new approach to our international player rules as they relate to Canada. Stay tuned.”

September, 2013 In a Plastic Pitch interview, NASL Commissioner Bill Peterson says that the issue of making Canadians domestics on U.S. teams was a “federation question, so I can’t ultimately say how that gets resolved.”

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December, 2014 Don Garber begins his MLS Cup roundtable with a group of five selected journalists with an overture intended for Canadian ears. He says that if Canada doesn’t qualify for a World Cup in his time as MLS commissioner, “It will be a mark I truly regret.” But he adds Canadian players will continue to be treated as foreigners on American teams, and retreats to the labour-law argument. It contradicts his statements from July. He also pulls the com-

petitive imbalance card, in a year when Toronto FC”s “Bloody Big Deal” ends up as yet another season without the playoffs. The Impact finishes at the bottom of the Eastern Conference. “Canadian players aren’t good enough yet to allow their teams to be competitive,” Garber cautions. That’s the same argument that was made in 2010. As long as that card is played, can Canadians can take it as yet another confirmation that MLS is failing the game in this country?

The Takeaway As we head into 2015, we know that Toronto FC, the Whitecaps and Impact will all have developmental teams in USL-PRO. The Canadian Soccer Association has agreed to sanction these teams on a year-to-year basis. The performance of these teams — in terms of developing Canadian talent — will be regularly reviewed. The CSA wants to see at least six of the 11 players on the field for each of these USL-PRO teams to be Canada-eligible players. No more counting guys because they are landed immigrants or have chosen to play for other national teams. But we still have the issue with the domestic rule in MLS and NASL. Garber said in December that he hoped there would be a time where Canadian teams would have a domestic talent pool that was deep enough to allow a new rule that would see Americans be treated as foreigners on those clubs. Unfortunately, lip service doesn’t make for change. MLS needs to make concrete plans, not vague promises that will be contradicted or retracted a few months down the road. MLS and its players union were able to come to a memorandum of understanding in the first week of March, avoiding a labour stoppage. Minimum salaries are going up, and there is going to be a very restricted form of free agency within the single entity. But, the roster sizes will be shrinking. Now, each MLS team has two less slots to fill. Sure, with more players going to USL to develop, there’s an argument that those roster slots were no longer necessary, and their elimination allows for just that much more wealth to be spread amongst the first-team players. But it also means that there’s even more pressure on rosters, and that Canadians looking for work in MLS will find it got just that much harder to find work. P²

Canada Soccer

In 2014, MLS Commissioner Don Garber said if Canada doesn’t qualify for a World Cup during his tenure, “it will be a mark I truly regret.” Until that happens, well, we can always remember 1986. SPRING 2015

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BYE BYE, BRYCE Bob Frid/Canada Soccer

THE PLAYERS’ STORIES Bryce Alderson, pictured on the far left, was a Generation Adidas player as a teenager. But the Canadian never played a minute for the Whitecaps in Major League Soccer. Still, the Whitecaps wanted him back in 2015 — and envisoned Alderson being a big part of their new USL-PRO team. But, after years of waiting for a shot on the big stage, Alderson said no... By MARTIN MACMAHON THE ROAD FROM academy and even youth international excellence to professional stardom is often rife with obstacles, challenges and barriers for young players. When it comes to Canadian players, those challenges can be even greater. With just three Major League Soccer teams in this country, and a handful of clubs at lower levels capable of paying players, young domestic talents don’t have the same sort of mobility enjoyed by young Americans. While Canadians take up a foreign spot on the rosters of U.S.-based teams, young Americans count as domestics on our side of the border. Still — when it comes to elite talent, there is often the sense it is only a matter of time, and not of if, a top youth player will transition from the first team from the academy. For Vancouver Whitecaps fans, it has been a somewhat surprising situation to see Bryce Alderson, a two-time Canadian U-17 Player of the Year and a former nationalteam captain at that age level, part ways with the club this offseason. Having signed a Generation Adidas deal in late 2011, the player never made the breakthrough at MLS level. Of the players signed to GA deals for the 2012 season, only Enzo Martinez similarly saw no game time at the top tier after joining Real Salt Lake. But Martinez has seen plenty of time in the second-division North American Soccer League as part of the Carolina RailHawks. Alderson possessed a sweet left foot, a rarity among central midfielders, and clear leadership qualities. So the hopes from many on the Canadian soccer scene were high for the player. Alderson is 21 now, and all of the years the Whitecaps have put into his development since his arrival in 2011 have seemingly all been for nought.

“I can’t say that I really regret my decision, because nobody knows how things would have worked out had I chosen a different option at 16 years of age.” — Bryce Alderson For the player, the decision is simple. Despite the fact the club has generally said positive things about him and his future, he never played a minute in Major League Soccer. “That’s why you sign,” Alderson said over the phone from his hometown of Kitchener following trials with Scotland’s Dundee FC, and French sides FC Sochaux-Montbéliard and Racing Club de Lens. “When I signed at 16, the hope was that I turn into a first team regular. Unfortunately, that didn’t pan out. Of course I would have wanted things to pan out differently, but unfortunately that’s not the way it worked out.” Alderson’s former U-17 national team coach, Sean Fleming, suggests the transition from youth level to professional is always an immense challenge for players. “Daily training — the expectation that you have to train at a very high level every single day,” Fleming said by phone of the biggest issue for players making the step up. “There’s also, in some areas, a lack of a competition structure, where there’s meaningful games once or twice a week, where a player is under real pressure to perform.” Despite the fact he didn’t make the breakthrough to the first team, Alderson insists at the time he joined the club, he was making the best decision, stating that he signed with the Whitecaps over options from multiple clubs in Scandinavia following an impressive showing in the 2011 U-17 World Cup.

“Hindsight’s 20/20,” Alderson said. “It’s easy to look at it now and say, oh, the decision to sign in Vancouver, I shouldn’t have done it. When I finished the Under-17 World Cup, I was young. I was just 16. You see a lot of cases of kids who go over to Europe at that young age and do really well, and make a career of it, and you see a lot of cases of kids who go over that young and get lost in the system, and end up coming back to Canada two or three years later with no passion for the game. “It’s really difficult to look back and say what would have been the best situation. Obviously I’m not happy with the way things played out in Vancouver. I don’t think that’s anybody’s fault. That’s just the way things worked out. I can’t say that I really regret my decision, because nobody knows how things would have worked out had I chosen a different option at 16 years of age.” Alderson’s decision to leave Vancouver this offseason was his alone, as he seeks regular first team football for the first time in his professional career. Whitecaps head coach Carl Robinson confirmed that he wanted the player to stick around and get more match time with the organization’s new USL-PRO side, Whitecaps FC 2, but Alderson felt he needed to leave to establish himself elsewhere. “I knew for a long time that I wanted to move on and try something else,” Alderson said of his feelings in the lead up to the end of his Whitecaps’ contract. “I see both sides of it. I understand – I remember meeting with Carl and Carl

Click here and go to The11.ca for a look back to when Bryce Alderson first signed a Generation Adidas deal with MLS SPRING 2015

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Bye Bye, Bryce ...

Canada Soccer

saying he wanted to keep me, I was young, I was just 20 years old. I understand that, but, looking at it from my side, I signed with the club when I was 16, I’ve been a first-team member for four years and that’s a long time to be involved with a club but not have played, not have been involved. “I can see his side of it, and I can respect that, but I think we’re on a mutual agreement that yeah, he would have liked to have kept me around, but it maybe wasn’t the best thing for me. What I wanted to do was move on and try something else.” Alderson’s goal is to sign with a club in Europe and make a go of it on the continent in which he’s dreamed of playing. He says in some ways the style of play in France suits him better — the game is more tactical and brains, more than brawn, tends to be the focus. Alderson admits the athletic part of the game is an aspect with which he struggles. Alderson admitted it won’t be easy trying to convince a European team to sign him, but insists that, in some ways, the style in France, specifically, seems to suit him better than the hustle and bustle of North America. “The North American game was more 16

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difficult for me,” Alderson says. “I’m physically not a great athlete. I always struggled with that part of the game. I don’t have too much of a physical element to provide, so I would actually say I fit in more with a European style than a North American. So I don’t know if I’m that much different in terms of skillset to what [European clubs] are used to.” Still, as a Canadian, his former coach Fleming said there are challenges for those trying to make it abroad. “I wouldn’t say there’s a prejudice against them, but we’re not really known as a footballing country across the world,” Fleming said. “If some player goes into Europe, where they have many top footballing nations, and know there’s a Canadian coming, then players have to earn the respect. “If you’re Brazilian, for example, they expect you to be technically sound, tactically sound, but it’s not going to be the same if you’re Canadian, where you have to go and prove yourself and I believe in our kids. Some of our kids have gone over and done very well. I don’t think people realize how difficult it is. You’re not welcomed with open arms by the other players there. You’re there to take their jobs, so it’s another thing

our players have to overcome.” While there are many top-tier clubs across Europe, the player insisted his priority is securing first-team football, even if that means dropping down to a lower level on that continent. “The best thing for me, and I said this to Carl when I had my meeting with him at the end of the season, is that I need to go somewhere where I can play immediately,” says Alderson. “I’ve obviously been in a situation with Vancouver, where it’s a good club, the facilities are good, the coaching is good and the environment is good, but I’m lacking that element of games. “For me, there’s no point in going to a different country, a different continent, whatever, and essentially be in the same position, where the training’s great, the facilities are good and the club is good, but I’m not playing games. “I need to step into an environment where it’s realistic that I’ll be able to play games. Like any player I want to play at the highest level, but I need to be realistic and go somewhere where I can play week in, week out. If that’s a second division or a second-tier, then that’s what I’m going to have to do.” P²

Lowball contract offers. Teams that don’t want to “waste” precious international roster spots on a Canadians. A player being told that he’ll get a chance to make a team once he gets a U.S. green card. These are the realities of Canadians trying to play in North America. In NASL and MLS, Americans are allowed to be treated as domestic players on Canadian teams. But, on the American teams, Canadians are treated as internationals. Here’s a look at the domino effect of roster inequality in North America.

