"I want to support the Canadian men's national team, but..."
While the country is indisputably full of soccer fans, the above sentence is one you'll hear quite often from folks who don't see fit to pledge their allegiance to the boys in red. Most often, the sentence ends with, "... but they're just not very good."
Everyone's entitled to spend their sporting time and dollar as they see fit, of course. But the idea that one develops and retains fealty to a team based solely on the coldly economic determination of whether a sufficiently good "product" is being served up is, to me, a tragic reflection of how the business of sports has infiltrated and corroded what the nature of fandom is meant to be.
It's even more tragic when it comes to our foremost team in the world's foremost sport.
[PRBREAK][/PRBREAK]
Time was when sports fans really had no option but to cheer for their local side, as a paucity of coverage limited their ability to follow anyone else with any regularity. (There are also arguments to be made about the declining societal worth of once-lauded ideals such as loyalty, but that's a moral tirade for another day.)
With the rise of satellite TV, the Internet and 24/7 sports coverage, fans have the sporting world at their fingertips. Where once a quick scan of the boxscores in the newspaper was a fan's only way to check up on out-of-town results, now it's not unusual for sports enthusiasts (soccer fans in particular) to be following several live games simultaneously through various media, even if those games are being played across an ocean.
For those with ties to another country, then, it's become exponentially easier to keep up-to-date on the situation "back home", be it the Premiership or Serie A, or the exploits of whoever's plying their trade in the Ecuadorian league. At the same time, globalization and major clubs' push to "build their brand globally" (more reprehensible corporate-speak) have lead to annual traveling circuses, where some of the best players on Earth show up to play meaningless friendlies in far-flung locales.
In other words, there are a lot of options to get your footy fix.
Just prior to World Cup 1994, 60,000 fans packed Commonwealth Stadium in Edmonton to watch the men's national team grab a 1-1 draw with Brazil, the eventual champions of that year's tournament. The crowd was overwhelmingly pro-Canadian, but also full of people for whom that game may have represented their only chance at seeing top-level international soccer. These days, you can catch top stars during one of their summertime North American kickabouts or, at the very least, streamed live directly to your laptop on a weekly basis.
All of this preamble brings me to my point: I get it. I understand, intellectually if not emotionally, the reasons why you'd choose not to support our men's national team. Combine these economic and technological changes with the well-worn, intractable issue of "Canadian identity" (or lack thereof) and you've got the perfect storm of reasons why people may not support Les Rouges.
Now for the reasons why they should.
"Canada helped my family when we had bad times back home ... Now they helped us come over here, make a better life for me and my family, so this is my way that I can return it to them and say thank you. I don't have any other way to return it."
That's Milan Borjan, goalkeeper for the men's national team, who will be on the roster for tonight's friendly against Ecuador and the upcoming Gold Cup. His family moved to Canada from Serbia when he was 13, and coach Stephen Hart brought him into the Canadian setup just last year. He had attracted some attention from the Serbian national program, but instead chose to represent Canada.
"Before I accepted Canada people were talking about the Serbian national team. ... I was born down there and everything, my family's from down there. But I looked at it as, Canada helped my family. It's not how good Canada is (or) how good Serbia is in soccer. I looked at how to return it to them because they helped me a lot."
I -- like most other Torontonians -- am the product of recent immigration. But my father has told me many times that he immigrated to Canada for a reason. And no matter how long you or your family have been in this country, the reality is, the country has done something for you too.
It may not be as drastic as having given you refuge from a bloody war. But it could be the universal healthcare. The economic opportunities. The open, diverse and welcoming social setting. The beautiful natural scenery. The solid principles of democracy and freedom. So on and so on.
None of these elements are perfect, of course. Neither is our men's national team. But the team is comprised of men willing to risk their potentially-lucrative professional careers -- for which they've fought for most of their lives -- in order to represent the nation that we all call home.
The very least we can do is repay that favour by showing some support, don't you think?
"Every country needs supporters. Every game they play at home, they need a lot of supporters," said Borjan. "We need to bring more fans to come and cheer for us, to give us that 12th player."
Canada will never be Spain or Brazil or whomever else when it comes to soccer. We are what we are. But that's just the point, isn't it? It's us. It's our team. It's not about consuming a product. It's about wearing a jersey that ostensibly means something. Sure, notions such as nationalism and commitment to a sporting franchise are, at their basest levels, intrinsically ridiculous.
But in a world of infinite choice, this is probably the easiest one of all. No explanations needed for why you cheer for the team, because the explanation is already built in: It's your team.