We hinted that change has been coming and Sunday it will arrive. Tomorrow marks the start of a massive Canadian Soccer News overhaul.
One that largely means taking the local coverage out of the hands of that 'centre-of-the-universe scum' and putting it in the hands of those who are in your community, who understand your issues and sing with you at games.
We're decentralizing our coverage and giving it a truly local voice.
[PRBREAK][/PRBREAK]First up is Vancouver. We've brought in an editor well connected to the supporters groups, with an established readership and someone who shares the same values we do for driving the conversation and breaking news. He will be CSN's Vancouver bureau chief of sorts - directing, writing and setting the agenda for Whitecaps and Cascadia coverage.
With him, he's bringing a team of writers, columnists and podcasters that will be introduced in the lead up to First Kick 2012.
They are varied and opinionated and, I'm convinced, will come to be the source for giving the community what it's after - stories away from the, ahem, numbers.
If it's not plainly obvious, this is the most excited I've been about CSN coverage since the planning stages of the CSA reform saga. That helped to define us and has set us apart from the herd - as I believe this will. We're committed to giving Canadian teams and their local fans a voice of their own - a place to discuss their own. We're also committed to creating an interactive experience that will be truly unique to each user. But before we turn the soccer online experience on its head with CSN 2.0, we will deliver Montreal its own proper place and voice. There will be more on all of that in the months ahead.
For now though, the Vancouver Whitecaps gets a second blog on CSN, a dedicated team to cover their game and we get to quell some of the dissent that this is only a site for those East of the Prairies and West of La Belle Province.
Frankly put, tomorrow we take a step towards living up to our name: Canadian Soccer News.