Canada was knocked out of World Cup qualifying this week. Though "knocked out" hardly does the 8-1 loss justice. Normally after Canada plays a major game in Central America I come away angry at biased officiating, but in this game the ref didn't have to offer any help. It's not really a setback in this one cycle of World Cup qualification, rather it's a setback with multiplicative effects.
The dirty little secret of Canadian soccer is that there is no such thing as Canadian soccer. Very few people become fans or players of the game in any serious fashion purely based on things that happen in Canada. Most of them (myself included) become involved in the sport because their family has close ties to another country where the sport is more popular. On the one hand, that provides a nice shortcut to popularising the game here, but it also provides a few obstacles to getting a competitive national team:
Humiliating losses like the one in Honduras make all these worse: The reputation as an embarrassing team prompts players to chose to represent other countries. Feeling the team is a lost cause discourages fans from supporting the team. Without playing high profile games, it's hard to inspire the next generation of players
It also provides support for the many in the sports media who just shrug, say we just don't have the talent, and go back to analysing the minutiae of hockey. Much as there is an obvious talent gap, I'm not sure that's our immediate stumbling block.
To take the recent game as an example: previous to the debacle in Honduras, we tied (and nearly beat) the same team in Toronto. When a team plays to a tie at home, then gets annihilated on the road, lack of talent isn't the main cause. I don't want to sound like I'm setting up recently-resigned coach Stephen Hart as a scapegoat. It just sets up my long-time complaint about Canada's soccer program: whenever our hockey team plays a game against a country that doesn't have much of a hockey tradition, we usually see that they have a Canadian coach. But for some reason, we never seem to take the hint ourselves.
We're going to have to admit that this is a problem we'll need help from outside to fix. Ironically, even though our soccer culture comes from other countries, we keep looking inwards for our coaching.
The dirty little secret of Canadian soccer is that there is no such thing as Canadian soccer. Very few people become fans or players of the game in any serious fashion purely based on things that happen in Canada. Most of them (myself included) become involved in the sport because their family has close ties to another country where the sport is more popular. On the one hand, that provides a nice shortcut to popularising the game here, but it also provides a few obstacles to getting a competitive national team:
- A small number pool of people to draw on for potential players
- Many potential national team players qualify to play for other countries too
- Canadian fans are often outnumbered by ex-pat fans of the visiting team in home games.
Humiliating losses like the one in Honduras make all these worse: The reputation as an embarrassing team prompts players to chose to represent other countries. Feeling the team is a lost cause discourages fans from supporting the team. Without playing high profile games, it's hard to inspire the next generation of players
It also provides support for the many in the sports media who just shrug, say we just don't have the talent, and go back to analysing the minutiae of hockey. Much as there is an obvious talent gap, I'm not sure that's our immediate stumbling block.
To take the recent game as an example: previous to the debacle in Honduras, we tied (and nearly beat) the same team in Toronto. When a team plays to a tie at home, then gets annihilated on the road, lack of talent isn't the main cause. I don't want to sound like I'm setting up recently-resigned coach Stephen Hart as a scapegoat. It just sets up my long-time complaint about Canada's soccer program: whenever our hockey team plays a game against a country that doesn't have much of a hockey tradition, we usually see that they have a Canadian coach. But for some reason, we never seem to take the hint ourselves.
We're going to have to admit that this is a problem we'll need help from outside to fix. Ironically, even though our soccer culture comes from other countries, we keep looking inwards for our coaching.
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