CPL General

[narduch]

12 hours ago, Kent said:

My understanding from his post wasn't about there being some other forum or social media or whatever that is the voice of the mainstream. Just that people vote with their dollars and the MLS teams draw many more fans than the CPL teams in those same cities. I don't go on the MLS forum on here, but what we see on here seems to indicate that the CPL is the more important league, but that isn't reflected in attendance or viewership ratings (not that we have that data). I think that was his point.

Fair enough. 

But the country isn't just Toronto and Vancouver. 

Edited September 6 by narduch

[Aird25]

On 9/3/2024 at 7:47 PM, Kent said:

I know the dollar amounts are rarely mentioned, but does anybody know how many players York United have sold for a fee? I feel like there have been a few.

I just fumbled around Transfrmarkt a bit to find the following total transfer values.

Forge €718k
Cavalry €479k
Pacific €241k
York United €127k

I hope the guys that have recently transferred out of CPL can make an impact at their new clubs so the players to follow them in the future can attract higher fees for the CPL clubs. More transfers like Kwasi Poku that can pay off the majority of the player wages for a season would be massive, especially for the teams that don't draw big crowds.

It sounds like more teams are opting to hold on to players instead of sell them mid season or for small fees (de Brienne, Nimick, Fernandez, Loughrey etc)

https://wanderersnotebook.ca/2024/09/06/8-cpl-thoughts-olimpicos-tfc-squeaks-past-forge-de-brienne-transfer-news-and-cpl-squad-building/

[Mihairokov]

1 hour ago, narduch said:

Fair enough. 

But there country isn't just Toronto and Vancouver. 

Sorry? My Canada ends at Bloor and Bathurst respectively 

[fil]

Doesn't everyone know? Toronto is the centre of the universe...

 

Centre of the Universe | Nickname | A derisive and highly accurate sobriquet used by the rest of Canada for the City of Toronto, based on its air of superiority

[SoccMan]

The only thing I’ll say on this matter in terms of CPL attendance . Before I go any further I understand that the CPL is in it’s infancy and there was the Covid years , however, when I look at the level of the MLS Canadian teams and the  level of the CPL top teams the gap in level is not that much .  I still think some of these CPL  teams should be averaging better crowds . Forge as we have seen with their Championships and their play against MLS and top Mexican league teams are not that far off from these teams, therefore , I see no reason why they shouldn’t be averaging 8 to 10000 . Forge is a very good team and play a high level style of soccer . Sure they are near the top of the league attendance wise but they should be getting 3 to 5000 more . I don’t think the attendance they get in my opinion is good enough, not for the type of product they put on the field . Ottawa is another example that stadium should at the very least be half full for their games . Moreover , Winnipeg who are let’s be truthful here,  when I watch games  are getting York United numbers, yes I know they have never been that good but still that market should do better. The product on the field is good the level is good but I think that attendance should be a lot better . Apart from the MLS CPL cities this other cities have the pro soccer market all to themselves and they need to start bringing in more fans . The product is good the level is good hopefully one day soon we will see more fans in the stadiums because this league is strongly needed if we are going to keep getting better at this game .

Edited September 6 by SoccMan

[Ozzie_the_parrot]

On 9/5/2024 at 2:04 PM, Kent said:

Canada as a whole did the sensible thing and did what was readily achievable from 1993-2018. It resulted in 5 pro teams by the end of that window of time (plus 1 or more reserve teams). Some people were ready to dream bigger and be more ambitious. Now we have 11 pro teams (plus 1 or more reserve teams). Time will tell if this number grows or retracts. I'm along for the ride. 

Do you think Canadian soccer only started in the early 1990s? Fifteen to twenty years before that one of my first cousins was playing for London City in the NSL. In a GTA context that would often be in front of substantially larger crowds than York United draw in the present day in a league where a whole series of different clubs like Toronto Italia, Toronto Croatia, First Portugese and Panhellenic were based in Toronto. A lot of people act like pro soccer in Canada is something new with the launch of the latest shoot for the stars masterplan being the year zero when Canadians finally discovered the sport for the first time. It's not. It has been around for a very long time and that has consequences that reverberate down to the present day.