By STEVEN SANDOR

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Canada Soccer/Bob Frid

David Monsalve is seen playing for FC Edmonton in Canadian Championship action against the Vancouver Whitecaps. The Canadian keeper had a sorta-successful trial with the Jacksonville Armada. Monsalve says the Armada would have signed him — but only AFTER he got the paperwork needed to be counted as an American domestic. Monsalve now plays with Colombian side America de Cali. PROFESSIONAL ATHLETES WILL talk about their games, their rivalries and how they made it to the big leagues. But when it comes to talking about the politics of their leagues and their business affairs, they often will only speak in hushed tones — and off the record. They fear that speaking out against a league or team will see them branded as malcontents. Their honesty could derail their careers. So, in many ways, soccer supporters only see a very two-dimensional picture of what it’s like to be a pro in North America. They don’t see the struggles of making the league minimum in an expensive city like Vancouver or New York. They don’t know what a player makes after taxes expenses — and the agent’s share is paid out. But, some brave players have stepped forward, to put on the record the sort of topics that are usually left for off-the-record discussions — or aren’t talked about at all. And they paint a vivid picture of what it’s like to be a Canadian professional soccer player.

road, he would have to accept that, for the 2015 season, he’d have zero chance to get into a North American Soccer League game. After the Canadian keeper’s contract with But Monsalve isn’t bitter. In fact he says AC Oulu expired at the end of the 2014 that the expansion Armada is well-run and Finnish league season, he wanted to get might just surprise more than a few people back to North America. Monsalve had in the North American Soccer League. His played with Toronto FC in 2007 and with issue is with the Major League Soccer and FC Edmonton for part of the 2011 season NASL rulebooks; they allow for Ameriand all of 2012. can players to be regarded as domestics Monsalve secured a trial with the expansion Jacksonville Armada of the North on Canadian teams, but the courtesy isn’t reciprocated on the American clubs. The American Soccer League. As a trialist, he Americans have the advantage of being seen paid the travel expenses, but the team as domestics on both sides of the border, covered the accommodation. The Armada while the Canadian players can only be confirmed that Monsalve did have a trial domestic with the Canadian clubs. Problem with the club. is, most of the teams are located south of Monsalve claims that the Armada was the border. interested in bringing him on board, but “They wanted me and I am still in cononly as a domestic player. Had he taken tact with the coaches there,” says Monsalve. that route, it would have meant waiting to “I guess they liked me that much. I had a get the needed U.S. paperwork before the great relationship with every single coach Armada would add him to the roster. That there, and every single person on the staff. wait could have taken Monsalve up to a The general manager [former MLS year. So, to play for the Armada down the David Monsalve

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Canadians Need Not Apply ... goalkeeper Dario Sala] I had known from before. It was a great experience, a great time. NASL teams can only carry seven internationals. And, for an American team, using one of those precious spots on a Canadian is tough. It’s not as easy to sell a Canadian selling to an American audience as it would be a South American or a European. “We even tried talking to the team lawyer to see if there was any way I could get the green card,” says Monsalve. “We looked at it and it would have taken too long. And, I would have needed to have a job [in the meantime]. And they weren’t willing just to give me a contract, to give me a job, without me being part of the team. “The idea was that they didn’t want me to take up a foreign spot. They wanted me to be there, training till I got my green card. But it was too long a process. If it has been a few months, maybe half a year, they would have thought about it. But it was going to be at least a year, and really fighting for it, and they weren’t willing to go that far.” Over the past few months, Monsalve was able to secure his Colombian passport — so he’s now officially a dual citizen. And, with that Colombian paperwork in hand, he was able to secure a trial with America de Cali. In January of 2015, he signed a six-month contract with the Colombian club, and he hopes he will play well enough to earn a long-term extension. Monsalve followed in the footsteps of so many other Canadian players — falling back on dual citizenship in order to better his chances of landing a job. On the international soccer market, a Canadian passport is an anchor. So, many players who do find success abroad rely on other citizenships to do so; and, of course, it makes Canadian soccer supporters uneasy to find out that these Canada-eligible players could also be capped by another country. The fact that the U.S. market is closed to Canadians helps contribute to the double-passport standard. Monsalve says that the Colombian teams don’t pay quite as well as MLS does — but it’s close. And, in Colombia, the teams look after many of the players’ cost-of-living expenses, such as accommodation. When you factor that in, the quality of life for the player in Colombia is arguably better than a player at the MLS average salary in North America. Monsalve has played in spells with Finnish sides Inter Turku and AC Oulu. Before heading to Finland for the first time, Monsalve spent part of the 2007 campaign and a 20

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little bit of time in 2008 with Toronto FC. That was in a time before MLS changed the rules that would recognize Americans as domestics on Canadian teams. Monsalve said the club put a premium on finding Canadian players when MLS rules officially tagged Americans as internationals on Toronto FC. Mo Johnston, who ran TFC’s football operations at the time, is still vilified by Toronto soccer fans for getting the franchise off on the wrong foot. The losses piled up. But Monsalve remembers a man who cared greatly about the health of the Canadian soccer program. “What Mo Johnston tried to do was to look for the best Canadian players, the best young Canadian players. What he did was go to a lot of national-team camps. He looked at us and picked and chose which of us could be the best guys.” After dislocating his shoulder, Monsalve was released. But after winning a penalty shootout for Canada’s U-23s against Guatemala — after a 0-0 draw through 120 minutes — in a March, 2008 Olympic qualifying tournament match, he got invited back to the TFC fold. But Monsalve realized there was no room to be anything but the third-choice keeper, and left shortly afterwards. In 2011, Monsalve was offered a sort-of four-year contract with TFC after a successful trial. But he rejected it. That’s because it wasn’t a true four-year deal; it was a typical MLS entry-level deal, laden with team options. The team would have held the options on each year of the contract. With

“I didn’t want to sign because of the way the contract was structured. It was four years, but every year was an option. It was 1+1+1+1.” — David Monsalve

Stefan Frei and Milos Kocic already on the roster, Monsalve didn’t want to be in the position of being a third keeper with little chance to prove himself — and no contract certainty. “I didn’t want to sign because of the way the contract was structured. It was four years, but every year was an option. It was 1+1+1+1. I wasn’t going to take that chance of will they re-sign me or could they release me? I wasn’t willing to feel that sense of

insecurity. If I’m going to be here, and I’m not going to play, I need to know that if I am making the minimum salary that I have at least the guarantee that I’ll have that time to dedicate myself to developing and learning, so when the time comes to play I will be 100 per cent prepared.” Monsalve’s decision not to sign a team-option-loaded contract follows the example of Canadian midfielder Mozzi Gyorio, who rejected an offer from Sporting Kansas City in 2012. After impressing in NASL with FC Tampa Bay, the Prince Edward Island native got the chance to impress SKC boss Peter Vermes. But Gyorio walked away from a contract that offered a low salary and gave the team the chance to extend it without offering much in terms of a raise, even if Gyorio were to break through and get first-team minutes. So, instead of returning to TFC, Monsalve signed with FC Edmonton in 2011. When he got released in Edmonton, it came in spring of 2013, not in the fall of 2012. He went to the league to ask if the release was legal and the NASL backed FC Edmonton. “Joe Petrone [who director of soccer at the time for the Eddies] released me one week before training camp, and that was months after he had told me in November that I would be back with the team.” But Monsalve doesn’t hold any ill will to the current FC Edmonton regime. “Every year since, I’ve tried to get back with Edmonton especially with the relationship I had with many of the guys there, and it never worked out.” So, with three Canadian teams in MLS and two more in NASL, why aren’t there more opportunities for Canadian players? In the States, we see American journeymen bounce from team to team, and find work because they are domestics and have league experience. But, for example. we don’t see the Whitecaps and Impact often snap up Canadians players who are released or out of contract after a spell TFC. Monsalve says it’s because the teams have close relationships. “There are three Canadian teams in MLS. So, if things don’t work out in Toronto, for example, Montreal and Vancouver are just

Click here to read more about David Monsalve’s decision to make the move to Colombia!

NASL

Shaun Saiko, in action for the San Antonio Scorpions in 2014. Saiko is now re-enlisting as an amateur in Edmonton. In 2011, he was a member of the NASL Best XI and is FC Edmonton’s all-time leading scorer. sitting there thinking, ‘why is this guy not getting a contract again?’ And those three clubs all know each other like the back of their hands. All the coaches speak to each other. If you didn’t do well at one team, or if the coach didn’t like you for a particular reason, the other two coaches aren’t going to take a chance on you. And then you look to the States, and you don’t know how many times I’ve approached people I know there, coaches who have taken a liking to me, and I’ve asked them if I can have the opportunity to try out for the team and they think about it and they come back to me and tell me, ‘David, they’re just not willing to look at you. Even if you are good enough, they’re not willing to spend a foreigner spot on a Canadian and, on top of that, a young goalkeeper.’ “Take a look at Clint Irwin, the guy who plays for Colorado, he’s an example of a guy who worked his ass off. He played in Ottawa [Capital City FC of the Canadian Soccer League], for fuck’s sakes. And he ended up going to Colorado and doing well, enough to earn the starting spot for the year. And it could have been me. But it wasn’t. Why? Because of the fact, as a Canadian keeper, I really only have three [MLS] opportunities. Vancouver wasn’t interested because they had great keepers. Toronto was full of keepers and still is, especially because they just drafted some keeper [in the first round]. And then Montreal, I don’t think they’ve ever really considered me.” But, despite all of the issues he’s had trying to find work with American teams in North American leagues, Monsalve doesn’t feel Canada is ready for its own first division. For him, fairness comes down to MLS and NASL following the USL model; to recognize Canadians as domestic players league-wide, not just on the rosters of Canadian teams. “I just don’t understand why they can’t just say ‘Canadians are domestic players.’ But, I guess what it comes down to is that if we

become domestic players, Canada becomes a better national team within the next five years. If I become a domestic player, and I go to the States — and MLS is a league I feel I can play in — I go there, I play and do well, I’ve just raised the competition level in the national goalkeeper pool. I think one of their fears is that if Canadians become domestic, we could start beating the U.S. more than we have before. “It’s unfortunate, but it’s a double-edged sword. We need them. We don’t have enough of a fan base, enough money, enough anything to sustain our own league for more than a couple of years. And, let’s say, we did get a Canadian league like the one that’s been talked about with NASL. How are we going to fill these teams with Canadian players? There aren’t many Canadian players playing right now. We need some time. That league would be bad. You know what it would be like? Those Icelandic teams or Moldova or the European countries where there is one or two or three good teams and everyone else struggles. If we had our own league, it would be as atrocious as MLS was in 1996. That’s where we’d start.” Shaun Saiko It was the summer of 2014. Just days after his San Antonio Scorpions played in his hometown of Edmonton, midfielder Shaun Saiko was told by coach Alen Marcina that he was being cut. Saiko understood the circumstances; he’d been injured for most of the season — a double hernia — and, as a Canadian, he took up one of the Scorpions’ seven international slots allowed by NASL. The Scorpions has just made a trade for another international — César Elizondo — and needed to jettison one of their seven non-Americans in order to make room. Saiko was gone. “I don’t blame them,” says Saiko. “I had been injured most of the SPRING 2015

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Canadians Need Not Apply...

