Imagine where Canadian soccer would be right now without Montagliani and Herdman...
A Toronto and Montreal based organization stunting the growth of the game at all levels in this country, as adults bicker back and forth over political infighting and self serving egotistical hubris.
The funds from making the World Cup and hosting the world Cup will be largely wasted by the CSA and their board members and whoever else at the provincial level they've cuddled up to, not long after 2026 expires.
As as example of the inefficiency; USA Soccer's main board has 13 people to cover the 330MM people in the country.
CSA's board has 14 people for 10x less people in Canada.
My rants on here about the CSA are likely tiresome, but they are all valid.
Herdman was a stop gap as CSA had egg on their face after a year long search hired a guy who wasn't putting up with getting told by these Toronto and Montreal based CSA members how to manage a team...so Herdman was forced to coach the MNT rather then the CSA get exposed in another long manager search.
Of course the CSA makes the PC statement about splitting with the womens side, and it’s probably news to the womens side as well.
Remember when it took them 4 months to rule on a racist comment heard by most?
CSA just making sure they appease a faction of the population, while basically disrespecting the complainants.
Good for the players, the CSA has been nickel and diming this program to death for decades, and then claiming “no Tv money”, “no domestic league” ( the CSL lasted 5 years after the 1986 WC because all that startup money vanished) “geographical hurdles” and other non sense as to why the program continually was a laughing stock, when politics and funds mismanagement played a large part of the disarray. When all those players came back, you didn’t hear too much waxing poetic about their time on the national team, because they had to fight crap and distraction and politics off the field internally nevermind better opponents on it.
There’s no hiding the funds the CSA gets for making and hosting the WC so the CSA can’t hide behind any of the crap they did before.
I still remember when DeVos vowed to go work for the CSA and change the culture there. He’s turned into a sheep like the rest of them.
Last edited by browna; 06-04-2022 at 08:57 PM.
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Yes, the CSA and their financial constraints. Meaning the 14 board members plus anyone else from Ontario and Quebec soccer associations which allows and helps them to be on that board, need to be paid first, alone with all the first class tickets and accomodations to Qatar.
Westhead and the Canadian government should do an in-depth forensic audit on the CSA, now that it’s in the spotlight, long before jumping on hockey Canada. You’ll get a lot more unethical impropriety there.
It sucks that it's come to this and that the fans in Vancouver got royally screwed here but this showdown has been brewing for a very long time based on how horribly the CSA has operated. If this is what it takes for tangible change across all levels of the executive branch of Canadian Soccer, so be it.
Edited to add - The players have burned alot of goodwill here with the fanbase no doubt. It will be interesting to see how this plays out. Many have supported the players here but they certainly also could have handled things better.
Last edited by Trojan97; 06-05-2022 at 03:12 PM.
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CSA has always been a garbage organization and its not that surprising that unprecedented on field success for both the women's and men's teams wasn't enough to force them to get their act together. Having this fiasco play out now will hopefully be better for the program in the long run than just letting the status quo of incompetence go on forever.
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It's worse than expected. Who is this "Canadian Soccer Business"?
They are running soccer in this country for their own profit, with the CSA a bunch of puppets they've installed/been fine with this third party running the money side.
Never mind the payments to the players, the fact that profits from World Cup success that should be going to generations of soccer players, are being collected by some company that entered into a secret agreement with the CSA, I assume for some up front fans payments, is almost criminal.
Let me guess, they are a group of Toronto and Montreal soccer people who are responsible and friendly to Bonito and others who got board positions. You can probably tie a lot of jobs and even players in development programs to people associated with that organization over the years.
And CSA avoiding giving answers becuase execs are vacationing, and ignoring the most important team in your organization and their valid requests for answers is terrible.
And again, of the 14 board members, none of them.are former players. DeVos is in there somewhere but at an operational level, not a decision making level.
Again, bravo. Throwing the spotlight on this whole situation requires media and government intervention and audit immediately...for financial impropriety and any number of dubious relationships with this "Canada Soccer Business “.
Disgusting but not surprising.
Last edited by browna; 06-05-2022 at 04:03 PM.
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It sucks that it's come to this and that the fans in Vancouver got royally screwed here but this showdown has been brewing for a very long time based on how horribly the CSA has operated. If this is what it takes for tangible change across all levels of the executive branch of Canadian Soccer, so be it.
Edited to add - The players have burned alot of goodwill here with the fanbase no doubt. It will be interesting to see how this plays out. Many have supported the players here but they certainly also could have handled things better.
Players have burned zero goodwill. Zero.