By the mid-80s with the NASL collapsing in a United States context due to not doing the sensible thing where a salary cap is concerned and a lot of the owners opting for indoor soccer and the MISL instead, Dale Barnes and the CSA were dreaming big in a Canadian context with a CFL style air travel format and wanted to eradicate ethnic attachments to go after the generic Canadian sports fan. There was no place for Italia, Croatia or Panhellenic in their new masterplan. That alienated broad swathes of the GTA's soccer community and effectively killed off a strong semi-professional (mainly, there would also be imports on fully pro deals) scene that had been around since the mid-1920s (there had also been similar leagues in Montreal and Vancouver). What's left now is L1O drawing not much more than friends and family in a "pro-am" format. Shooting for the stars can also result in the sensible thing being sacrificed at the altar of the masterplan pushed by the latest swivel-eyed my way or the highway loonball (thinking Dale Barnes here more than Bob Young or Scott Mitchell but Joe Belan might have something to say about that).

Back in the 1980s in a London context, London's NSL team was Marconi by that point. They packed it in with the arrival of Dale Barnes' CSL and went back to local district amateur given what the CSL's arrival was going to do to the quality of the NSL. Marconi had been regularly drawing crowds to their own SSS in minature on Clarke Side Road at the main Italian social club in the London area that were larger than what the two incarnations of the London Lasers ever achieved in the CSL or London City ever did under Harry Gauss the second time around when they were fielding teams that would have struggled to compete locally in WOSL permier. In more recent times, things were going really well with FC London in a PDL context and their ownership were thinking about a step up to USL D3 level given the way crowds often in low four figures. Along came Victor Montagliani with his moratorium to prepare the ground for the latest CSA-driven shoot for the stars masterplan, so FC London instead have wound up in a "pro-am" format playing various nondescript suburban GTA youth clubs...

I wasn't the only person on here predicting York 9 would struggle to draw in low four digits before the league launched, because I am far from the only person on here who has some concept of what the mainstream soccer community in southern Ontario is likely to be interested in paying money to watch. Having to beg people to show up in Year 6 by offering free tickets when you are chasing a regular season championship despite being next to a TTC subway station and very close to a 400 series highway in a metro area of over 5 million people shouldn't be what is happening. The quality of the soccer is reasonable but there is a long history of screwups and failed shoot for the stars visions over the past 60 years or so (let's not forget the ECPSL and Harold Ballard and Frank Stronach) that have poisoned the well for lower budget pro soccer in a GTA context.

Focusing on regional markets like London, Windsor and K/W along with more of an OHL style approach to travel would be a better bet to be sustainable so there's definitely still something to watch 20 years from now but would that give Bob Young & Co MLS-style escalating franchise values?

Edited September 7 by Ozzie_the_parrot

[SoccMan]

1 hour ago, Ozzie_the_parrot said:

Do you think Canadian soccer only started in the early 1990s? Fifteen to twenty years before that one of my first cousins was playing for London City in the NSL. In a GTA context that would often be in front of substantially larger crowds than York United draw in the present day in a league where a whole series of different clubs like Toronto Italia, Toronto Croatia, First Portugese and Panhellenic were based in Toronto. A lot of people act like pro soccer in Canada is something new with the launch of the latest shoot for the stars masterplan being the year zero when Canadians finally discovered the sport for the first time. It's not. It has been around for a very long time and that has consequences that reverberate down to the present day.

By the mid-80s with the NASL collapsing in a United States context due to not doing the sensible thing where a salary cap is concerned and a lot of the owners opting for indoor soccer and the MISL instead, Dale Barnes and the CSA were dreaming big in a Canadian context with a CFL style air travel format and wanted to eradicate ethnic attachments to go after the generic Canadian sports fan. There was no place for Italia, Croatia or Panhellenic in their new masterplan. That alienated broad swathes of the GTA's soccer community and effectively killed off a strong semi-professional (mainly, there would also be imports on fully pro deals) scene that had been around since the mid-1920s (there had also been similar leagues in Montreal and Vancouver). What's left now is L1O drawing not much more than friends and family in a "pro-am" format. Shooting for the stars can also result in the sensible thing being sacrificed at the altar of the masterplan pushed by the latest swivel-eyed my way or the highway loonball (thinking Dale Barnes here more than Bob Young or Scott Mitchell but Joe Belan might have something to say about that).

