While reading this NY Times article on Canadian football, the similarities between them and us were glaring. The difference: they have the gall to demand change and actually fire a figure-head despite his recent accomplishents FIFA U-20 and Toronto in the MLS. Do we have the spine to do the same for the sake of our football?
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Canadians Trying to Overcome 20 Years of Futility
By JACK BELL 11/08/06 NY Times
The Web site of the Canadian Soccer Association is available in English and French, but for the past 20 years, the game up north has known only one language — failure.
The United States has played in every World Cup after 1986; Canada has not played in one since then. Major League Soccer has succeeded in attracting sponsorship dollars and providing a place for young Americans to hone their skills. In Canada, there is no national league and precious few sponsorship deals.
The record of futility, coupled with the departures of coaches like Frank Yallop and the defections of players like Owen Hargreaves to play internationally for another country, reached a tipping point last week when the C.S.A. (canadasoccer.com) fired Kevan Pipe, who had run its day-to-day operations since 1985.
“We have been among the missing since 1986, and people have got to realize that the men’s World Cup team has to be our No. 1 priority,” Colin Linford, the president of the C.S.A., said in a telephone interview from Kitchener, Ontario. “We have to do everything possible to ensure we qualify for 2010 because the effects will trickle down. There is not a country in the world where the men’s team is not the top priority.”
Canada is ranked No. 71 by FIFA, between Lithuania and Venezuela.
Pipe played a role in Canada’s being named host of next summer’s FIFA under-20 world championship, which will be played in six cities and has already sold more than 400,000 tickets.
He also took some credit for helping Toronto land an M.L.S. team and for the construction of BMO Field in Toronto, a 20,000-seat stadium on the lakefront that will be used by the club team and for the under-20 tournament.
“This decision has come 20 years too late,” Bob Iarusci, a former national team player, said in a telephone interview from Toronto. “Pipe got the credit for bringing the U-20 tournament to Canada, but how many other places does FIFA have to go? The game up here has been set back 25-30 years, and there’s the same British mafia in control of it still. The situation is bleak: no structure, no leader, no passion, no vision.”
Pipe has other detractors.
“Pipe’s firing was a question of some well-overdue housekeeping,” said Noel Butler, the host of a soccer radio show in Montreal. “A straight shooter at the helm is long overdue. I’m sure most of the people in a position of influence within Canadian soccer welcome and endorse the decision.”
Linford said he hoped to have a new top executive, a new national team coach and a new technical director in place by the end of March. Yallop, a Canadian, resigned as coach of the national team earlier this year to return to M.L.S., where perhaps the league’s best player, Dwayne De Rosario, is Canadian.
