If you look hard enough, you’ll likely find at least one TFC fan complaining that Julian de Guzman has been called up to the Gold Cup. For some it’s club over country, always, no exceptions.
However, most understand that football, like life, is about compromise. The inclusion of de Guzman in the line-up is a burden for the club, but one that they are prepared to deal with. Country matters too.
What TFC fans have had issue with in the past is the amount of burden they were asked to carry. When you are forced to coax a retired fullback from a local old boys team to play alongside a scout in a league match then you have a legitimate issue. Yes, that issue is mostly with the league that is forcing you to play on international dates and during continental competition, but that doesn’t mean that thinking national team fans should not have some empathy.
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After all, Stephen Hart does. Today he admitted that he made some compromises in his selections for the Gold Cup out of respect for those teams that that are in leagues that play summer schedules. We don’t know for sure whether Adrian Cann or Greg Sutton might have been given the call if MLS had chose to do the sensible thing and stopped during the Gold Cup, but we can assume that it would have been far more likely.
The stubborn and blind view that the national teams should take any player they want, regardless of the circumstance is, at best, short-sighted. At worse, its counter-productive. Thankfully Hart understands this.
Managing a national team is more than just picking your best XI and getting on with it. You must manage much more than that. Player’s egos and club team’s needs all need to be considered at all times. If you fail to do that then you run the risk of a push back at the worst possible time. Hart was clear today that he would be willing to be flexible now, even in his second most important event, so long as it was understood that when World Cup qualifying starts that he would need to be selfish.
Since Hart is showing them respect now, the clubs will likely respect him then. When the games really matter Canada’s best will be there.
And no one, anywhere, will complain.