CPL General

[Mihairokov]

3 hours ago, rkomar said:

I think a lot of the raising of the standard of play is down to the coaches and training staff learning over the years the best way to run a team.  Even without any diamonds among the players, the CPL is improving the practical side of playing in this country.  We need this as much as finding and nurturing excellent players.

Agreed.

One thing i've been thinking about lately is how two players returned to Canada this season after considerable time in Europe and don't really stand out in CPL all that much. Zanatta and Twardek both spent a decade in Europe in various leagues and although they're strong CPL players it's not as if they're world-beaters each and every week. I think it would be a much worse indicator if players like them could enter CPL and overly dominate. They don't, and it speaks to where the quality of the league is these days.

[Ozzie_the_parrot]

9 hours ago, rkomar said:

I think a lot of the raising of the standard of play is down to the coaches and training staff learning over the years the best way to run a team.  Even without any diamonds among the players, the CPL is improving the practical side of playing in this country.  We need this as much as finding and nurturing excellent players.

At no point has anyone in this thread suggested that having more pro soccer in Canada was a bad thing. All I questioned is the narrative that the quality of CanPL is going from strength to strength in playing standard terms, which appears to be something akin to an article of faith for some posters on here.

Something to ponder is the following. When CanPL was about to launch it was expected to be significantly higher budget than it ultimately turned out to be. There were players who kept their careers in a holding pattern waiting for the league to launch rather than heading off to some obscure club in Scandinavia as they might have previously.

Now that CanPL is a concrete reality players like Morey Doner, Mohammed Omar, Osaze de Rosario and Easton Ongaro are drifting away to less than stellar opportunities elsewhere rather than hanging around into their early 30s. CanPL rosters skew heavily towards younger age cohorts who are not necessarily as good as players like the above in the here and now but will give pro soccer a go for a few years on a low salary.

For the league to have been improving year on year in playing standard terms more domestic players would need to have been hanging around into their peak performance years and there would need to have been less of an emphasis on bringing in younger import players.

 

Edited July 23 by Ozzie_the_parrot

[Bison44]

I hear the usual blah blah bird chirping nonsense but lets look at it reasonably.  Wages are up, have been going up since the league started.  More and more players are working thier way up the new pathway, L1 regional leagues to CPL then on to greener pastures, just like we hoped they would.  The level of play doesnt stink, I dont see games and think this league is unwatchable and we are still getting results against higher div MLS with 10x the payroll.  Attendance overall is inching up, some of the teams are making inroads with the fan bases. As much as it was a longshot, 2 coaches from CPL were brought up in the search for the national team job.  Because of the CPL, 2 permanent facilities were built and or heavily renovated, ATCO and Starlight, actual brick and mortar that will have a lasting legacy. 

Now he can drone on and on about expectations by people before launch (strawman) but i think anyone with any hint of credibility to them can see that things are improving, slowly.  I dont need to get into a bunch of semantics about which age group of player is spending their peak performance blah blah blah.  I can see with my eyes, and I can see Forge just about to knock of TFC and Montreal in the same year.  I can see Nimick, Poku, Gazdov, Klomp, Tavernier, Tahid etc as the next crop of guys who make their mark at a higher level.  I dont think we have rose colored glasses, the product on the field is getting better...now the for the financials..ieeeeee!!!!!!  

[Kent]

I think we are all just guessing probably as to whether the level of the league is higher, lower or the same as previous years. Let's not forget that in year 1 (2019) Pacific had Issey, Marcel DeJong, and Marcus Haber, who were all recent national team players, and Pacific still finished only 5th out of 7 teams in the spring and 4th in the fall (not going to lie, I had forgotten there was a split season the first year).

There were plenty of guys that first year that we considered names to varying degrees. And people bring up moving players on, yes that's a fantastic thing for the development for the league, but in the immediate term when a good player leaves CPL, that brings the level of the CPL down to some degree. Like if Poku leaves Forge tomorrow, the league overall is a bit weaker at that moment than before he left. Don't get me wrong, it's good for the league for guys to move on to better leagues, in particular if those players do well in their new destinations, because it can drive the price of outgoing players up, and it signals to prospects that the league is a viable place to play. But Forge will be worse off after moving on a player like Poku until they have been able to adequately replace him, or incrementally improve the team in several areas to be better off than before he left.

