Welcome to another edition of Long Balls: Canadians Abroad. It’s a service for those who want to keep tabs on Canadian footballers but lack time to wade through multi-page forum threads and obscure German-based betting websites.
Sigh. Finally some holiday mirth here at Long Balls. After watching Simeon Jackson, Josh Simpson and yes, even Tomasz Radzinski bang in goal after goal earlier this season, we hit a bit of a dry spell on the scoresheet. Leave it to wayward defender and roving Turkish league ball winner Mike Klukowski to cure our ills.
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He wheedled into a local bank, filled out the requisite forms and opened his account for the season, scoring for Ankaragücü in a 1-1 draw with Sivasspor. The goal is great news, but even greater news is that Klukowski is getting regular minutes. He may not have suited up for Canada since May, but he's hardly drifting out of shape in the meantime.
On the subject of the regular physical exercise that goes hand-in-hand with lining up for a top-level professional club in Europe, how about that Canadian mens' national team keeper situation?
There's this friendly coming up against Greece in February, in Greece. You might remember this opponent from such tournaments as Euro 2004, which they won, and the World Cup last June, in which they were largely disappointing but nonetheless present.
Canada's options in goal for this upcoming friendly include ostensible first-choice keeper Lars Hirschfeld, who will be just starting to stir from his winter slumber, considering that he plays his club football in Norway, whose league breaks from November to March. Haidar Al Shaibani is riding the pine in the French second division, although I assume that he's at least getting some form of rudimentary physical activity he could parlay into a start against the 11th ranked nation in the world.
David Monsalve recently tweeted about how crowded it was at north Toronto's Yorkdale mall during the holidays, while Josh Wagenaar is writing economics papers at Graceland University in Iowa.
But here's where I finally address the reference to newly minted Canada hopeful Milan Borjan in this post's title. Exactly how committed he is to our national program remains to be seen -- I'll remain nervous until I see him on a soccer field, wearing a Canada shirt, at least marginally involved in a Fifa-sanctioned match. After all, this is a guy who likes to move around. All that's left is for the theme from The Littlest Hobo to start playing in the background when you open his Wikipedia page.
He's just your average Serbian kid who fled a civil war, settled in Hamilton for a time, moved to Uruguay, then back to Serbia, the whole while harbouring the pipe dream of playing for the national side of his native land before succumbing to a creeping sense of reality coupled with a strange letter in the mail from a gentleman called Stephen Hart. But the fact is, I'm not sure Canada has any better choice to start the match against Greece. Can you think of one?
That's why I'm disturbed at not being able to figure out why he was subbed off after 60 minutes in a 2-1 loss to Javor Ivanjica on the weekend in Serbia. Managers don't generally pull the keeper two-thirds though a match unless he's injured. I punched in about all the relevant Google searches I could think of and then threw my hands up. God, please don't let him be injured.
Other Concacaf players from outside the U.S.A.-Mexico Concacaf duopoly making an impact abroad this weekend include Honduran cat and mouse team Maynor Figueroa and Hendry Thomas. They start basically every match for Wigan in the Premier League, and now Wilson Palacios is getting minutes in Tottenham. He went 90 at the weekend against Birmingham and 90 again on Tuesday in the Champions League against Twente.
So there you have it. While Canadian soccer fans frantically spin Serbian language match reports through Google Translate, desperate to sleep at night knowing they'll have a keeper for their side's next friendly, Honduran supporters kick back and watch 3/11ths of their starting eleven live it up in the Premier and Champions leagues. Happy Holidays!