Tony Lewis/FC Edmonton

Paul Hamilton is seen challenging former FC Edmonton teammate Michael Cox for the ball. Hamilton played for the Carolina RailHawks in 2013. season. They went on to win the championship. I can’t say it was the wrong decision.” Now, in 2015, three and a half years removed from being a member of the NASL Best XI, Saiko has applied to get his amateur status back so he can play men’s league soccer in Edmonton. In 2015, he got two offers from NASL clubs — but the offers were so low-paying that it wasn’t worth it for him to really even consider them. One offered US$2,500 per month; the other was at US$3,000 per month. Add that up over the life of a one-season contract — seven or eight months — and it’s not a lot of money. “After taxes and expenses, I’d be making less than $15,000,” Saiko says. “Look around the league. Show me any guys who have kids who are playing. When you’re single, you can live the dream.” Soon after he was cut by the Scorpions, Saiko’s partner, Erin Bennett, gave birth to their daughter. So, if Saiko left for another part of North America to make peanuts, he’d be leaving his family at home for months at a time, and have nothing to show for it financially. It’s so often a mistake that we see on Twitter or on message boards. Canadian fans say “why doesn’t this player go to MLS?” or “that player would be good in NASL.” They don’t think about the player’s wife or his family. They don’t ask — does a U.S. team pay for healthcare for the player’s wife and kids? Does the wife make more money at her job than the player does? Is it worth it for her to leave that vocation, or for the couple to live apart? After the 2011 NASL season, Saiko, then a member of FC Edmonton, was named to the NASL Best XI. After the 2012 season, a plan was in place for him to join the Montreal Impact of 22

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MLS. The Impact was set to go on a tour of Italy, and Saiko was supposed to join the team — if it worked out, a deal would have been made for the MLS team to secure his rights. But, just before he was supposed to go, he was told that his potential move to Montreal would be delayed. Then, the delays turned into disappointment, as he learned the deal was off. To this day, Saiko says he’s not sure why the deal got scuttled. It was his MLS chance, and it was gone. When Saiko was talking to NASL clubs before the 2015 season, he said that one executive from an American team was taken aback when Saiko reminded him that an international roster spot was needed. Saiko says the GM didn’t know that Canadian players were considered imports on American NASL teams. “I don’t understand why we can’t be domestic,” Saiko says. “On our teams, Americans can take up domestic slots. But we can’t be domestics on their teams. It’s not fair.” Before the 2014 season, NASL Commissioner Bill Peterson toured the NASL cities to meet with each and every team. When he was in the San Antonio dressing room, Saiko says he put up his hand and asked the commish “when are Canadians going to be considered domestics in this league?” The answer? “He just changed the subject,” recalls Saiko. Paul Hamilton Like Saiko, central defender Paul Hamilton could still be playing professionally in 2015. But, in 2014, he made the decision to get his

Tony Lewis/FC Edmonton

Paul Hamilton, in blue, is in action for the Carolina RailHawks as he tries to outleap FC Edmonton’s Daryl Fordyce. amateur status back and spent the year with Edmonton Scottish as a player and coach. In 2012, Hamilton was named to the NASL Best XI; but, in 2013, FC Edmonton declined to offer him a new contract and so he went shopping; he found a new one-year deal with the Carolina RailHawks. But, after the 2013 season, Hamilton had to weigh his options. Was heading away from home for most of the year just to make peanuts fair to not only himself, but his new wife? “It is very tough for a Canadian to play in the American market,” Hamilton says. “Teams need to use international spots so that we can play in the States, and my feeling is that most teams want to spend their international slots on big-name players who will make

a big difference. Not to say that Canadian players can’t make a big difference... But teams want that ‘wow’ factor when using their international spots, not just an everyday player who goes about his job. “After I left Edmonton, I looked abroad and in the U.S. for the chance to continue playing — and I landed in Carolina. I left my new wife — my wife of only three months — my family and friends to go play for crap money for eight months a year. After the year was done I explored some options, but in the end living away from my wife, my home, on way less money than I could be making doing something else wasn’t worth it for me. I had other ambitions in life that were not feasible if I continued to play.” Hamilton and Saiko’s stories show what happens to Canadians who do get offers in the U.S.; because they are told that they should be fortunate to be offered one of the coveted international slots, the players have very little bargaining power. It’s easy for the general manager of an American team to make a lowball offer because he knows the Canadian player doesn’t have a lot of options. Hamilton and Saiko were both NASL Best XI players post-2010; both are now out of the game. Would an American who was recently a part of the NASL Best XI struggle to find a deal in the NASL? Of course not. And this is where we get to the chicken-and-egg argument. Sure, it’s fair to say that, if Canadian players want more bargaining power and more options, they need to be, ahem, better. But, if Canadian players aren’t getting decent offers and are retiring in their mid-20s because there are dozens of better career options than continuing with soccer, what incentive is there for us to improve our program? It’s like any vocation; if there isn’t enough decent work available, why build a training program around that occupation? So, for Canadian soccer to improve at the grassroots, we need to show the kids and parents that there are benefits at the other side of the bridge; legitimate chances to make real money in soccer careers. Agent John Horvath admits that it’s a struggle to try and find work for his Canadian clients. He says that if the marriage between the Canadian and American systems is to continue, both sides need to reassess the relationship and begin anew. “For me being a manager-agent for these young, and up-and-coming Canadian soccer players, is a struggle. The only way I see things changing, is that first both the CSA [Canadian Soccer Association] and USSF [United States Soccer Federation] have to come to terms on expanding the new policy of youth development for professional players. “There has to be a new policy in place that both countries must have equal access to all North American pro teams. “If the two federations cannot come to terms with this agreement, then at least a percentage of Canada vs. U.S. players shall be allowed on these teams. The Canadians and U.S. both should not be counted as foreign players, given that the fact that we now have a lot of Canadian cities in all three leagues — MLS, NASL and USL.” Horvath thinks that the relationship that now exists between USL and MLS — which has been strengthened with the addition of USL teams in Toronto, Montreal and Vancouver which are affiliated with the respective MLS sides — will eventually force NASL into a pyramid with the two other leagues. But, for that to be good for Canada, he thinks the rights of Canadian players to move freely to American sides needs to be recognized. But, whether NASL is in the pyramid or not, the truth is that, without reform, we could put out an issue a year where we document twentysomething Canadian players who have been shut out of the system. P² SPRING 2015

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The Lonely

CANADIAN Thanks to a slew of new signings and culling of Canadian players from the first-team lineup, Jonathan Osorio is now the only player from this country who can realistically hope for a regular starting job on Toronto FC By MARK POLISHUK

AFTER EIGHT SEASONS without a postseason appearance, there’s no question that roster construction has been an issue for Toronto FC. Yet, as the club continues to look for the elusive mix of talent that can deliver a winning season, one specific type of player seems to becoming less of a necessary ingredient for the Reds: The Canadian. This past winter saw TFC part ways with Doneil Henry, Kyle Bekker and Dwayne De Rosario, who combined for 36 starts and 3,425 minutes in 2014. This leaves Jonathan Osorio as the only Canadian player slated for a starting job on this year’s TFC squad, and he’s happy to embrace being the domestic face of the club. “It’s a role I’m more than willing to take on,” Osorio says. “It’s an honour….There’s not as many [Canadians] as in past years and I like taking that pressure onto my shoulders.” Though the Reds added several midfield and striking options during the offseason, there’s little doubt that Osorio will continue to be a key figure for this year’s side. On paper, he’s the prototype of what Toronto FC promised to deliver en masse to Canadian soccer when it first joined MLS: The local kid receiving a chance to play and develop his career at the top North American level. 24

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The catch is, however, that Osorio originally received his opportunity in large part because the 2013 Reds were in the throes of a rebuilding project. During the Tim Leiweke/Tim Bezbatchenko era, “rebuilding” has been replaced by a more aggressive pushes to become an immediate contender. This means more established names coming into the club, leaving the other six Canadians on the roster (four-year veteran Ashtone Morgan and TFC Academy products Manny Aparicio, Jay Chapman, Jordan Hamilton, Chris Mannella and Quillan Roberts) only in line for significant playing time if something goes awry with one of the first-choice options. Bench jobs are nothing to sneeze at, and there’s a solid chance at earning a larger role should TFC’s history of injuries and underachieving starters continues. Chapman, in particular, turned heads after an impressive preseason and likely won himself some extra substitute minutes. That said, Canadians as bench depth r epresents a marked change from how domestic players were highlighted during TFC’s first several seasons. Between the red uniforms and the likes of Jim Brennan, Julian de Guzman, Terry Dunfield and Dwayne De Rosario on the pitch, it was easy to mistake TFC for Canada’s men’s

national team during the team’s early days. Of course, those initial TFC teams also weren’t very good. While the Canadian content was hardly the issue with Toronto’s lack of success either then or now, eight years of losing teams has increased the pressure on management to acquire players who can simply deliver, regardless of national affiliation. “As a proud Canadian I want to see Canadians on TFC and doing well. That being said, in the past I think we’ve put an emphasis on having Canadians to the point that it maybe negatively affected the team,” says Phil Tobin, president of the Red Patch Boys supporters’ group. “We’ve drafted Canadians and put this emphasis on Canadian players, and they simply don’t seem to materialize in the roles that we imagine them in.” National pride was a major part of TFC’s launch as Canada’s first MLS franchise, yet that branding focus has shifted to positioning TFC as players on the worldwide stage. De Guzman remains the only Canadian Designated Player in Toronto’s history, as the Reds have since signed DPs from other countries, a strategy that Tobin points out is an MLS-wide trend. “Certainly with the World Cup last year, all [the league’s] emphasis was on the

Ville Vuorinen/Canada Soccer

Jonathan Osorio is seen in action for Canada. international stars,” Tobin says. “Look at TFC with Giovinco, Michael Bradley, Jozy Altidore, Jermain Defoe last year... MLS loves to play the international card.” (Of course, Altidore and Bradley, because of their American passports, are treated as domestic players on TFC.) Obtaining elite Canadian talent, naturally, is easier said than done. For fans of both Toronto FC and Canada, however, the franchise’s struggles have been doubly frustrating; it would be one thing if TFC not playing Canadians was leading to good results on the pitch, yet that clearly hasn’t been the case. Toronto’s management turmoil has also undoubtedly played a role in the lack of a steady domestic talent pipeline. Of the many former general managers and coaches in the Reds’ short history, only two (Earl Cochrane and Nick Dasovic) have been Canadian, and both only served on interim deals. This front-office instability has also filtered down to the TFC Academy, which has had multiple directors and multiple different philosophies since its inception. Greg Vanney’s move from Academy director to head coach could signal more cohesion between the MLS roster and its prospects. It could be argued that, with the establishment of the Toronto FC II reserve side in the USL, the Academy has only now put a proper developmental structure in place. Since Vanney knows as well as anyone what Chapman, Hamilton and the other young Canadians bring to the table, he is theoretically the ideal person to oversee this next stage of their growth as footballers.