As for Canadian Championship results. Yes Forge eliminated Montreal and is leading Toronto half way through their match up, but in 2019 Cavalry beat the Whitecaps, and York9 was agonizingly close to beating Montreal in the first leg of their match up (keeper blunder, or maybe even 2 blunders, I'm not sure, gave Montreal a goal or two in the first leg, and still York9 almost got a last minute go ahead goal). So it's not such an obvious improvement from 2019 to 2024 on the field in my opinion.

[Aird25]

1 hour ago, Kent said:

I think we are all just guessing probably as to whether the level of the league is higher, lower or the same as previous years

We could just trust players and coaches that experience the league directly on a weekly basis

Edited July 23 by Aird25

[Aird25]

16 hours ago, Watchmen said:

not to mention that Halifax lost to a L1 side and Pacific probably should have as well.

Pacific had 20 shots to 2 in the game against the Rovers, if this is the match you're suggesting Pacific should have lost

Edited July 23 by Aird25

[Kent]

3 hours ago, Aird25 said:

We could just trust players and coaches that experience the league directly on a weekly basis

So we listen to a guy like Kyle Bekker I suppose, who has been in the league through it all. He's 33 now and was 28 when the league started. I can tell you the league I played in was a lot better when I was 33 than when I was 28... or maybe it just felt that way because I wasn't as good as I was before.

[longlugan]

2 hours ago, Kent said:

So we listen to a guy like Kyle Bekker I suppose, who has been in the league through it all. He's 33 now and was 28 when the league started. I can tell you the league I played in was a lot better when I was 33 than when I was 28... or maybe it just felt that way because I wasn't as good as I was before.

Or we take his word for it instead of your's?

[Cheeta]

Blah, blah, blah.

I'm just going to trust my eyes.  This league has improved every single year.  If the 2019 edition of Cavalry stepped out of a time machine to compete in the 2024 season they'd still be in 6th place by 23 July.  AND they'd be living there until season's end.  (That is unless Wanderers can get a bit of good luck, then they'd be down a rung looking over their shoulder at Valour.  How humiliating is that?). 

[fil]

Didn't anyone see Forge versus Montreal and TFC?

[phil03]

I think there is good and bad news both financially and on the pitch.

For all the financial issues attendance is moving in the right direction, taking MediaPro out of the equation could at least conceivably make negotiating with Canadian broadcasters easier. Moreover, with the CMNT back on the right track and with Marsch taking a more collaborative party line about it (and at least Eustaquio following suit) there is reasons to think that a rising tide will indeed lift all boats and that the PR damages taken in 2022 will fix themselves with time.

On the playing side there is progress but at least for MTL's case it was a borderline perfect storm in Forge's favour, there is still moments where I am like ''yep, that's a CPL kind of mistakes!'' while watching and the pipeline has improved has we hoped. Like, yes Taheed and Tavernier got interest from very impressive clubs but nothing came out of it and other, less storied but still solid'' options haven't gone for them after Feyenoord and Monaco didn't pick them up. If anything most of the best solid alumnies of the league (Farsi, Waterman, McNaughton, Loturi, Zator, etc...) were players who came up in earlier year.

Basically, we shouldn't be too rosey in outlook or too pessimistic. Lets be happy about the good signs and work to deal with the less promising stuff...

[Kent]

I just turned on the last couple innings of the Blue Jays game. They are wearing "City Connect" jerseys which are mostly black with a city skyline across the middle. It really reminds me of the 2020 CPL away jerseys, both in look and in name. The CPL jerseys were "City Edition" jerseys.

https://canpl.ca/article/macron-away-kits-for-2020-cpl-season-unveiled-for-all-8-clubs

https://www.mlbshop.ca/en/toronto-blue-jays/city-connect/t-25122368+c-2392660718+z-92-3949873437

[Ozzie_the_parrot]

Reading recent posts in this thread you have to wonder whether certain posters even remember that the Cavalry knocked out the Whitecaps over two legs in 2019 and whether they grasp that MLS teams have often been going into these games rotating their squad in a big way because they view MLS regular season games as more important while CanPL teams sometimes rest top players in their preceding regular season games because they prioritize the Canadian Championship game. It's a bit like the English League Cup that way and it provides a recipe for upsets and surprisingly close scorelines that wouldn't be happening anything like as often if both sides were taking it equally seriously.

[Aird25]

8 hours ago, Ozzie_the_parrot said:

Reading recent posts in this thread you have to wonder whether certain posters even remember that the Cavalry knocked out the Whitecaps over two legs in 2019 and whether they grasp that MLS teams have often been going into these games rotating their squad in a big way because they view MLS regular season games as more important while CanPL teams sometimes rest top players in their preceding regular season games because they prioritize the Canadian Championship game. It's a bit like the English League Cup that way and it provides a recipe for upsets and surprisingly close scorelines that wouldn't be happening anything like as often if both sides were taking it equally seriously.

