By: Dino Rossi
Last Thursday, the Canadian Women’s National Soccer Team was dealt a massive blow, falling 4-0 to a lower ranked French side, resulting in Canada’s surprisingly early elimination from the 2011 FIFA Women’s World Cup.
I have read a wide range of reactions to this teams’ failure over the past few days, including today to Nigeria, and clearly there are plenty of angry and frustrated Canadian soccer fans out there who expected so much more from this team. Although I am a passionate Canadian soccer supporter, my primary emotion is neither anger nor frustration but, rather, I’m feeling a slight glimmer of hope, which is especially odd considering how hopeless many people feel the Canadian Soccer reality is at present.
Don’t get me wrong. This is definitely not the best time to be a Canadian footy fan. Our men’s program is far from running on all cylinders and we just suffered through an underwhelming and short-lived Gold Cup campaign last month. Our WNT program, which was supposed to be the bright light for the CSA and the squad most likely to provide some much needed joy for success starved Canadian fans, has proven to be sorely lacking in quality as well.
However, having said that, I see potential for a silver lining, especially if the WNT’s early knockout from the World Cup serves as the tipping point needed to immediately get to work at charting a better path for Canadian Soccer. Both our men’s and women’s programs have stagnated, despite the fact the CSA has committed to funding these programs better than they have ever before. As such, we must take a hard look at the root cause for our shortcomings and start doing something about fixing the problems that plague our sport.
[PRBREAK][/PRBREAK]
The painful truth is staring at us squarely in the face. We simply cannot compete with the rest of the world when our soccer system is geared almost entirely toward promoting amateurism and recreation while virtually everyone else in the football world is focused on professionalism and success at the elite level of the game. The status quo is not working for Canada and it never will. The relentless drive to boost registration numbers ever higher with little or no focus on “professionalizing” our game is not making us a more successful soccer nation. Those impressive recreational soccer participation rates are not translating into the development of the quantity or quality of player we need to compete internationally. What has evolved over time is a very elaborate and generally profitable babysitting service that is not designed to develop better players (or coaches) and it does nothing to help us develop any sort of legitimate soccer culture here in Canada.
The question is this: Are those in charge of the CSA, the various Provincial Associations, the local District Associations and, most importantly, the huge network of community clubs that are the foundation of our sport in Canada, willing or able to face these facts and start thinking outside the box about the type of reform that is needed? Will the people in positions of authority look at what happened at the Women’s World Cup and chalk it up to poor coaching or bad luck - because it is easier to take those positions - or are they prepared to take a cold, hard look at reality and commit to rolling up their sleeves and getting down to the hard work that is needed? We’re not talking about needing to simply make structural changes, although they are badly needed. We also need to change deeply entrenched attitudes among people at every level of the sport that value participation and providing access to soccer FAR MORE than they care about developing the game at the elite/professional level.
One may ask why the WNT’s failure would be more of a tipping point than the men’s persistent lack of success. As I see it, the relative success of our women’s teams over the past 10 years or so has reinforced in the minds of many involved throughout Canadian soccer that we can indeed be successful on the world stage with an almost entirely amateur soccer system as the foundation for our sport. It gave many an unfounded confidence that “we can do it our own way”. However, after the shellacking our women suffered in the World Cup, those people who were previously confident and/or satisfied MUST be starting to question this line of thinking, or at least one would hope they are. The reality is that our success in women’s soccer up until now had little to do with the quality of our player development but, rather, had far more to do with the fact that relatively few footballing nations paid serious attention to the women’s game until very recently. Furthermore, our current ranking of #6 in the world going into the World Cup appears to have been the result of playing a large quantity of matches over the past 12 months, where we feasted on weaker nations while accumulating a much more modest record of 3 wins, 4 losses and 2 ties versus top 10 sides (including the losses to Germany and France last week).
This time, those people who might be inclined to defend the status quo cannot reflexively claim that the WNT’s poor showing came as a result of a lack of preparation or a general lack of resources. The WNT was led by one of the top managers in women’s soccer, Carolina Morace, who has worked to revamp almost every aspect of the WNT program over the 27 months that she has been at the helm. The team’s budget was the healthiest it has ever been, apparently ranking among the top 7 or 8 nations in the world, and it allowed the team a 4 month residency in Rome as well as an unprecedented schedule of friendly and tournament matches over the past 12 months. It also gave Morace the freedom to employ a large and highly experienced staff of hand-picked assistants to help prepare her squad. As a result, many “experts” picked Canada to be a team to be reckoned with in Germany.
However, when they got to the biggest stage, they found themselves up against opponents who were technically superior, tactically more disciplined, mentally tougher and physically on par with the Canadian side. Those qualities are not developed over a short period of time. The women representing both Germany and France (as well as most of the other top national teams on the women’s side of the ledger) are developed from childhood within a largely professional system, by professional coaches/trainers and, as they graduate up the ladder, they have the opportunity to continue playing the sport at a (somewhat) professional level at home or abroad. In those key areas, our women can only look enviously at what their competition have going for them. The situation is just as dire for our men, if not more so.
