Latest posts (RSS 2.0)On Oct. 30, FIFA announced that Germany won out over Canada in their bid to host the 2011 Women’s World Cup. For FIFA, it was perhaps an easy decision. The German women’s team were re-crowned as world champions in September’s tournament, while Canada bowed out at the group stage thanks to a late equalizer from the Australian team. The women’s exit was only the most recent heartbreak this year for the long-suffering Canadian soccer fans, who saw their men’s team fall in the CONCACAF Gold Cup to some suspect officiating and their U-20 team achieve the ignominious mark of being the first hosts not to score a goal.
Germany also has proven facilities and a tremendous track record from staging the 2006 World Cup, while Canada appears to have somehow found a way to lose money on this summer’s U-20 World Cup despite shattering the tournament attendance record, according to Angus Barrett, a director-at-large of the Canadian Soccer Association. More details of this sordid financial affair should come out in the near future, but it is yet another event demonstrating the complete and utter disarray of the CSA, responsible for organizing everything relating to soccer in this country.
The CSA is without a president, technical director, or chief operating officer. They only decided on an interim president—Dominic Maestracci—on Oct. 20, almost two months after the resignation of Colin Linford. They haven’t had a chief operating officer since Kevan Pipe was fired on Nov. 2, 2006.
The straw that may have broken the CSA’s back came this summer when their board shot down the appointment of Fred Nykamp, who was successfully lured from Canada Basketball, as chief operating officer. Nykamp was hired, but never allowed to start work, and eventually let go Aug. 26 after the CSA board voted not to ratify his hiring. He’s now claiming wrongful dismissal and suing the CSA for more than $1.75 million, 14 per cent of their annual budget of approximately $12.5 million.
The Nykamp saga is only the latest to mar the CSA. Their carefully crafted facade of competence began to crack last November, when chief operating officer Kevan Pipe resigned. Pipe had a long and perhaps checkered career with the CSA for over 25 years, achieving great success at times but frequently by rather dubious methods. The next thing to go wrong was in the hiring of a national coach. Linford favoured Brazilian Rene Simoes, and thought he had a deal worked out, but the board intervened in tried-and-true political style to insist on Canadian content, which led to the promotion of Dale Mitchell instead.
At the time, Mitchell appeared a solid choice: he had led the men’s U-20 team to the quarter-finals at the 2003 World Youth Championships, and had also done well with the team in the 2005 tournament. However, some doubt was cast on whether he was the right man for the job when the Canadian U-20 team he coached through the U-20 World Cup this summer not only failed to win or draw a game, but also couldn’t even score a goal. Meanwhile, interim coach Stephen Hart—who had been in the job since Frank Yallop vacated it in June 2006 to go coach Major League Soccer’s Los Angeles Galaxy—was achieving spectacular success with the senior team at the Gold Cup, advancing to the final against the U.S. and only losing after a linesman prevented an Atiba Hutchinson goal by noticing an imaginary offside. Fortunately for Canadian soccer, Hart put his ego aside and agreed to stay with the senior team as an assistant to Mitchell.
Soon after, the women’s national team was off to China for their World Cup tournament. However, a foreboding air above and beyond the Beijing smog hung over their trip from the beginning. Head coach Even Pellerud blasted the CSA—legitimately, in this writer’s view—for failing to arrange sufficient pre-tournament games for the team and also bowing out of a bid to host the Olympic qualifying tournament in 2008. According to the Globe and Mail, the CSA said they couldn’t afford the $300,000 to $400,000 it would cost to stage the tournament. Pellerud said the CSA had become so focused on the U-20 World Cup that they were ignoring the women’s team, and even offered to chip in money from the women’s team budget to host the tournament. Also, the CSA apparently failed to notify Pellerud that FIFA had suspended him for the team’s first game at due to an ejection in a Gold Cup match the previous November against the United States: he got the news less than a week before Canada’s first match from reading a paper in his home country of Norway.
The ominous atmosphere appeared justified when the women’s squad, historically the greatest strength of Canadian soccer and ranked ninth in the world as of October, narrowly crashed out of the tournament’s group stage following the late draw with Australia. It seemed as if Pellerud’s words about the lack of preparation handicapping the team had indeed come true.
Things came to a head on Sept. 12, “Black Wednesday,” when a badly promoted international friendly between the men’s national team and Costa Rica took place at BMO Field in Toronto. The early timing and weeknight scheduling of the game, combined with the CSA’s lackadaisical promotion, led to many empty seats at a venue usually packed to the rafters with enthusiastic soccer fans: only 9,325 people attended, less than half the stadium’s capacity of 20, 500. However, many of those present (including noted soccer columnist Ben Knight, who recently joined the Globe and Mail’s sports section) made a profound impression by their attire, dressing in black “Sack the CSA” T-shirts made by the Canadian Soccer Supporters United group.
The protest and the events leading up to it led to deeper scrutiny than usual of the CSA by the mainstream media, including an appropriately titled piece by famed Globe columnist Stephen Brunt called “Storm the barricades, it’s time for change.” Many, including Brunt, suggested getting rid of the CSA entirely and replacing it with a new federation, similar to steps taken in Australia a few years ago. National team striker Tomasz Radzinski even lent his support to the cause, telling the Toronto Star’s Cathal Kelly, “If I’m in the stands next time I’m going to wear a black shirt as well.”
To their credit, the CSA appeared to finally get the message that they couldn’t continue to operate in a manner more suited to a pub soccer league than a government-funded body responsible for overseeing the world’s most popular sport in a country of more than 33 million people. They finally got around to appointing Dominic Maestracci as interim president on Oct. 21. Their representatives also attended a protest meeting held by the North York Soccer Association and tried to address some of the concerns raised. However, it’s still obvious that fixing the CSA will be a painful, drawn-out process.
The timing of the CSA’s unraveling is unfortunate. Canadian soccer has made so many strides forward in recent years: the building of BMO Field in Toronto, the introduction of Toronto FC into Major League Soccer and the record-breaking attendance shown for the U-20 World Cup this past summer. World-class clubs from the United Kingdom such as the English Premier League’s Aston Villa and Sunderland and the Championship’s Cardiff City have all played friendlies in Canada in recent years, with the David Beckham-led Los Angeles Galaxy joining the trend Wednesday in a match played against the Vancouver Whitecaps before 48, 172 fans at B.C. Place. More Canadian players are joining high-class teams all the time, such as U-20 goalkeeper Asmir Begovic who plays for Portsmouth in the English Premier League. As mentioned above, both the men’s and women’s national teams have made large strides recently as well.
Hosting the Women’s World Cup, which Canada would be ideally suited for given the amount of national interest in the women’s team, the success they have enjoyed recently, and our proven ability to stage international soccer competitions would be a logical next step on the path to becoming a true player on the international soccer stage. However, the current state of the CSA leaves us in no position to host anything larger than a world championship for eight-year-olds (and even that might be a stretch).
It was disappointing to see Canada lose out to Germany, but the decision was not only logical, but probably best for our country in the long run. There will be other chances to host in the future, and hopefully by that time our national association will be in competent shape to handle an international event. As famed TSN and CBC soccer commentator Dick Howard, who is also a member of FIFA’s Technical Development Committee, remarked in an Oct. 30 cbc.ca article on the failure of Canada’s bid, “It’s quite honestly a blessing in disguise.” It says a lot about the tragic state of a country’s soccer association when losing is a victory on its own.