Back in the 1980s in a London context, London's NSL team was Marconi by that point. They packed it in with the arrival of Dale Barnes' CSL and went back to local district amateur given what the CSL's arrival was going to do to the quality of the NSL. Marconi had been regularly drawing crowds to their own SSS in minature on Clarke Side Road at the main Italian social club in the London area that were larger than what the two incarnations of the London Lasers ever achieved in the CSL or London City ever did under Harry Gauss the second time around when they were fielding teams that would have struggled to compete locally in WOSL permier. In more recent times, things were going really well with FC London in a PDL context and their ownership were thinking about a step up to USL D3 level given the way crowds often in low four figures. Along came Victor Montagliani with his moratorium to prepare the ground for the latest CSA-driven shoot for the stars masterplan, so FC London instead have wound up in a "pro-am" format playing various nondescript suburban GTA youth clubs...

I wasn't the only person on here predicting York 9 would struggle to draw in low four digits before the league launched, because I am far from the only person on here who has some concept of what the mainstream soccer community in southern Ontario is likely to be interested in paying money to watch. Having to beg people to show up in Year 6 by offering free tickets when you are chasing a regular season championship despite being next to a TTC subway station and very close to a 400 series highway in a metro area of over 5 million people shouldn't be what is happening. The quality of the soccer is reasonable but there is a long history of screwups and failed shoot for the stars visions over the past 60 years or so (let's not forget the ECPSL and Harold Ballard and Frank Stronach) that have poisoned the well for lower budget pro soccer in a GTA context.

Focusing on regional markets like London, Windsor and K/W along with more of an OHL style approach to travel would be a better bet to be sustainable so there's definitely still something to watch 20 years from now but would that give Bob Young & Co MLS-style escalating franchise values?

The ethnic team name debate was also one had in the old NASL when the Croatian community saved pro soccer at the time and purchased the Toronto Metros and rebranded them into Metros Croatia , which went on to be NASL champions in 1976. The NASL approved the sale but wasn’t that thrilled with the Croatian name added to the Metros name from what I recall. However, I will agree the Dales Barnes CSL should have allowed some of these ethnic clubs with their names and all to join that league , instead of started entirely new teams and in some cases forcing some of these ethnic clubs to go from playing pro to just becoming local amateur teams and playing in amateur city leagues . These ethnic teams had rich histories going back many many years and already established fan bases . If you look at pro teams in South America like Argentina and Brazil you will see many teams still with ethnic names that were started by immigrants from different countries that were immigrants to those countries many years before who started soccer clubs and named these soccer clubs after the country were they were from . Those clubs are still around today playing in those countries top  leagues . The mistake we made in Canada was to kill those clubs basically and not let them organically grow the way they were growing up to that point . Instead we kept trying to start new clubs right from scratch with no history whatsoever. I think there is something to be said about having clubs grow organically throughout the years and we had that with a lot of these ethnic clubs that were putting hard earned money into the game for so many years , instead we killed them off always trying to start from scratch . The past is the past and we are where we are , what’s done is done unfortunately. We now need to move forward and try every avenue to make this new league work so that we have a national league the CPL here for a long time and prosper . However, things could have been a lot different and we may have been a lot further along . 

[Ozzie_the_parrot]

39 minutes ago, SoccMan said:

...The mistake we made in Canada was to kill those clubs basically and not let them organically grow the way they were growing up to that point...

Australia is a useful comparison from that standpoint. South Melbourne, Sydney Olympic, Melbourne Knights, Sydney United 58, Sydney's version of Marconi and ... Melbourne lets me down a bit on going for the full Panhellenic, Croatia and Italia parallel where Brunswick Juventus are concerned ... are still around and pushing to start a new close to fully professional second tier. In Canada our esteemed national and provincial associations did all they could to completely sideline clubs like that and eradicate their influence and didn't seem to care whether that permanently alienated a lot of people in the process.

What some people on this sub-forum don't seem to grasp is I am genuinely delighted when I see a full stadium in Halifax or the Cavalry beginning to approach that sort of level of support at least some of the time. Pointing out the mistakes of the past is motivated by not wanting to see them repeated in an endless cycle of boom and bust until the next set of investors have forgotten what happened the last time around and do many of the same misguided things all over again. By Canadians For Canadians was definitely not the slogan they should have been pushing in a GTA context but I suspect people like Paul Beirne (who I have met and spoken to on a few occasions back in 2006 and 2007) were simply completely oblivious. 