There are as many ideas for fixing the system as there are people espousing solutions. In Ontario, the OSA has formed a Technical Advisory Council, made up of several experienced soccer people from across the province. This Council will be expected to make a number of recommendations for moving the sport in a better direction in Canada’s soccer heartland and hopefully the OSA’s Board of Directors will adopt most or all of their proposals. The time has come to show some faith in the experts. The BCSA created its own taskforce and from that they have announced the creation of a High Performance League that will hopefully improve the quality of player development in that province. Quebec has their Sport Étude program, which has alot going for it as well.
In my view, any system is capable of accomplishing the goal of improving the generally poor state of player development as long as that system is focused on surrounding athletes with qualified, experienced and professional coaches/trainers as young as possible. We can’t expect legions of well meaning volunteer moms and dads, many/most of whom have a very weak foundation in the sport, to be the trainers of our future generations of footballers, especially during their formative years. It is not fair to the kids, nor is it fair to the volunteers either. Many people in the “system” will say we don’t have enough good quality technical people and that might be true. If so, we need to get serious about bringing qualified people into Canada, especially in the near term. Developing our own coaches and soccer specific sports science people is critically important, as is encouraging ex-high level players to take up coaching, but that process takes time. We can’t afford to lose more time. I can assure you that there is no shortage of people with a strong football background (either as a player or trainer) who would jump at the chance to work in Canada in the soccer business. I know that I get emails, faxes and letters every week from all over the world from highly qualified people who seek employment with our small club. I’m sure big community clubs are overrun with job enquiries from outside Canada.
This is not to say that there is absolutely no use for the volunteers. They are a very important part of Canadian soccer and that won’t change anytime soon, nor should it. What I’m proposing is that the highest level of competition, regardless of age group, needs to be overseen primarily by experienced professionals. In Ontario, it is estimated that there are over 2000 “rep” teams dotting the province from the ages of 11-18 (according to the TERRA Power Rankings). That is part of the problem. Get that number of truly “representative” teams down to a more manageable number (for arguments sake, let’s say 300-400 for all of Ontario) and establish rigorous standards for what it takes to play at that top level to ensure quality. This is a more logical approach and yet it still provides plenty of opportunities for players lacking the quality or unwilling to make the commitment necessary to continue playing soccer at an appropriate and enjoyable level that approximates the current level of play.
In addition to investing in professional coaching, it is also critical that we make significant investments in the development of better competitive pathways for our top home grown players. In the vast majority of cases, our community clubs see their responsibility to players ending when they reach 18 years of age and then those players are cast out to figure out the next step of their progression for themselves (assuming they don’t quit the sport altogether due to the lack of opportunities). Most community clubs do not offer permanent, fully funded senior soccer programs for men and women. This runs completely counter to almost every serious soccer nation in the world, where the senior expression of the sport is the #1 priority for a “community” club and every other activity the club partakes in are designed to provide the necessary resources (human and financial) to help the first team succeed. If we do not adopt this sort of structure here in Canada and promote the importance of competitive senior soccer as part of any long term player development philosophy, we’ll never make real progress.
The financial resources needed to prioritize high level senior soccer already exist, so long as the people who control those resources are willing to invest those resources accordingly. We cannot continue to rely on foreign clubs to provide high quality senior level competition for our players. The US College route is not cutting the mustard either. Even MLS, who benefits most from the college soccer system, agrees with assessment. We must stop being so passive and start doing most of the heavy lifting ourselves. This is especially true now that the rules governing a club’s ability to sign foreign players below the age of 18 are getting far more stringent, as FIFA seeks to stamp out abuses. You are unlikely to see situations where kids like Jonathan De Guzman leave Canada at 12 years old to sign for a club in Europe unless his entire family is prepared to immigrate permanently to that country. You are also less likely to see kids who are 15 or 16 years of age signing with a foreign club and getting to play in their youth ranks. They might be able to train with foreign clubs prior to the age of 18 but actually signing to play for those clubs can’t happen until they have reached their 18th birthday.
Our governing bodies need to come to grips with this reality. As it stands now, Canada is simply incapable of developing world class footballers in any sort of systematic fashion. We might get lucky now and then but we can’t be content with relying on good fortune. We have to make our own luck. We must become far more professional in the way we approach player development and we must have experienced soccer people in positions of authority throughout the sport. It really is not that complicated. The examples are out there to be referred to.
It’s time for Canadian Soccer to cease being viewed as a bit of a joke, which is precisely how those in the soccer world, who bother to notice us at all, perceive us. Being the largest participation sport in the country cannot continue to soccer’s primary calling card anymore. It’s time to start making the changes and investments needed that will bring the results (both short and long term) that so many of us crave. We need to see real progress or else a sense of hopelessness truly will prevail. Here’s hoping I am not the only person who feels this way.
_______
Dino Rossi is the president and co-owner of Milltown FC, a senior club based in Milton, Ontario and a passionate supporter of Canadian Soccer