Didn't all the MLS DPs start leg 1? The only real rotation I noticed from MLS teams was to meet the required quota of Canadians. 

[fil]

To be fair TFC rotated fringe player Insigne against Forge. 

 

[Kent]

19 minutes ago, fil said:

To be fair TFC rotated fringe player Insigne against Forge. 

 

The lack of "in" or "out" after the word rotated makes me not sure if this is a joke or an attempt at a joke but with a mistake.

Either way, I've now ruined the joke.

[phil03]

12 hours ago, Ozzie_the_parrot said:

Reading recent posts in this thread you have to wonder whether certain posters even remember that the Cavalry knocked out the Whitecaps over two legs in 2019 and whether they grasp that MLS teams have often been going into these games rotating their squad in a big way because they view MLS regular season games as more important while CanPL teams sometimes rest top players in their preceding regular season games because they prioritize the Canadian Championship game. It's a bit like the English League Cup that way and it provides a recipe for upsets and surprisingly close scorelines that wouldn't be happening anything like as often if both sides were taking it equally seriously.

I don't think anyone save for a rare few posters would deny that the MLS clubs as they are when they play against their own league are better and that the CPL clubs in the same situation are not as good. However, the simple fact that such upsets aren't unheard off is a sign of progress for the CPL.

[Kent]

11 hours ago, phil03 said:

I don't think anyone save for a rare few posters would deny that the MLS clubs as they are when they play against their own league are better and that the CPL clubs in the same situation are not as good. However, the simple fact that such upsets aren't unheard off is a sign of progress for the CPL.

But such upsets happend in year 1 of the league, in 2019. That's why I said a while back that it's not a clear cut argument that the level of play has increased.

2019 - Cavalry eliminated Whitecaps, York United were minutes (seconds maybe even?) away from beating Montreal at home in the first leg)

2021 - Pacific eliminated Whitecaps, Forge took Montreal to a shootout (and even beyond the 5 kicks).

2020 (which happened in 2022) - Forge took Toronto to a shootout (and even beyond the 5 kicks).

2022 - Cavalry took Whitecaps to a shootout

2023 - This is the one year where there were no upsets or at least making it to a shootout before losing.

Edited July 26 by Kent
I somehow missed the Pacific win over the Whitecaps. I think I was looking at QF on, thinking MLS teams were starting there.

[Aird25]

Pacific knocked out Whitecaps in 2021. I think the quality has noticeably improved since then

[Ozzie_the_parrot]

I doubt dronegate is going to do CSB any favours financially where CMNT and CWNT revenue streams are concerned over the next year or two if general perceptions are going to be similar to those of Christian Dailly in this clip:

Ben Johnson wasn't exactly flavour of the month where corporate endorsements were concerned post-Seoul after all so Kevin Blue needs to start a mass clearout of all staff who were aware but didn't blow the whistle.

[narduch]

Lmfao

[longlugan]

4 hours ago, Ozzie_the_parrot said:

I doubt dronegate is going to do CSB any favours financially where CMNT and CWNT revenue streams are concerned over the next year or two if general perceptions are going to be similar to those of Christian Dailly in this clip:

Ben Johnson wasn't exactly flavour of the month where corporate endorsements were concerned post-Seoul after all so Kevin Blue needs to start a mass clearout of all staff who were aware but didn't blow the whistle.

I'm sure it's the CPL's fault somehow. 

[Kingston]

10 hours ago, Kent said:

But such upsets happend in year 1 of the league, in 2019. That's why I said a while back that it's not a clear cut argument that the level of play has increased.

I agree that upsets aren't a useful measure of whether the level of play in the CPL has improved.  

I do think the level has improved somewhat since 2019.  I don't think this is because the average quality of the players has changed very much but rather because the teams have had time to develop systems and styles of play the players can fit in to.  

I believe we will see an increase in the level of play as salaries continue to rise and the league attracts or retains legitimately better players.  That process will be incremental and will take time.

[cornerkick]

https://asia.nikkei.com/Spotlight/Sports/Red-Bull-to-enter-Japan-pro-soccer-with-J3-team-acquisition
 

I wonder if they would consider owing a CPL franchise in the future…

[Mihairokov]

Eh, we should definitely be prioritizing domestic owners over becoming a feeder league for international corporations. Atletico versus Red Bull, City Group versus whomever; it sounds boring and soulless.