Edited September 7 by Ozzie_the_parrot

[narduch]

Not really sure what lessons can be learned for CPL in 2024 from a glorified Toronto league from the 60/70s back when the country was half the size it is now.

If you are arguing for a bus league you are basically arguing you want to get rid of half the current league.

Edited September 7 by narduch

[longlugan]

Blah blah blah blah blah

That's in response to the incessant parrot...not you Narduch

Edited September 7 by longlugan

[narduch]

Here are the standings from 1975. This league called itself the National Soccer League!

[Ozzie_the_parrot]

^^^complete non-sequiturs from this guy as per usual. I won't leave it to Kent this time to explain that the lessons that would be learned would be from Dales Barnes' CSL given that was the one that actually involved air travel.

Beyond that to show just how fallacious he can be sometimes he left out the following because it would have shown there were teams across most of the Windsor-Quebec corridor (think the dude in my avatar played for the Montreal team as his stepping stone to the NASL, but can't be bothered doing a double-check) :

Second Division

Pos	Team	Pld	W	D	L	GF	GA	GD	Pts	Qualification
1	Windsor Stars (C, P)	30	21	4	5	81	23	+58	46	Qualification for Playoffs
2	Montreal Castors (P)	30	21	1	8	65	30	+35	43
3	Oakville United	30	18	4	8	51	29	+22	40
4	St. Catharines Heidelberg (O)	30	13	5	12	42	44	−2	31
5	Srbija Kitchener	30	9	7	14	44	56	−12	25
6	Ottawa Tigers	30	8	4	18	42	45	−3	20
7	Ontario Selects	30	8	4	18	24	49	−25	20
8	Toronto Hungaria	30	7	5	18	37	64	−27	19
9	Toronto Ukrainians	30	3	6	21	18	79	−61	12
10	Toronto Polonia	30	4	3	23	13	88	−75	11
11	Toronto Melita	30	2	3	25	17	117	−100	7

Edited September 7 by Ozzie_the_parrot

[Ozzie_the_parrot]

He also chose to leave out a national title and CONCACAF qualification angle:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1975_Canadian_Soccer_League_season

Canadian Open Cup

The Canadian Open Cup was a tournament organized by the National Soccer League in 1971 where the NSL champion would face the Challenge Trophy winners to determine the best team throughout the country.^[56][57] The 1974 edition served as a qualifier match to determine the Canadian representative to the CONCACAF Champions' Cup.^[58] Toronto Italia was the NSL representative for the 1975 competition while their opponents were the London Boxing Club of Victoria, who were the British Columbia Provincial Soccer Championship, and Challenge Trophy titleholders.^[57][7]

October 26, 1975

Toronto Italia

2–0

London Boxing Club of Victoria

 

 

 

[narduch]

59 minutes ago, Ozzie_the_parrot said:

^^^complete non-sequiturs from this guy as per usual. I won't leave it to Kent this time to explain that the lessons that would be learned would be from Dales Barnes' CSL given that was the one that actually involved air travel.

Beyond that to show how just fallacious he can be sometimes he left out the following because it would have shown there were teams across most of the Windsor-Quebec corridor (think the dude in my avatar played for the Montreal team as his stepping stone to the NASL, but can't be bothered doing a double-check) :

Second Division

Pos	Team	Pld	W	D	L	GF	GA	GD	Pts	Qualification
1	Windsor Stars (C, P)	30	21	4	5	81	23	+58	46	Qualification for Playoffs
2	Montreal Castors (P)	30	21	1	8	65	30	+35	43
3	Oakville United	30	18	4	8	51	29	+22	40
4	St. Catharines Heidelberg (O)	30	13	5	12	42	44	−2	31
5	Srbija Kitchener	30	9	7	14	44	56	−12	25
6	Ottawa Tigers	30	8	4	18	42	45	−3	20
7	Ontario Selects	30	8	4	18	24	49	−25	20
8	Toronto Hungaria	30	7	5	18	37	64	−27	19
9	Toronto Ukrainians	30	3	6	21	18	79	−61	12
10	Toronto Polonia	30	4	3	23	13	88	−75	11
11	Toronto Melita	30	2	3	25	17	117	−100	7

Pretty sure you don't know what non-sequitor means.

And having the odd team in Windsor or Montreal while 75% of your teams are in Toronto is hardly a national league.

And bringing up the Cup doesn't change any of that.