“In the Academy, time is on your side. Players don’t have to be exactly ready every single day,” Vanney says. “They’re about a projection that’s two, three or five years down the road and it’s not necessarily about every weekend’s performance. Sometimes you’re exchanging performance for learning. But, here, results are the name of the game and the key is that they’re ready to perform every single weekend.” As with so many of the Reds’ problems, simply keeping the same management in place for longer than a season or two could do wonders for finally turning the TFC Academy into an important talent source for both the club and the national team. Despite just a minute of MLS action between them, Hamilton, Aparicio and Mannella have all received senior team international caps within the last six months, so they’ll need regular playing time (likely in the USL) to remain as options for Canada. Yet not even the hardest of hardcore national team supporters wants to see Canadians playing just for the sake of playing in MLS, nor is anyone claiming that TFC should be fielding an all-Canadian starting XI. It can only help both club and country, however, if more of a balance can be struck between the homegrown Canadians and the internationals on the roster. “Of course it has to be a spot that’s earned, always,” Osorio says. “If there is a Canadian player and it’s a spot that’s earned, it means all that more to the fans.” P² SPRING 2015

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THE ASSOCIATION

STARTING from SCRATCH

In 2012, Victor Montagliani was elected as the new president of the Canadian Soccer Association. At the time he took over the biggest position in the Canadian game, the relationships with Major League Soccer and the United States were, in his words, “non-existent.” While there are now some bridges being built, we’ve still got a long way to go By STEVEN SANDOR

Canada Soccer/Andrew Soong

The gulf that exists between the CSA and the USSF is metaphorically illustrated in this photo of the delegates’ area at the U-20 Women’s World Cup in Montreal. USSF President Sunil Gulati sits far away from CSA President Victor Montagliani. 26

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TORONTO FC played its first Major League Soccer match in 2007. Five years later, there was still no real relationship between the Canadian Soccer Association and the United States Soccer Federation. There was no relationship between MLS and the CSA. According to CSA President Victor Montagliani, when he took over in 2012, the Americans saw the CSA as nothing more than an organ that would rubber-stamp whatever MLS wanted; that included a 2011 change in the rules that saw Americans treated as domestics on Canadian teams, and quotas for Canadian players on Canadian MLS teams reduced to three per squad. “Until two to three years ago, the relationship was non-existent,” says Montagliani. “Basically, we were a foregone conclusion to our friends from the south. But we have strengthened our relationship, first with the USSF, and now we have better relationships at the MLS level, and the NASL level. Our relationships are improving but, remember, it’s been just two or three years.” Maybe the biggest sign of an improved partnership between the Americans and Canadians is the deal which allows the CSA to place up to 16 players on the rosters of National Women’s Soccer League teams; the CSA looks after the salaries of the players. But, in 2015, John Herdman, the coach of the national women’s team, elected to place just 13 of 16 players on the rosters of the nine U.S.-based NWSL clubs. Montagliani says the idea of bringing Canada into the fold — to help launch an elite women’s soccer league that could stand on its own — came from USSF President Sunil Gulati. He reached out to Canada and Mexico, realizing that several goals could be achieved. For a new league, some of the players’ salaries could be subsidized, making it more attractive to investors. As well, the league would still serve the interests of American soccer players, but also offer space to Canadian and Mexican athletes. For Montagliani, the next step would be to see a Canadian investor take a chance and place an NWSL franchise on this side of the border. “Hopefully there will be new cities that want to join NWSL, and that they can use the success of the World Cup in Canada as a platform. In the first year, there was interest from the Canadian MLS cities. They looked at it. But the timing wasn’t right from them to pull the trigger.” On the men’s side, however, there is still plenty of disagreement between Montagliani and our neighbours to the

“For me, it’s not about growing the game. It’s about growing the Canadian game. And, acquiescence to the United States is not the way to do it. The way to do it is to develop a real partnership, a real relationship and have meaningful debate between us.” — Victor Montagliani south. The issue of Canadians not being counted as domestic players on the U.S.based NASL and MLS teams continues to stick in Montagliani’s craw. MLS Commissioner Don Garber had maintained that U.S. labour law prevented Canadians from being considered domestics on the rosters of American teams. But, at the same time, Canadian MLS (and NASL) teams are given the opportunity to give domestic slots to American players. In the summer of 2014, facing mounting pressure, Garber promised a change to the domestic rule was coming; but, by December, he’d falled back to the old labour-market argument. “In regards to seeing Canadian players as domestics, we respectfully disagree in regards to their position,” says Montagliani. “Our position is clear, from a legal standpoint and from a moral standpoint. But, right now, we are focused on some other

things we can do to help the Canadian game. We should be hearing some things out of MLS very soon, about some things at the academy level.” In 2014, the CSA agreed to sanction three third-division USL-PRO teams on Canadian soil. Those teams, affiliated with their Canadian MLS parent clubs, will be located in Montreal, Toronto and Vancouver. But no formal debate has been held in terms of allowing these teams into our national championship tournament and the chance to play for the Voyageurs Cup. The teams will be reviewed at the end of the 2015 season, and will be expected to abide by strict Can-con rules which would force each of the three USL-PRO sides to ensure that six of the 11 players on the field are eligible for Canadian team call-ups. (It’s worth noting again that, unlike MLS or NASL, USL-PRO sees Canadian players as domestics league-wide, not just on the Canadian teams.) But Montagliani says that the one-year sanction reviews shouldn’t be seen as that big of a deal. Basically, it’s like triple-filtered beer; a marketing team can make a basic part of the brewing process seem special. In soccer, every team and league works on year-to-year sanctioning. Sure, for the most part it’s a rubber-stamp process, but at any time a federation can try and revoke a sanction. “Sanctioning is always an annual process, a lot of people fail to see that,” says Montagliani. “Even MLS is subject to this. Yes, the process is pretty well rubber-stamped, but sanctioning of teams is not an evergreen thing.” The partnership — if we can truly call it a partnership — between the U.S. and Canada is unique. The two countries share leagues, but each federation has to look out for the best interests of its own players. You can’t blame the USSF for trying to ensure that the Americans have more job opportunities than Canadians. But, it’s up to Canadians to ensure they’re not taken for granted. And Montagliani promises the days of the rubber-stamp are over. “For me, it’s not about growing the game. It’s about growing the Canadian game. And acquiescence to the United States is not the way to do it. The way to do it is to develop a real partnership, a real relationship and have meaningful debate between us. Look, I don’t wake up in the morning and wonder what I can do to help U.S. soccer. I don’t. And, to be fair, I’m sure they don’t think about what they can do to help Canadian soccer, either.” P² SPRING 2015

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LOOK back in

ANGER

Former CSA president Dominique Maestracci accuses MLS of breaking promises it had made to the association; and he says the relationship with the USSF was not a cooperative one By MARC TOUGAS

THE UNITED STATES is our closest neighbour, so it only makes sense for the Canadian Soccer Association to regularly interact with the U.S. Soccer Federation. But the Americans are not our friends, and trying to be buddy-buddy with them is a mistake, says former CSA president Dominique Maestracci. Maestracci ran the CSA from 2007 until current president Victor Montagliani was elected in May of 2012. To illustrate his point, Maestracci makes

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an allegation based on what he saw at the 2012 London Olympics. Not the one that happened on the field, but another story which pretty much stayed under the radar. “I was part of the FIFA organizing committee for the soccer tournament at the Olympics,” claims Maestracci. “At the committee meeting held before the tournament – [FIFA President] Sepp Blatter was there, the president of the committee as well, everybody was there – we found out that Canada had made a request to play

with a GPS system, which would allowed the team to gather data on the players’ movements. We were told that FIFA had refused.” The GPS system in question had been approved for use by the teams in their training sessions. Small monitors were inserted into pockets located in the backs of sports bras. “The vice president for the organizing committee, who was a member of the FIFA executive committee, raised his hand and

Canada Soccer

Dominique Maestracci addresses the FIFA delegates. asked, ‘Why wasn’t our committee informed of this? And who made a decision on this matter?’ “We found out that the decision was made by the head of refereeing and the head of the FIFA medical committee. So we asked, ‘Why wasn’t this decided by this committee?’” The discussion that followed didn’t change the fact that the decision had already been made. Maestracci says that when he got back to the hotel, he received a message from the manager of the Canadian women’s program, who wanted to make a request to FIFA about using the GPS in a game situation. But Maestracci said it was too late to do so, as the meetings on the issue were over. Maestracci says: “I called [CSA General Secretary] Peter Montopoli and asked him why he didn’t tell me about this before, so I could have made sure that the committee would have acted on it? But it was too late to do anything.” Then came that infamous game between Canada and the United States, the semifinal the Americans won in extra time. The controversial awarding of a free kick to the Americans for a delay-of-game infraction on Canadian keeper Erin McLeod, the

resulting hand-ball call and game-tying penalty kick converted by Abby Wambach weren’t the only dramatic turns of events to transpire that day. “When our team doctor went to anti-doping with the Canadian players who had been selected, she saw that the American players who were being tested were wearing GPS systems. She told the team, but apparently nothing happened,” alleges Maestracci. “Considering the CSA had made a formal request that was refused, the CSA had a huge opening to go to FIFA and lodge a protest. If Canada couldn’t use a GPS system, than the United States should not have been allowed to use it either. Simple as that.” It’s unclear whether the Americans allegedly used the GPS systems with or without FIFA’s permission. What bothered Maestracci was that the CSA apparently did not react after being the victim of what seemed like a double standard. Maestracci says he suspects Canada did not want to run the risk of jeopardizing its ties with the USSF. “At this level, there are no friends. Do you think if the roles had been reversed, the Americans would have done us a

favour?” says Maestracci.“[USSF President] Sunil [Gulati] is also my friend, but that shouldn’t stop anything. The rules are the rules.” CSA Out of MLS loop The CSA should not be afraid to rock the boat, says Maestracci, because he says he knows for a fact that the Americans are not willing to do Canada any favours in terms of soccer development. For instance, when, before the 2011 season, MLS decided that American players on Canadian based clubs would be recognized as domestics, the CSA was not included in the discussion. When he realized that a decision had been made without him, Maestracci decided it was time for a meeting with Commissioner Don Garber. The meeting was held in Toronto, but Maestracci says Garber sent a league vice-president in his place. Maestracci says that he and then-vice president Victor Montagliani (now the CSA President) demanded that the quota for Canadian players on Canadian clubs be increased. “The quota was three, but on the overall roster. If it was only up to me, it would be three on the starting 11,” says SPRING 2015