As for fans feeling cheated out of a usless friendly vs a nothing opponent tonight, they've wanted to negotiate with the CSA for a month, who have used excuses about being away on holidays, and only June 4 when the execs of course all land on Vancouver, are they available to finally chat...to tell the players they don't control the money anymore. (Meanwhile those same execs negotiated friendly with Iran and probably others in that time, so...)
They have just recently found out that that national governing body that is supposed to be supporting them, and soccer for all Canadians, have sold out to private enterprise, seemingly secretly, years ago, and no longer has full control of anything, let alone finances.
Again, this is borderline criminal for the CSA to do this.
Last edited by browna; 06-05-2022 at 04:27 PM.
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They have just recently found out that that national governing body that is supposed to be supporting them, and soccer for all Canadians, have sold out to private enterprise, seemingly secretly, years ago, and no longer has full control of anything, let alone finances.
Again, this is borderline criminal for the CSA to do this.
For people like ourselves who understand the circumstances behind this decision this is likely true. However, I personally have three separate group chats w friends who live in Vancouver/happened to be in Vancouver this weekend all with tickets for todays game and all three chats are currently popping off with comments about how much of a mickey mouse operation soccer is in Canada with many comments along the lines of "this is why you don't waste your time watching this sport". These are all hockey/basketball fans generally who have jumped on the bandwagon and wanted to see the team live.
While the justification behind the decision to cancel is there, there are alot of people who were screwed over today that don't care what the reason is and are now less likely to give the team another chance/follow as closely in the future. Winning cures all in the case of these casual types but there was absolutely goodwill lost by many by this decision today. Rightly or wrongly.
With that said, I agree with your points on what is essentially the privatization of the national program. Incredibly sketchy set of circumstances and I don't blame the players whatsoever for wanting this addressed.
For people like ourselves who understand the circumstances behind this decision this is likely true. However, I personally have three separate group chats w friends who live in Vancouver/happened to be in Vancouver this weekend all with tickets for todays game and all three chats are currently popping off with comments about how much of a mickey mouse operation soccer is in Canada with many comments along the lines of "this is why you don't waste your time watching this sport". These are all hockey/basketball fans generally who have jumped on the bandwagon and wanted to see the team live.
While the justification behind the decision to cancel is there, there are alot of people who were screwed over today that don't care what the reason is and are now less likely to give the team another chance/follow as closely in the future. Winning cures all in the case of these casual types but there was absolutely goodwill lost by many by this decision today. Rightly or wrongly.
With that said, I agree with your points on what is essentially the privatization of the national program. Incredibly sketchy set of circumstances and I don't blame the players whatsoever for wanting this addressed.
I guess, but the complaints are coming out of personal inconvenience and lost time and money. Complaints would be as boisterous if BC Ferries canceled sailings and people couldnt get to the game from the island, or if there was transit issues or parking issues at BC Place, they would be just as upset, but have that rage channeled at whoever was to blame.
If I had paid for a ticket I would be more upset of having Canadan going from playing and matching up against a World Cup team in Iran vs a three step downgrade in playing Panama.
Press conference postponed til 8:15 EST for anyone interested in watching.
It will be fascinating to see how the media in this country deals with this. I have no doubts those who control the CSA, and this 3rd party organization, are scrambling to put up some damage control.
Showing soccer in this country has not been profitable because the team has sucked. The team has sucked since our national organization is corrupt and lazy and concerned instead with own personal agendas within the organization for decades then growing the game. The organization then blames the national networks for not giving them money or exposure as the reason for them sucking. Now the organization has let someone else be the purse strings and take their cut. One soccer was the only one to step up, but from my understanding, the Canada Soccer Buisness is associated with the CPL.
TSN/CTV/Bell has the WC rights. Westhead is loosely associated with TSN, hopefully he can remain on this story and unswayed. Who knows what the rest of of the Bell media network will go and do. Guys like Kristin Jack who would normally speak out on things like this, are part of One Soccer and the CPL now so I assume he stays quiet. James Sherman too I think is OneSoccer now, so he will be muted.
Sportsnet should be going to town on this story. Tim Mccalef should bring Sid back for a rant. Get Craig Forrest back and other former players to tell their stories.
CBC too, should dig their claws into this as well and make this a national story, which it is.
Edit: KJ hasn’t tweeted at all about this. Sharman has retweeted the Athletic Story. John Molinaro is going to be on CBC and CTV nationally he says after the windbag Bontis tries to damage control here in a few minutes.
Last edited by browna; 06-05-2022 at 06:11 PM.
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