"Why do we need to look at the problems with European clubs buying our players (and not paying)? Why don’t we start with our own professional clubs? Why aren’t our own professional clubs, in our own backyard, paying some kind of stipend to the originating club for signing some of these players?" Montagliani said. "I think that’s something we need to put in place. It’s a balancing act. It doesn’t have to be big dollars. But I think it will change the culture beneath the pro clubs."
Montagliani drew on a local example to make his point.
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"If a youth club has placed five or six players with the Vancouver Whitecaps and they were a youth club in the high performance league. If the Whitecaps were to give money back, in some formula, to the league, maybe not to just the club – it’s the league that’s developing them too – that’s just going to help people say, 'You know what it’s not about winning cups, it’s about developing players.'" he described. "And then they maybe say, ‘I’d rather develop players because there is a better value for what we’re running here.' If I win a cup, I get nothing for that. But if I put six players on that pro team, which fuels that engine, I think it changes the culture. I think it needs to start at home before it starts anywhere else."
As CSN has documented, there is cognitive dissonance that exists for what Canadian clubs are entitled to when their players sign professionally abroad and what they are able to collect. Montagliani describes it as a problem that isn't localized to Canada but in a number of federations.
"This is an issue everywhere in the world, except for Europe," he said. "Where the system doesn’t fail is in Europe, where the money gets trickled down to the originating clubs. And it’s easier in Europe, because a lot of the originating clubs are not amateur, they’re professional. They might be fourth division, but they’re still professional."
"I’ll give you a personal example. Before my CSA days, an EPL club was looking to sign a player in British Columbia. And they basically said, ‘if you want us to pay what it says in the FIFA guideline were just not going to sign the guy.’"
So what can the CSA do to stop this kind of pilfering?
"From a legal standpoint, or a governance standpoint, you can step in. But in the same token, you can step in all you want, what’s the end result? You might win the battle but lose the war. At the end of the day you want this young kid to sign. And you don’t want to scare off a potential suitor here for a young Canadian to have a professional experience," Montagliani said. "It’s a balancing act, at what point do we sink our teeth in and go ‘this is a principle that we need to stick our guns on?’"
As others have pointed to however, he sees a place, in the near future, where they can draw a line in the sand.
"It’s been difficult in Canada because we’ve been so scattered in our structure. You and I both know how scattered our professional structure has been," Montagliani said. "That’s now starting to have a bit of definition. Beneath that, we’re beginning to see that definition with the OPDL, with the BC high performance league and the Quebec league. As time goes on it’s going to be easier for us to sink our teeth in because we do have that professional structure."
In the meantime, regarding the local clubs collecting from the local pro teams, Montagliani's stance seems pretty clear.
"FIFA has regulations. And they’re pretty spelled out."
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