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Look Back in Anger ... Maestracci. “It doesn’t do us much good if those three players don’t play. How can you pick a player on the Canadian national team if they don’t even play with their own club? Sometimes, we still select them anyway, because we don’t have a choice. “We ended up talking about a scenario where the quota of three [on the roster] would go up to four the following year, and then to five the year after that, and to six,” recounts Maestracci. As per that discussion, the Canadian quota should now stand at six. Yet, it has stayed at three. “I was convinced we had a verbal agreement,” says Maestracci, who regrets that nothing was put in writing. “Usually, when I negotiate something with another national federation, like I did with France and Italy, for example, I have lawyers write everything up. Not this time.” So the lesson, says Maestracci, is that business is business, whether you do business with “friends” or not. “You have to look after the interests of Canadian soccer,” he says. Maestracci recalls a discussion with Gulati about an exchange of coaching services between countries. Maestracci says the USSF President made a joke about Canada wanting to become another U.S. state. “I told him, ‘Fuck you, Sunil.’ That’s how I told him: ‘Fuck you.’ “For me, Canadian interests come before my friendship with Sunil Gulati or other people at the USSF,” adds Maestracci. “They have very good people, Sunil is a good guy, but they have problems like we have, so their own affairs come way before doing favours for Canada.” Find a Way to Work Together Maestracci says he believes that Canada should have its own pro league one day, but that day has not yet come – far from it. In the meantime, Canadian soccer must learn to work with the Americans, while continuing to prepare its own future development – a future where Canada will someday be strong enough to go ahead without help from its neighbours. “We obviously need to have a Canadian league and to go in that direction, so that Canada can stop depending on the United States,” says Maestracci, who was CSA president when the Association’s strategic plan for the country’s future in terms of soccer development was implemented in 2009. “But right now, we only have five pro clubs.” Maestracci says a Canadian pro league would need to have a minimum of seven or eight teams to kick off. “If you have five or six Canadian players playing with each of those clubs, that means the Canadian national team coach would have a pool at least 40 players to choose from. And those players would be here, in Canada. “But I don’t think we’re ready for that yet. At least, with the Women’s World Cup being held this year, we’re going to have stadiums that are up to FIFA standards in just about every region of the country. Our [future] pro clubs will be able to play in those stadiums.” In the meantime, the CSA must find ways to convince the five existing pro clubs – three are in MLS, two in the NASL – to work for the good of Canadian soccer as a whole, and not just look after their own interests. That is not an easy task, Maestracci admits. “The USSF can butt heads with MLS because they have money. But the CSA, unfortunately, doesn’t have that much money,” he 30

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points out. “[The CSA] can’t tell the clubs what to do, because they have no stick, no carrot… So how do you go about it?” asks Maestracci, who says that the relationship between the CSA and the clubs “wasn’t great” when he was president, although it improved when the Canadian championship was created, because clubs needed to go through the CSA-sanctioned competition to face clubs at the CONCACAF level. Maestracci says the CSA should start by trying to convince the pro clubs to put some of their youth teams in Canadian-based regional leagues — like Toronto FC did in League1 Ontario last summer. “The clubs say they want to play in American leagues so that their players face high-level competition. They say that the level of play is not good enough in Canada and they are right in saying so,” admits Maestracci. “But the clubs need to realize that they have to plan in the long term. If they never put youth teams in leagues here, the level of play will never improve. “You can’t let things slide forever. At some point, you have to bear down and make things happen.” P²

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THE HISTORY

WHEN it was

OUR GAME

Canada has only qualified for the World Cup once — in 1986. But, thanks to a bunch of players who had honed their skills in the Canadian Soccer League, a scrappy and determined national team got very close to making it to USA 1994. That represented the last time Canada got close to a World Cup. We wonder what would have happened to us if the first-division Canadian league would have survived... By ROB NOTENBOOM

THE LAST TIME Canada’s men’s national soccer team came close to qualifying for the World Cup was over 20 years ago. Many of the team’s current supporters were either too young to remember, or not born at all. For those who are old enough to remember, the details are fuzzy. And, like all distant memories, they become a blend of truth and myth, simple facts that have been correctly stored in a mélange with accidental revisions and fantastical memory overwrites — stirred with the wooden spoon of emotional attachment to particular ideas, themes or narratives. One such narrative links the string of decent results of the C anadian men’s national soccer team with the existence of the Canadian Soccer League. Virtually all of the players that contributed to the attempt to qualify for the 1994 World Cup — which saw Cana32

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da eliminated by Australia in a penalty shootout in the OceaniaCONCACAF playoff — played at least some time in the CSL. It is a very small step from the blissful reminiscence of better times to the obvious speculative question: What if ? What if Canada had qualified for the 1994 World Cup? Would the intervening 20 years of near permanent darkness have contained more light? Would the exposure and notoriety of a World Cup berth have captured the imagination of fans and investors enough to reestablish the CSL? Would a coast-to-coast professional league provided a platform for raw Canadian soccer talents to launch successful professional careers and propel Canada back to the World Cup? Like all such speculative trains of thought, there are fantastic and foolish narrative pathways to be drawn upon, but

Canada Soccer

Canadian captain Colin Miller shakes hands with Aussie captain Graham Arnold before their two sides met in the Edmonton leg of their CONCACAF-Oceania World Cup qualifying playoff. there are also real lessons to be learned. The mid-‘80s were crazy times for soccer in Canada. The original NASL had just gone under, the Canadian men’s national team had qualified and competed in its first and only World Cup in Mexico, and the CSL was in its genesis. Born partially of the remnants of the NASL and using the World Cup’s new popularity and visibility, a new Canadian national league was launched in 1987. Approaches to team building were varied. The Hamilton Steelers, for instance, had been around for a while in various leagues and became one of the CSL’s original teams. The Steelers owner, Mario DiBartolomeo, was exactly the kind of committed long-term owner the league needed for stability. Canadian legend Alex Bunbury, who was drafted by the Steelers as an 18-year-old, hails DiBartolomeo as a “mainstay” and as one who was “building the foundation of soccer in Canada.”

A completely different approach was taken on the West Coast. Returning from the World Cup in 1986, Bob Lenarduzzi worked to establish the Vancouver 86ers, the name reflecting both 1886, the year of Vancouver’s establishment, as well as the 86 members of the West Coast Soccer Society, who each put up $500 to help establish the team. According to Lenarduzzi, the 86ers managed to survive without a major financial backer mainly on ticket sales — which remained reasonably stable over the first few years of the club’s existence. Winnipeg-based soccer analyst and writer Bobby McMahon was also involved in the CSL as part of the Winnipeg Fury organization. In McMahon’s words, the Fury were one of “the least capitalized” teams in the league, but it provided an important logistical link in the centre of the country to bridge the enormous geographical gap between eastern and western teams.

To say that the league was volatile would be a serious understatement. In 1987, the inaugural year of the league, there were eight teams. By 1990 there were 11 teams but, in 1992, the year of the leagues dissolution, there were only six. Of the 13 teams that competed in the league only four competed in every season — including the 86ers and the Fury. The Nova Scotia Clippers competed only in the 1991 season. The London Lasers competed in 1990, went on hiatus in 1991, only to rejoin the league in 1992. Teams in Kitchener and Victoria lasted only two years each. Teams in Ottawa and Calgary lasted just three years each.. There were many reasons for this volatility — according to those involved — but some were more important than others. According to Lenarduzzi, despite the commitment of many CSL club owners, the league had difficulty attracting enough investors with long-term vision and SPRING 2015

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When it Was Our Game ... financial resources to fund the league until it became profitable. Canada’s qualification. McMahon echoes this sentiment in his experience with the Fury. Sweeney, who was called back into the national team by Le“Without deep pockets to begin with, it was never going to work,” narduzzi after retiring from the international game, cites a great he says. And ,with shrinking gate receipts, combination of veterans who competed in political fractures, and waning local support, the 1986 World Cup together with younger by the end of the CSL’s run the Fury were players. The team had a complement of solbarely getting by. id professionals getting consistent first-team Another difficulty is highlighted by minutes in former CSL and national team player Mike professional environments in every position Sweeney. “A league only within Canada on the pitch. Bunbury adds the importance cannot make it due to the geography.” Due of Lenarduzzi’s experience and playerto the distances and high cost of travel, any management ability as being critical. Canadian club in a coast-to-coast league has But the team had much more than the to cope with this difficult financial reality. right people in important positions. It also But despite its difficulties, the CSL had intangibles. It had belief, commitment, played a critical role in developing Canadian and identity, and these traits united them players. In fact, the contrast between the and propelled them forward. There was league’s financial difficulties and its devela lack of ego or pretense between players opmental successes couldn’t be greater. returning from European leagues and those “For me, when I first came into Making the jump from an academy player to based in the CSL , says Watson.. the league as a 16-year-old, I a professional is a critical step in a player’s “You would do anything for 90 minutes to development and the CSL played an import- was playing against the best in get a result,” states Watson. ant role in this transition. Current Orlando Miller supports Watson’s estimation: “We Canada and it was very much City FC assistant coach Mark Watson is unwere just an honest, hard-working group a sink-or-swim environment. It equivocal in his support of the league. “The of players. We made a commitment at that really made me as a player CSL was essential in helping myself and a time as a group to say ‘Let’s have a real bash lot of younger players start off in the game, at this.’ The culture was what I would say because my development learn the game, and approach the game as a should typify a Canadian team and that is from the age of 16 to 19 was professional.” that we would fight tooth and nail to get a exponential.” Jason deVos, a TSN analyst and broadresult. “ — Jason deVos caster, describes the CSL as a proving “We didn’t have much flair,” says Bunbury. ground where players are made. “It was a workman’s kind of attitude and it “For me, when I first came into the league as a 16-year-old, I was really identified what Canada was all about. Everybody got along playing against the best in Canada and it was very much a sinkand everybody was pushing each other. We were willing to make or-swim environment. It really made me as a player because my sacrifices for one another. That’s Canada.” development from the age of 16 to 19 was exponential. One week When watching the games from the early ‘90s, one is immediit’s Catliff and Mobilio, the next week it’s Peschisolido, next it’s ately struck by the intensity and passion displayed on the field. Bunbury, then it’s Eddy Berdusco. You’re playing against the top Additionally, the team got results where fans have forgotten that a strikers in the country and, as a defender it was an opportunity for Canadian team can get results. It tied Honduras away only because me to learn my trade.” Honduras scored a last-minute penalty. It beat El Salvador away. In The CSL was the league where many of Canada’s top players the final qualification game at Toronto’s Varsity Stadium against learned to be professionals. Many of them translated their Mexico, a win would have seen Canada through. A 17th-minute newly minted professionalism into careers at higher levels overseas. strike from Bunbury put Canada in the lead but in his words “We Alex Bunbury went on to England and then Maritimo in Portugal had it. Then we let it slip away,” conceding two goals to give Mexico and states that he “couldn’t think of a better apprenticeship” than the victory and direct qualification. the CSL to help him make the jump. Paul Peschisolido, Watson, A scintillating 2-1 victory over Australia at Commonwealth StadiGeoff Aunger, Lyndon Hooper and Jason deVos went from the CSL um in Edmonton in the first leg of the CONCACAF-Oceania to England. Colin Miller went back and forth from the Scottish playoff gave the Canadians hope. But the team lost the return leg in first division to the CSL. In Lenarduzzi’s words the CSL was the Australia 2-1. With the teams tied on aggregate, the game went to “springboard to take their careers to a whole other level.” penalties and Australia prevailed. The World Cup dream was over. In 1992, while the CSL was struggling through its final season Canada has not come that close since. In 1998, despite having before folding, the Canadian men’s national ueam was beginning its three CONCACAF spots in the World Cup, Canada finished botattempt to qualify for the 1994 World Cup. Held in the tom of The Hex. In all subsequent qualification attempts, the team United States and with the potential for high visibility and attenfailed to make the final six. With the 2000 Gold Cup win being the tion, qualification would have been a serious boost for soccer in lone bright spot, the years since the CSL have been incredibly dark. Canada. However, with only one direct CONCACAF spot availThe solution seems too obvious. When Canada had a domestic able — because the Americans grabbed an automatic spot as hosts league the team had a reasonable level of success. Since then, it has — and the powerhouse Mexican team being the obvious favourite, not. Bring back a Canadian domestic league and Canada should be Canada was in tough. This didn’t discourage the Canadian players, back on the road to the World Cup. who describe a perfect storm of factors increasing the chances of If only it were that simple. It may be a stark lesson that,without 34

