For the past 28 years, the Canadian men’s national soccer team could be described as a national program with many inhibitors, but that would be putting it lightly. Since bowing out of the 1986 FIFA World Cup after losing all three of its matches, the men’s side has endured a long haul of neverending misery.
In 2000, Canada did get lucky at the CONCACAF Gold Cup, winning a coin-flip tiebreaker with South Korea that saw them advance out of the group stage. They went on to defeat Mexico, Trinidad & Tobago and Columbia en route to the greatest triumph in Canadian soccer history. Since then they have dropped from 63rd in the world to 120th as of September, according to the latest FIFA World Rankings.
From what was arguably the greatest generation of soccer players Canada has ever seen, we are now left with a team that earned their first win in almost two years with a 3-1 victory over Jamaica earlier this month.
For a country where hockey is religion, soccer still possesses a decent following. To say the sport is a passion would be an exaggeration but to say that there is no interest in the game would be ignorant. According to the 2013 Canadian Soccer Association (CSA) Annual Report, soccer is the most popular participatory team sport in Canada with over 865,000 players and 1,500 clubs registered in the country. In 2011, it was reported by the CSA that 44 per cent of Canadian youth under the age of 12 participate in the game at some capacity.
Exactly how has this country not built upon the successes and talent pools of 1986 or 2000, and has instead gone backwards?
For one, the path to a career in professional soccer for a young Canadian athlete is unclear. Unlike the NHL, where junior hockey teams act as a feeder system for the big leagues, this sort of professional development has not always existed in Canada. Prior to the introduction of the only professional soccer league in North America, Major League Soccer (MLS) in 2007, players would have to leave the country at an early age and travel to have a chance at a professional career. Most famously, the greatest talent that Canada has ever produced, Owen Hargreaves, left his native city of Calgary for German giants Bayern Munich in 1996 and never looked back. He went on to play for Manchester United, Manchester City and represented England at the national level after being cut by the Canadian national team.
With the advent of local youth academies that have been created by Canadian MLS clubs, Toronto FC, Montreal Impact and Vancouver Whitecaps FC, local talent is able to, in theory, practice skills and succeed professionally without having to move to a different continent. However, at the moment these programs have yet to fully succeed at either the club or national level.
According to an TSN article written by former Canadian International Jason deVos, the governing body of soccer in Canada, the Canadian Soccer Association (CSA), has never put together a technical development plan, including a national curriculum for player development, to serve as the “technical roadmap” for the nation.
Photo: Canada Soccer
In fact, it wasn’t until June 3, that the CSA announced the creation of Canada’s Soccer Pathway as a means of instituting a curriculum for long-term player development
Though the CSA must take the blame for waiting too long to institute this system, while inhibiting the successful development of their own players, the blame for Canada’s lack of success at the international level cannot be solely put on their shoulders as there are factors beyond their control.
Canadian soccer players are often overlooked by MLS clubs because of their nationality. At the beginning of every season, each MLS club has the opportunity to fill a certain number of roster spots with players that are labelled as international or non-domestic. The remaining roster spots must be filled with players who are considered to be domestic.
This is where controversy arises. For the three Canadian MLS clubs, domestic players include those that are Canadian or American citizens. For the remaining 16 American-based MLS clubs, domestic players are defined as American citizens or permanent residents only.
In the MLS, international roster spots are generally saved for players who come from different parts of the world to play soccer in North America. For the most part, these players are expected to be highly-touted and possess a great amount talent. When former English star Nigel Reo-Coker signed for the Whitecaps in 2013, his signing took up an international roster spot and it was expected that he be the key to their midfield problems.
This MLS roster rule has effectively allowed American clubs to limit the number of Canadian players on their teams and instead fill up their international spots with “better talent” from other countries. At last count, there were only five Canadians playing for American clubs. Two play in D.C., while the remaining three are in Dallas, Los Angeles and Portland.
In all fairness, the United States Soccer Federation-sanctioned league was created in 1996 as part of an agreement with FIFA to allow the U.S. to host the 1994 World Cup tournament. The MLS was meant to be a domestic soccer league where American talent could develop and make an impact on the national team. The creation of the league has done just that, as the United States is currently ranked the 17th best team in the world.
However, since the MLS has become a North American sports entity, Canadian talent has had nowhere to thrive in their own league. They have been restricted to playing for only three clubs, which are trying to balance being competitive with American clubs, while being solely responsible for developing the next generation of Canadian players.
Canadian clubs have been playing catch-up with the Americans since arriving in the MLS and in that short amount of time the mindset has been club over country. In Vancouver, it was Miller, Robson and Reo-Coker. In Montreal, it was Di Vaio and Nesta and, most recently in Toronto, it’s been Jermain Defoe and Michael Bradley that have taken roster spots away from Canadian players.
Out of a 30-man roster, you’d be hard pressed to find many Canadians in a consistent starting role for any of the three clubs, as only five Canadians are signed to the Whitecaps active roster, and only eight appear in Toronto and Montreal.
In an attendance-driven league, it is difficult to blame the clubs for making the signings that they do. After the star signings of Defoe and Bradley, Toronto’s attendance increased by 24.6 per cent from last year. For the club, these signings may be worth it financially, but who’s looking out for the national program and Canadian talent?
Only as recently as last year did the CSA begin to discuss the roster rule issue with the MLS. A year later there has been no change. These discussions, along with the long-awaited arrival of a national curriculum, have allowed Canadian soccer to make steps towards overcoming the obstacles that have been both self-inflicted and set by our American counterparts. Yet, the results won’t be felt for many years to come.
We are still a nation trying to figure out how this whole soccer thing works.
