The Canadian Men's Soccer Team Thread

[Trojan97]

Bontis has always come across as such an arrogant ####. Like MASH said, it's not going to fix anything immediately but it's definitely a start. Nice to get this dealt with now to hopefully build some momentum towards 2026.

[Yoho]

https://twitter.com/user/status/1630328916702289920

[browna]

Originally Posted by Johnny199r

Happy to be wrong.

Who says you are wrong? Don't see anything that he's not still a VP of Concacaf.

Montagliani helps Bontis fail upwards with a quintessential ex-CSA patronage appointment, that has been one of the problems with the CSA for decades.

Bontis, the ink barely dry on his VP role, slithers immediately out of his CSA role and responsibilities and into one with much less spotlight and more perks.

Again, it's good to get his arrogant and condescending ego out, and with the spotlight on the CSA, their 12 board members will come up with, at best, someone who will say all the right things and have a much more pleasant demeanor in the media to try and placate the current volatile situation.

However, no matter the person and the intentions, they will still be pretty useless when any major decisions that involve spending on anything NT youth NT, or development programs at various levels, as they have to pass through the money men at the CSB to get more than the CSA contracted allowance.

[cam_wmh]

..I'm hearing they aren't sure if they have to be a board member of their domestic federation to hold that seat.

[GirlySports]

FIFA finally officially announced that that USA, Mexico and Canada have automatically qualified for the 2026 World Cup. Woohoo!

With that done, the format for the remaining 32 CONCACAF teams has been announced. 3 automatic spots plus 2 playoff spots.

First Round. The bottom 4 teams (29-32) will be paired in home and away playoffs. Currently that would be Turks and Caicos Islands, US Virgin Islands, British Virgin Islands and Anguilla. Get your tickets for the possible heated Virgin Islands derby!

Second Round. The 2 winners join the remaining 28 teams in 6 groups of 5. Single round robin, top 2 in each group advance.

Third Round. The 12 advancing teams are put into 3 groups of 4. Double round robin, group winners qualify for the World Cup, best two runners up go to the playoffs.

[shermanator]

CSA and the women have agreed on pay for 2022. Something that needed to get out of the way so that all parties could negotiate for 2023 and onward.

https://twitter.com/user/status/1631432660454080512

[browna]

Women aren't impressed. Nor should they be.

https://www.tsn.ca/soccer/canada-wom...eace-1.1926841

A stop gap PR move as Bontis moves to CONCACAF, and predictably the CSA aims to fix the situation by putting a female as Interim President.

The women see right through that smokescreen, saying that both national teams have been negotiating in the dark because the CSA isn't giving them numbers, and, this about the new President.

As impressive as Charmaine Crooks is as an athlete and a Canadian, from the women’s national team’s perspective she represents the 'old guard' on the board. She was on the board when it approved the Canada Soccer Business deal in 2018, and she has always appeared to the players to be closely allied with Nick Bontis. Unfortunately in the decade she has spent on the board, the players have seen nothing to suggest that she was working to promote the women’s national team’s interests," the statement said.

[M*A*S*H 4077]

Alistair Johnston scored his first goal for Celtic today

[Yoho]

Originally Posted by m*a*s*h 4077

alistair johnston scored his first goal for celtic today

https://twitter.com/user/status/1632375382736351233

[shermanator]

Sweet sweet transparency. Tonnes of #### in here with a lot of dollar values.

That proposed CBA includes, but is not limited to the following elements:

• Equal pay (appearance fees and win bonuses) for both National Teams.
• $3,500 per match per player, plus win bonuses up to $5,500 per player depending on the rank of the opposing side.
• An equal amount ($1.15 million) to each National Team for their qualification to their respective FIFA World Cup.
• The pooling and sharing of competition prize money to provide equitable pay in an unequal world.
• Canada Soccer has proposed to put 40% of the Men’s FIFA World Cup prize funds (approximately $3.6M USD for finishing #17-32 at Qatar 2022) into the Prize Pool and as much as 75% of the FIFA Women’s World Cup prize funds (estimated to be $1-4M USD) depending on where the Women’s National Team places in this summer’s FIFA Women’s World Cup in Australia & New Zealand. To demonstrate how “pool and share” works, if a total of $7.6M USD is placed into the pool, then $3.8M would be distributed to each National Team.

....

Canadian Soccer Business is voluntarily and proactively in discussion with Canada Soccer to amend its Representation Agreement, with the goal of providing incremental funding to the Association to support its important mission of growing the game at all levels.

https://twitter.com/CanadaSoccerEN/s...87071407427585

[CroFlames]

Do other major national associations split the money 50/50 like that? To me, it appears the women are getting a wicked deal.

[cam_wmh]

Originally Posted by CroFlames

Do other major national associations split the money 50/50 like that? To me, it appears the women are getting a wicked deal.

I thought I heard the US Men get something like 8%, and the Women get 30% of the revenue, yet the American men still make considerably more. Don't take that as gospel, as I can't recall where I heard it, nor can I cite it.

[shermanator]

The US men's and women's national teams have all prize money pooled together, with winnings split equally between the national teams.

Like everything in Canadian soccer, this CBA proposal from the CSA is essentially a copy/paste of what the Americans did. Just like the CSA/CSB agreement is a copy/paste of the USSF/SUM agreement that was run for decades before ending a few years ago.

https://www.ussoccer.com/stories/2022/05/cba-fact-sheet

Ireland does it as well, with the MNT agreeing to lower their wages to allow for the WNT to have equal pay.

https://www.fai.ie/ireland/news/equa...r-both-mnt-wnt

Only two I can think of off the top of my head.

[Yoho]

https://twitter.com/user/status/1634590068638908417

[GirlySports]

2026 World Cup format official

12 groups of 4, top 2 in each group plus the best 8 3rd place teams advance.

104 games

[browna]

My guess is Vancouver and Toronto get more group games, and relatively less knockout games.

Will be interesting also as to how they divide up the pots. Likely now not two "minnows" in Canada's group, and a victory and a tie are likely required to advance.

[bizaro86]

Originally Posted by browna

My guess is Vancouver and Toronto get more group games, and relatively less knockout games.

Will be interesting also as to how they divide up the pots. Likely now not two "minnows" in Canada's group, and a victory and a tie are likely required to advance.

Seems likely. In 2022 7 of 8 groups the third place team had 4 points. So even if 2/3rds of the 3rd place teams advanced some teams with 4 points wouldn't have made it.

Of course, presumably the extra teams aren't as good, so that might create more separation between the good teams and weaker teams.

[Ozy_Flame]

Zator, Loturi are named to the roster for the upcoming Canada/Honduras game on March 28.

https://twitter.com/user/status/1636449221959090176

[Johnny199r]

Ayo Akinola on the team is...something.

[M*A*S*H 4077]

This camera angle tonight is worse than Pacific FC and the hydro pole