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When it Was Our Game ...

Les Jones

North York Rockets vs. Winnipeg Fury in classic CSL action. a lot of players playing first- team minutes, a country’s soccer team is going nowhere, but it is equally clear that without solid, longterm financial backing, a Canadian league would be doomed from the start. Lenarduzzi points to the current MLS, NASL and USL teams to fill the void. “We have enough teams that if they’re committed can provide opportunities for the best young players,” and, as president of the Whitecaps, Lenarduzzi states that he would like the club to be a “conveyor belt of players that will eventually play in our senior squad and also get Canada back to the World Cup.” McMahon agrees stating that by plugging into “existing pyramids” shared with the United States is the most stable situation and helps eliminate many of the financial hurdles with an allCanadian league being more viable at a lower level. But can these teams help Canada get over the developmental hurdles as well? Jason deVos is skeptical that they will provide solutions. “Their mandate is not to produce players for the national team, their mandate is to win games,” states deVos; he adds that the developmental landscape is so split up and fractured that there is 36

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no cohesive plan. He agrees however, that the most viable Canadian league may be a series of Division 3 leagues as were proposed in the recent Easton report. Since the 1994 World Cup there has been little soccer success for the Canadian men. Had they qualified, it is difficult to see how that would have led to a resurrection of the CSL given the very difficult financial reality of soccer in this country. To this day, it is difficult enough to get people to agree that there should be a Canada-wide league let alone establish one. For the time being, Canadian hopes hinge to a large extent on partnerships with American leagues. Any attempt to establish a Canadian league would need to be well-funded by people with long-term vision and a willingness to stay the course despite the difficulties, financial and otherwise. But if that is one lesson from the CSL, the other is that the developmental payoff can be very significant. It is unclear whether in this time and context a Canadian league would be able to do the job it did in the late ‘80s and early ‘90s. It is also unclear whether or not the current Canadian professional teams in American leagues will eventually fulfill the developmental need for Canadian players. P²

GO BACK IN TIME...

ISSUE 1 ISSUE 2 • Our in-depth look at Hanson Boakai! • A 16-page look at Canada’s bid to host the 2026 World Cup! • Drew Beckie on his decision to sign with the Ottawa Fury • Ottawa Fury’s Philippe Davies talks about how he almost quit • A comprehensive look at the playing soccer future of BMO Field • Our interview with Whitecaps coach • FC Edmonton’s Mallan Roberts and the wait for his passport Carl Robinson! • A survey of agents: Will there be an • Frank Yallop on choosing the Chicago Fire over the Whitecaps MLS work stoppage? • How Kevin Holness is rekindling • Dejan Jakovic: Making the move from MLS to Japan Regina’s passion for soccer • Canadian women’s national teamer • Sura Yekka: Canada’s teen soccer sensation! Selenia Iacchelli • Matt Lam’s Hong Kong adventure • Rhian Wilkinson leaves NWSL

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ISSUE 3 • A look at Canada’s unofficial team in NASL, the San Antonio Scorpions • Q and A withNASL Commissioner Bill Peterson • A look back at the U-20 Women’s World Cup • David Monsalve and Dominic Oppong, teammates at AC Oulu • FC Dallas’s Tesho Akindele on playing for Canada • Toronto FC coach Greg Vanney looks forward to the future • John Molinaro on how to make MLS Cup better

ISSUE 4 • Canadian keeper John Smits, winner of the NASL’s Golden Glove award • Desiree Scott talks about her decision to leave NWSL for England • Canadians in indoor soccer; a look at the Milwaukee Wave and its Canadian coach, Giuliano Oliviero, and Canadian star player, Ian Bennett • We look at the birth, successes and trials of League1 Ontario • We catch up with former Impact coach Valerio Gazzola, who has worked with various national teams; why he thinks MLS teams are better off hiring local coaches rather than going to Europe to recruit them

THE SUPPORTERS

The

Distinct

Society

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Montreal’s fans are different than soccer supporters you’d find in the rest of Canada. They feel the pull of their unique Quebecois heritage; if a Canadian league ever launched, they might constitute the most difficult market in which to succeed. So, we asked them... What’s more important: The Impact developing Canadian soccer players, or the Impact doing what needs to be done in order to win games in a predominantly American league? By MIKE WYMAN

CANADA IS ONE of the few soccer-playing nations without a professional league operating exclusively within its boundaries. So what of the idea that Canada should develop a professional league of its own rather than remaining a (sometimes very) minor partner in cross-border leagues? Arguments have been made that a domestic reorganization could stem the flow of young players heading overseas, strengthen the game at both the amateur and the pro levels, result in having more players easily available for national-team duty and raise Canada’s standing in the international rankings. But, a lot of things that find favour in the rest of Canada don’t gain the same traction in Quebec. I contacted the Ultras, the best-known supporters group associated with the Impact, as well as two season subscribers who began attending games before the Impact joined Major League Soccer. Stéphane Bertin has been a season-ticket holder since 2008, while Pierre Mailhot has been an avid soccer fan since the days of the Montreal Manic. (Parties submitted their responses and comments by email)

Canadian Cup > Canadian League Mailhot did not think that a home-based league would change things significantly, saying that the players with talent would still go overseas. “Europe is Europe and that attraction will always remain, MLS or not,” the Ultras said. “If the league functioned differently and the Canadian league didn’t have a salary cap, probably. Unfortunately, we’d end up with a league as predictable as the Scottish Championship.” As to whether a Canadian league would find favour with Impact fans, Bertin replied: “No. It would be great if Canada could have its own domestic league like most countries do, but we’re just not strong enough. I can’t see how it would be economically viable. It’s a drag to admit it, but we are dependent on the U.S. for quality football.” What the Ultras would like to see is a more developed Canadian Championship. Right now, only the three Canadian MLS teams and the two Canadian NASL squads are allowed into the tourney. “Before thinking of forming a Canadian league, it would be possible to improve the already existing competition, one that is

governed by the Canadian [Soccer Association]. We have all the tools needed for the job. It’s a little ridiculous to think of forming a Canadian league without even trying to grow the Canadian Championship. We would like to have the opportunity to face Ottawa, Québec, Trois-Rivières.” They don’t think that a league with a focus on developing players for the Canadian national team and World Cup competition would be any easy sell; but do see some positive local potential. “This is not something that would be of interest to a good number of fans, including several of our members. However, if it allows for the development of more young players, the Impact could benefit since Quebec players are more inclined to make their c areers with the Impact rather than try their luck elsewhere in North America, as the more mobile American players tend to do.” The Impact and its Quebecois Roots The Quebecois nature of the team and the fact that the roster has traditionally found space for local players have long been some of the stronger ties binding fans to the Impact. “It’s very important, but I think that, under the proposed [Canadian league] system, players like [current roster players] [Maxim] Tissot, [Patrice] Bernier, and Wandrille (Lefèvre) would try to move on to stronger leagues,” Bertin offered. “And we’d be left with the likes of Pierre-Rudolphe Mayard, Reda Agourram and Kevin Cossette.” “Impact fans have a very strong attachment to local players,” said the Ultras. “There’s a sort of intentional blindness when it comes to the players who graduated from the academy. We are more forgiving of their errors and under-performances because they are home-grown players. We also have a soft spot for Francophone players from around the globe.” Winning Games > National-Team Success Mailhot also agreed on the importance of local talent but figures that winning trumps geography. “It’s important, but winning is more important. If you win with local players, great. If you win with imported players, you still win. “Impact supporters are probably the Canadian fans who are the least interested in the national team, probably for socio-political SPRING 2015

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The Distinct Society ...

reasons, but that doesn’t mean that we do not recognize or appreciate the Canadian nature of the Impact,” replied the Ultras. “It’s one of the things differentiating us from the Americans, particularly in the MLS rulebook, but ultimately it is the Montreal character of the team that takes precedence for us.” Mailhot feels that a Canadian face is also secondary to putting games in the win column, while Bertin explained why he is a less-than-enthusiastic supporter of the national side. “I liked Team Canada back in the day. I even went to a match against Honduras at Saputo Stadium in 2009 but they haven’t been back since then. They continue to say that Toronto is their home and, even though they haven’t had success there, they insist on playing 90 per cent of their games there. So, no, I don’t feel particularly included in Canada.” Rivalries Asked about the effect an all-Canadian league would have on, rivalries and level of play, the Ultras answered that any rivalries the Impact may have with American teams are dwarfed by the one with Toronto FC. “However, as active fans we place a lot of importance on the energy level in the stands,” they said. “Even though MLS crowds are often a little reserved, we do see a lot of potential in that league for more activity in that area,” they said. “We can see advantages and drawbacks to both leagues. We feel that an expanded Canadian Championship with the Impact in MLS would be the best medium-term avenue to follow.” Bertin theorized that Impact owner Joey Saputo would lose the rest of his hair if it came to pass, given the time and effort he has 40