You just keep talking in circles and bring absolutely nothing of value to the discussion 

[Kent]

6 hours ago, Ozzie_the_parrot said:

Do you think Canadian soccer only started in the early 1990s?

No. I just said that Canada was doing the "sensible" thing from 1993-2018, meaning between the periods of the nation spanning version of the CSL and the CPL. I knew you didn't consider the CSL a sensible thing. You then went on to explain exactly that, proving that my date ranges conform to your viewpoint. I don't know why any of that was necessary to respond to what I said originally.

[Ozzie_the_parrot]

Shorter executive summary then: the CSL fiasco from 1987-1992 had already effectively killed off the basis for what under other circumstances could have been the ongoing sensible thing from 1993-2018, i.e. the NSL in the Windsor-Quebec corridor. SoccMan grasped what I was talking about in his post above.

Instead, from 1993 onwards the soccer community in southern Ontario had stopped taking that whole level of soccer seriously and basically just tuned it out. What was left, with the exception of the USSF sanctioned clubs in Montreal, Toronto and Vancouver and at various times and for varying durations Calgary, Edmonton and Ottawa, for the most part doesn't even merit the description of pro soccer. The occasional exceptions like the Ottawa Wizards were soon eased out of the picture by the charlatans running the show.

Even the Lynx who at times were playing high quality soccer with players like Stalteri, de Rosario, Pozniak, Serioux, Hutchinson, Gerba, Reda etc couldn't draw flies in a GTA context relative to what was happening in Vancouver and Montreal.

Edited September 7 by Ozzie_the_parrot

[Aird25]

Could we please move this to another thread?

[narduch]

7 minutes ago, Aird25 said:

Could we please move this to another thread?

Does it really matter. He'll infiltrate any thread on this forum with his diatribes on why the CPL is on the wrong path

Edited September 7 by narduch

[Aird25]

7 minutes ago, narduch said:

Does it really matter. He'll infiltrate any thread on this forum with his diatribes on why the CPL is on the wrong path

I didn't read it, but I don't really see how Toronto soccer in the 70s or even 80s and 90s relates to CPL to a degree that it belongs in this thread (I'm not looking for an answer, I just keep expecting to see discussion about CPL only to be disappointed)?

[narduch]

2 minutes ago, Aird25 said:

I didn't read it, but I don't really see how Toronto soccer in the 70s or even 80s and 90s relates to CPL to a degree that it belongs in this thread (I'm not looking for an answer, I just keep expecting to see discussion about CPL only to be disappointed)?

This is how I imagine Ozzie putting his theories together. 

 

[Cheeta]

17 minutes ago, narduch said:

This is how I imagine Ozzie putting his theories together. 

 

?

With pants on?

[Bison44]

I wasnt around the boards when TFC/MLS started up.  Was Mr Parrot this preachy and negative then??  You know.. given all the horrible examples he gives and how shitty MLS was in its first 10 years, when TFC joined up??  

Anyways, glad to see York at least start having some success on the field.  Step 1 eh?  Entice some new fans with some free tickets....sounds like a plan to me.  Costco gets me in the door with free samples and cheap hotdogs...then my wife ends up buying 40lbs of oatmeal.   

 

 

[Mihairokov]

Getting really tired of this nonsense about leagues from 50 years ago. 

[Ozzie_the_parrot]

^^^but for some reason he is unable to simply ignore the posts he is not interested in.

Frankly bizarre that anyone would imply that posting about the history of pro soccer in the GTA as it relates to interest in York 9/United in the present day is off base in what is ...checks notes here... a CanPL sub-forum on a Canadian soccer website.

Last thing I have to say on this topic for now is that if you added together the fanbases of all the NSL clubs plus the Metros NASL team and adjusted for subsequent population growth, the number of people actively watching pro soccer games in the GTA per capita in the mid-1970s was probably not so different from what is happening in the present day.

Something to ponder whenever people are peddling the idea that exponential growth in interest is just around the corner. The big change in many parts of Canada over the last 50 years (Halifax is an obvious exception) hasn't been the latent level of interest in soccer as a spectator sport, it has been in the quality of soccer played by players that were born and raised in Canada.

Edited September 8 by Ozzie_the_parrot

[SthMelbRed]

15 hours ago, Ozzie_the_parrot said:

 

Last thing I have to say on this topic....

 

We can all only wish for this obvious lie to actually come true.