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devoted to implanting the game in this province. He then spoke on rivalries. “I’d rather get a hate on for the New York Red Dulls or Philadelphia Onion that try to work up animosity towards a flavourless FC Moncton or Regina FC.” Montreal Fans Won’t Support a Canada-Only League All three parties said that having the Impact play in a Canadian league would not prompt them to cancel their subscriptions, however they could envisage others acting differently. “I’m a die-hard supporter of the Bleu, Blanc, Noir,” said Bertin. “However we have trouble filling the stadium while playing in the top league in North America. So I can’t see how the team, even if winning, would attract more than the 8,000 to 9,000 it did in the NASL days.” “It might have the same effect as the Eurosnobs not coming to MLS, USL or NASL games,” said Mailhot. “Some would say the calibre of play is not good enough for them.” “We were there when the Impact played teams like the Syracuse Salty Dogs so it’s not a lack of glamour that will keep us away,” said the Ultras. “It would be idealistic, however to think that it would not have an effect on subscription levels. People come to the stadium to support the Impact but also to see the opponents. There would probably be the same effect on sales as when the Impact went from NASL to MLS but with the numbers going the other way. “There are a lot of bandwagon passengers out there. We completely disassociate ourselves from them.” P²

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THE WOMEN’S GAME When the NWSL was founded, the Canadian Soccer Association was in on the ground floor; the CSA agreed to subsidize the contracts of 16 Canadian players, who would all be assigned to various teams in the new women’s league. But, that relationship isn’t quite as rosy as it was a couple of years ago — and Canada is no longer using its full allocation By DUANE ROLLINS IT DIDN’T TAKE long for the cracks in the agreement between the Canadian Soccer Association and the National Women’s Soccer League to start showing. Just one year after announcing that they would be partners in the new league, an internal document leaked that suggested that the Canadian national team staff was not happy with what they were seeing. Although the CSA maintained its support publically, what was being said internally was far more blunt. “The NWSL is still in its infancy and, like many of the women’s professional leagues around the world, the [technical level] remains semi-professional with, in many cases, a lack of technical leadership that creates poor high-performance and cultures,” read the report, which was written for a 2014 Own the Podium review. Continuing: “While it is expected improvements will be made over the coming years through NWSL and USSF [United States Soccer Federation] interventions, the risk at this stage is too high for the 2015 Women’s World Cup tournament.” The conclusion of the report was to withdraw the Canadian allocated players this spring, in the lead-up to the World Cup. The fallout was swift — and it demonstrated just how tense the relationship was between the CSA, the NWSL and USSF. In an e-mail exchange obtained by me, a head coach in the league questioned the ability of the CSA to make a claim about the technical abilities of NWSL teams. The suggestion was that the CSA had not demonstrated enough success on its own to be making judgements about other organizations. For its part, the CSA stayed firm in its position. Quietly, the national-team staff started to look for European opportunities for its players. Ultimately, the CSA compromised and agreed to release the allocated players for the start of the NWSL season, but only for

a few weeks. The majority of the World Cup lead up will still be in the national team residency camp. The long-term involvement of the CSA is far from certain. Only 13 of the 16 potential allocation slots are being used this season and, when pressed, those close to the national team program refused to definitively answer. “We’re not committed to five years, six years with this,” John Herdman told reporters last year. “This is a case of us working to put Canadians in the best position to be successful.” Player agent Chuck Vine says that, without changes in how the league treats Canadians, it’s unlikely that league is the place to best provide those chances. “The players that are in the league are being treated well,” Vine says. “But, would I say it offers Canada with the best potential for development? No, absolutely not.” Vine’s biggest contention is the way NWSL treats non-allocated Canadians. Non-allocated Canadians are considered international players in NWSL. “It’s great for the girls who are allocated,” Vine says, “but what does that really do long -term?” Young Canadians Lose Out Suggesting that, under the current rules, young Canadians are going to lose out to core national-team members for allocation spots and to established international stars for the remaining international slots, Vine says it’s clear to him that there is little opportunity for the rest. “Why is the CSA hitching itself to a league where its players aren’t treated equally?” Vine asks. He suggests that if the league were to treat Canadians as domestics there would be at “at least 10 to 15” players who would immediately find spots.

Even in Vine’s dream scenario, you would only have around 30 Canadian women playing professionally. In today’s women’s game, which is increasingly becoming professionalized in the top soccer playing nations, that’s simply not going to cut it. The excitement of the bronze-medal run in 2012 — a run that was as much about having good luck at the right time as it was a result of any type of plan — has blinded many Canadians into thinking that the women’s program is healthy. In actuality, an argument can be made that the future of the women’s program is as uncertain as the men’s. In fact, it could be less certain. In many ways the state of the women’s game in Canada today is the same as the men’s was before the addition of the three Major League Soccer teams and two North American Soccer League teams. As much as that is clearly not enough for the men, it’s still more options than women have. For the last decade or more, elite female players who weren’t in the national team pool were faced with limited chances to continue playing at a high level. Nicky Rycroft played five years in the CIS for York and the University of Toronto during the latter part of the last decade. She went to the national championship finals three times and was named to the tournament all-star team twice during that run. Despite that impressive résumé, the thought of playing at any type of professional or semi-professional level after university wasn’t even the stuff of dreams — it literally was impossible for Rycroft and, she says, most of her teammates. “I never really considered playing professionally as a kid,” she says. “It still seems unimaginable now, even if I was of that age still.” When she was in university there were W-League opportunities in the region; some of her teammates played there. But SPRING 2015

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In 2013, Christine Sinclair led the Portland Thorns to the NWSL title. Rycroft says that the time required was not something she or most could take on without other financial support. Bluntly, she was putting herself through university. She had to work and there are few jobs that allow for players to go to midday practices three to five times a week and travel nearly every weekend for games. Until such a time as an elite woman is paid enough to cover her basic living expenses, Rycroft doesn’t see much chance of things changing. “The only goal is provincial and national team,” she says. “Once that’s out of reach then just play for the love of it.” In an effort to address these type of issues, the Ontario Soccer Association is launching Ontario League1 for women this spring. League1 will operate as a standards based league and aspires to be semi-professional. “This is another proud day for women’s

soccer in our province and in Canada,” OSA President Ron Smale said when the league was announced. “With the 2015 Women’s FIFA World Cup in Canada, the launch of a semi-pro women’s league in Ontario will provide more opportunities for our female athletes by providing a higher level of competition, and a pathway for soccer excellence.” Smale continued: “As a provincial body, this is another step in our ongoing commitment and dedication to improving the landscape of soccer in Ontario and Canada. I am looking forward to an exciting and rewarding season.” High Priority League1 Ontario Chairman Dino Rossi says the creation of League1 for women was a high priority for the OSA. He suggested it could lead to improved performance of the

national team in the years to come. “Providing a vibrant and professional competition and training environment for the best female players in the province of Ontario will pay significant dividends for the growth of women’s soccer over the long term.” Rycroft applauds the efforts. However, she remains skeptical. “Things should hopefully improve with League1 starting, but really not sure how successful it will be,” she says. “A friend of mine joked, ‘Oh, it’s the league for women without a job’ when she found out it was three practices a week plus games, with financial assistance unlikely. “It’s just not feasible for us. And, especially, if there is no prospect of making more money later. “It’s a dead-end so no point spending that much time on it other than for enjoyment purposes.” P² SPRING 2015

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ESSAYS

TRIALS

AND

ERRORS

We don’t currently have a true Canadian professional league to call our own — but, what can we learn from those who tried to launch national soccer circuits in previous decades? By RICHARD WHITTALL

IT SITS THERE for all to see, like King Arthur’s sword in the stone: An all-Canadian, coast-to-coast, fully professional soccer league. Some smart people in Canadian soccer have long held it’s the only key to 46

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this country’s collective footballing future and the last hope for another chance at the Big Show — the World Cup. If Canadian soccer could only find a way to pull the sword out of that rock, overcoming costs

and skepticism and indifference to finally establish a lasting, nationwide professional soccer league under MLS — a league of our own — it could make up for decades lost in the North American soccer wilderness.

TSN’s 1987 promotional poster for its coverage of the Canadian Soccer League.

In 2011, former Canadian international James Easton was tasked by the Canadian Soccer Association with finding a way to do just that. His pro soccer league feasibility study, In a League of Our Own: A Study into the Viability of Division II Football in Canada — otherwise known as the Easton Report — was submitted to the CSA in December of that year. The impetus for the study may or may not have been related to plans first revealed in June of 2014 that the CSA is collaborating with the Canadian Football League and the North American Soccer League to start a Canadian soccer league, but it did lead to the formation of League1Ontario in 2013, a “Division III” semi-professional league. As part of the study, Easton asked me to author a short section on the history of professional soccer in Canada. Easton

reasoned that if we could see any clear patterns in Canadian professional soccer failure, we might finally figure out how to avoid them next time or, at the very least, realize once and for all they’re unavoidable. In other words, we can’t pull the sword out unless we know more about the rock. For my research I primarily focused on three, relatively recent Canadian professional soccer leagues: • The Eastern Canada Professional Soccer League 1961-1966 • The Canadian Professional Soccer League 1983 • The Canadian Soccer League 1987-1992 They all share some major similarities. They were formed out of a mix of sporting ambition, a desire to make money, and an earnest attempt to help the Canadian game progress. The leagues featured clubs from

Quebec to British Columbia and showcased stars like English legend Stanley Matthews (Toronto City, 1961) and Canadian national team stalwart Alex Bunbury (Toronto Blizzard 1990). They were founded by wealthy industrialists and connected journalists, with investment from experienced sports franchise owners and local big talkers alike. Their backers sometimes painted rosy pictures of future growth and outsized attendances, which often fell far short of reality. In 1961, despite grandiose hopes in attracting tens of thousands of spectators with the prospect of watching English stars like Matthews and Danny Blanchflower play in Canada, the Eastern Canada Professional Soccer League managed to finish “a couple of bucks in the black,” according to league president Harold Ballard in the Montreal SPRING 2015

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Trials and Errors... Gazette. In 1983, Inter-Montreal owner Bob Laker predicted a break-even attendance of 10,000 a game for his franchise for the CPSL season; in its second home game, a mere 981 people attended. The club folded less than a month after its inaugural fixture, and the entire league followed. These losses were often in spite of financial safeguards put in place by league officials. In 1983, ahead of the CPSL’s first season, league commissioner John Bailey — a lawyer — claimed in the Calgary Herald that “most clubs’ budgets will be fairly close. We don’t want to see any clubs spend themselves out of existence.” Less than a year later the league folded after sustaining heavy financial losses. In 1985, two years before the inaugural Canadian Soccer League season, CSA president Jim Fleming promised the newly formed league would be a “bare-bones organization,” and that the CSA would ask for “significant financial guarantees from each of the teams to ensure they continue.” Three years later, inaugural CSL champions, the Calgary Kickers, folded after owner Ron Knipschild incurred what he claimed were “six-digit losses.” Four years after that, the league would dissolve completely after a season in which Vancouver 86ers owner Milan Illich, the only club owner able to pay league dues in full, was forced to help bankroll several of his rival teams, including travel and hotel expenses for a home game against the Toronto Blizzard. In every case, the answer to all ills from beginning to end was, perhaps understandably, “securing investment.” The Eastern Canada Professional Soccer League for example came about in large part from the efforts of businessman Peter Bosa and journalist George Gross in securing willing financial backers in Quebec and Ontario back in 1961. Meanwhile both the CPSL and the CSL offered highly attractive, midto low-five-figure franchise fees in order to lure prospective owners. But this drive for seed money fostered an air of naive optimism about the prospects for pro soccer in the Canadian sports market, with little in the way of serious market research or contingency plans. The low bar of entry, often in the form of affordable franchise fees, also attracted some investors whose ambitions were bigger than their bank balances. In each case, it appeared the league founders and franchise owners were taking on a far more monumental task than they knew. Success in pro soccer isn’t only about figuring out how to sell the game in a com48

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Canada Soccer/

Jim Fleming was the CSA president who helped oversee the formation of the CSL. petitive North American sports market, or about leagues being only as strong as their weakest clubs. It is about having the resources to weather sometimes crushing financial losses for five, 10, perhaps even 15 years. In other words, the key to long-term survival in professional soccer is short-term survival. The problem is short-term survival in a North American pro sports market requires a monumental effort and deep financial and human resources. Tom Fath, current owner of the NASL’s FC Edmonton, has said in the past about sports investments, “Think about all the money you think you could lose, and then double it.” Initial excitement over the novelty of a new team or league can evaporate in a manner of weeks. There are numerous, complex issues to resolve, like labour costs, tax issues, stadium plans etc. Then, there are unpredictable obstacles to overcome, as when several European leagues banned their players from travelling to play for the ECPSL in the summertime in 1962. Solving these problems sometimes requires vast financial resources, deft, effective leadership, and a lot of luck.

Even the United States’ pro soccer league, Major League Soccer (formed in 1996), with its single entity format in which the league maintains strict control over player contracts, salaries and movement, faced deep financial uncertainty in its early years. By 2002, many believed the league would fold under the weight of losses and the contraction of the league from 12 teams to 10. It took a good U,S, performance in the 2002 World Cup and the establishment of the highly lucrative rights-holding company Soccer United Marketing to right the ship. However, If a pro league can weather this early storm as MLS did, its chances of survival will radically improve. After a decade or two, clubs become ingrained in the local sporting culture of its home markets. At that point, a professional league tends to be stronger than the health of any one of its member clubs. The best metaphor might be that of a rocket. It requires an enormous amount of fuel booster rockets just to get into orbit, all kept in sections or “stages” that are jettisoned within minutes of launching. Once the rocket escapes the surly bonds of Earth, however, the spacecraft requires far fewer resources to operate. In other words, the

longer you’re there, the longer you’re there. It’s not a coincidence that all but one of North America’s six major pro sports leagues are over half a century old. One wonders therefore if history would have been different had some of the league founders involved in the ECPSL, the CPSL, and the CSL considered at the time working in some way with the existing regional semi-pro and amateur leagues, some of which had already been around for decades. The Ontario/Quebec based National Soccer League for example lasted from 1926 to 1997, before eventually transforming into the CSL in 2006. British Columbia’s Pacific Coast League was founded in 1930 and lasted forty-three years, before it became the BC Soccer League in 1973. These leagues were small-time, local affairs, but had something the startups could only dream of: longevity, and therefore something resembling durability. As I wrote four years ago in the Easton Report: Longevity is an essential component in the survival of any

professional sports league, yet at no point...did anyone look to the already existing amateur [leagues] to discuss a national, long-term strategy to slowly introduce professionalism. Instead, they decided the best route would be to create an entire professional league, with often entirely new and unfamiliar franchises. There were some exceptions to this. As Canadian soccer historian Colin Jose noted in an article on the ECPSL a few years ago, one of the first teams Peter Bosa managed to convince to move into the league in 1961 was the NSL team Toronto Italia. But by not working in more organized, systematic way with existing semi-pro and amateur leagues and their member clubs — by gradually grandfathering them into a higher, fully professional tier, or joining them in some sort of formal pyramid for example — the league founders may have missed a major opportunity in taking advantage of a small but already-established soccer culture. Future Canadian professional league founders, if they hope to better their forebears and finally wrench that sword from the stone, should avoid making the same mistake. P² SPRING 2015

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You’re BETTER OFF

WITHOUT US An American soccer expert explains why, despite some pretty noble intentions, that his nation’s leagues and federations aren’t ever going to be decent stewards of the Canadian game

By KARTIK KRISHNAIYER

AMERICAN SOCCER FANS tend to view Canadian participation in United States-based professional leagues as an entitlement. Canada is, after all, viewed in dismissive provincial terms by many of the fans who make up the American soccer community. Journalists who cover soccer in the United States have not spent enough time truly pondering the impact of Canadian pro teams in U.S. leagues and how that affects both countries. Many fans even viewed MLS’s expansion north of the border into Canada as a logical extension of 50

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U.S. Soccer. Once upon a time I believed that the two nations who shared a football heritage in this sport via the original NASL needed to forever be linked. But in time I have come to the conclusion that linkage disproportionately favours the United States and is not good for Canada or for the game in that part of the world. When I was hired as the first employee of the newly rebooted North American Soccer League (NASL), my belief was that Canadian and American professional soccer was inseparable at

FC Edmonton began its NASL life playing at the University of Alberta’s Foote Field. the league level. But, during the process of launching the league and maintaining it, I discovered that Canada has its own set of needs from a football perspective that require a domestic league dedicated to growing the Canadian player, promoting the sport in Canada and growing domestic soccer infrastructure and institutions. While the Canadian and American player development systems and player quality were roughly similar in the days of the original NASL, by the time Major League Soccer added Toronto FC in 2007 the Canadian system was vastly inferior to the American one. Despite the best efforts of Canadian pro clubs, particularly Vancouver and Montreal, player development in Canada was nowhere near the level it had ascended to south of the border. Had FC Edmonton not opted to join NASL in February 2010, we may have exited the Canadian market entirely since Vancouver and Montreal were both heading

to MLS (Though Montreal’s announcement of MLS entry had not taken place yet, we knew we were losing it at some point). Internally, the option of operating a domestic league which was simply a domestic American entity was considered. But FC Edmonton kept NASL north of the border and later, in 2010, the Puerto Rico Islanders defected from USL to NASL, giving the league a second non-USSF club for the 2011 season. Cross-Border Issues The challenges of running a cross-border league were enormous. At the league we dealt regularly with visa issues, travel issues and player-registration issues. Even last season, the Fort Lauderdale Strikers had to send a rag-tag team to Edmonton, because many of its starters couldn’t cross the border to work. Almost universally, though, a subconscious bias toward Ameri-

can interests existed. Canadian players were considered “foreign” at American clubs and couldn’t move around the league effectively. League executives spent less time in Edmonton and Ottawa, who eventually joined the league, than other NASL markets. Travel for FC Edmonton was far worse than any other club and the league wasn’t able to help FCE as much as we would have hoped with offsetting some of those issues. None of the biases were overt towards Canadian interests or FC Edmonton — they simply were the outgrowth of managing a U.S.-based league with Canadian teams. The irony of this is that some of the most viable growth opportunities for our league were in Canada. This involved potential national sponsorship and national TV deals (the first “national” TV deal for an NASL team came in 2013, when FCE games were broadcast on Sportsnet 360). In my experience as the league’s communications director, media coverage was in most cases easier to obtain SPRING 2015

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You’re Better Off Without Us... in Canada versus the United States for our teams. But still, we were not a Canadian league and never could be one. After my NASL experience as well as observing other matters around the CONCACAF region, I have come to the conclusion that at some point in the near future, Canada must have its own professional structure. How this would actually come about is for more experienced people to determine. Canadian sports fans tend to think in “north-south” terms but, in soccer, where development of a competitive domestic product is critical to long-term success, different thinking must happen. Player development is never going to happen consistently at the level it needs to for Canada to be competitive at the international stage. It is difficult to envision a country with a strong domestic league and strong national philosophy losing players the level of Asmir Begovic, Jonathan de Guzman and Junior Hoilett all in quick succession. The prevailing view abroad of Canadian soccer is that it is an ugly stepchild to the United States, without independent entities of its own and always doomed to resembled a “B” or “C” team compared to the USA when international competitions take place. I am met with some surprise or even shock when I tell friends in the United Kingdom that, on average, in major Canadian cities a greater percentage of the public watches the sport than in major American cities. But the perception is that Canada is not able to function on its own in this sport and must rely on the United States for financial support and the infrastructure to maintain the game domestically. North American sports are organized very much in a self-contained prism. For this reason, cross-border leagues are not as much of a negative in those sports. International football requires an infrastructure with top-down mandates and a place for players to grow. A clear vision and technical direction are needed for any nation to be successful in the international game. Limited club opportunities and the availability of cheap, experienced American professionals has held the Canadian professional game back, I firmly believe that few can argue this point. But for many operating within the American system is comfortable and, perhaps, economically lucrative. But, unfortunately, operating within United States Soccer Federation (USSF) sanctioned pro leagues in a culture which promotes American players and the U.S. men’s national team allows Canadian clubs 52

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If Canada had a national league and a strong soccer identity, it might not have lost players such as Asmir Begovic. to take the easy road. Most notable among these clubs is Toronto FC, who has regularly opted to sign established American players and look to Europe to fill out a squad rather than doing the heavy lifting at home. Being tied to the American system makes it very easy for Canadian clubs to avoid developing as many local players as they can, regardless of the rhetoric executives at the teams employ. Vancouver has made an honest attempt to develop local talent as has FC Edmonton. But, in both cases, I firmly believe they would give that local talent an even greater opportunity to grow if experienced American players weren’t

so readily available within leagues that are after all based in the United States. Most countries’ identities as a football-playing nations are linked either to successful domestic league systems or national-team performances. Since Canada does not currently have a true domestic league, or a successful national team, the nation lacks a proper identity in this sport. Given the rising popularity of the international game in the nation and level of local support professional teams playing in U.S.-based leagues enjoy, the time is now for Canada to begin thinking seriously of making a break from the American system. P²

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