Herdman new head coach

[Kadenge]

Canadians

[WestHamCanadianinOxford]

1 minute ago, Kadenge said:

Canadians

Honestly, we sometimes tell ourselves we are nicer (read better) than other nations and when it is shown we are not, it unsurprisingly upsets us.  

[Unnamed Trialist]

11 minutes ago, WestHamCanadianinOxford said:

Honestly, we sometimes tell ourselves we are nicer (read better) than other nations and when it is shown we are not, it unsurprisingly upsets us.  

Then we have imposter syndrome reactions where we confess to things we did not even do.

Then with half the population Catholic we should be good at confessing and moving on with a clear conscience, but can't even manage that.

[Ed_S]

1 minute ago, Unnamed Trialist said:

Then we have imposter syndrome reactions where we confess to things we did not even do.

Then with half the population Catholic we should be good at confessing and moving on with a clear conscience, but can't even manage that.

Grossly overestimating present day demographics there lol. Quebec is very very secular these past 50 years.

[Unnamed Trialist]

Just now, Ed_S said:

Grossly overestimating present day demographics there lol. Quebec is very very secular these past 50 years.

So being secularized is what makes us lousy at confessions?

 

[nfitz]

6 hours ago, SpursFlu said:

Rat heads get cheese. I'm shocked that someone retroactively rolled on Herdman. Lame

During an investigation where Herdman has promised to assist CSA and then made a career ending misdirection to the media?

It sounds like everyone knew. 

I don't know what else was going to happen. 

Only way Herdman survived this is if the appeal overturns all the sanctions on Priestman.

Edited July 28 by nfitz

[Obinna]

7 hours ago, RS said:

It's true, media in football-mad countries are well-known to produce nothing but reasonable takes about the sport.

That's not my point at all.

From my point of view, we have a media that's covering the game more and more, which is excellent, but on this specific issue they are making a mountain out of a molehill.

I could be wrong, but I can't see media in the so-called football nations blowing up this specific story out of proportion. Why? Because spying on opponent training is relatively common.

I believe it was @dyslexic nam who posted headlines from a bunch of stories in Italy, and one with Leeds and Bielsa. Again I could be wrong, but I don't imagine any of these stories created much shock and awe, nor was there a subsequent desire to dig further and expose some sort of seedy underbelly. Again, does it benefit Canadian soccer for us to do this to ourselves?

And I think @Califax is on to something when he was saying:

6 hours ago, Califax said:

We are totally caught between being the hono(u)rable, good natured, follow-the-rules country dealing with a disaster of an association built out of gen pop’s long standing apathy towards and ignorance of the sport, competing against countries - some with limited moral compass - driven by an emotional attachment to the game and publicly mandated requirement for success. 

it makes me wonder if any thoughts I have are valid or myopic. 

My fear is that the general population doesn't see this and shrug, like you would expect in the so-called football nations, but instead see this and believe this one moment of stupidity at the Olympics has now uncovered some mega scandal in Canadian soccer, whereby a festering culture of cheating has now been revealed, putting into question the legitimacy our our results. The kind of thing worthy of investigating and finding every past instance and holding the perpetrators accountable, even if they no longer work for Canadian soccer.

This narrative is a creation of the media, primarily tsn by the looks of it.

And yes, I even saw one take on here (or maybe it was elsewhere) that Herdman should be punished and banned from any participation in Canadian soccer. I mean, to me that is absolutely crazy and only comes from the mind of someone who can't help but apply the honorable, good-natured, follow-the-rules Canadian sporting culture to CONCACAF, a federation where gamesmanship is necessary. Unfortunately, our sporting culture leaves no room for gamesmanship. That's the rub here.

Does Gamesmanship equal cheating?

It's a novice, naive mentality that will get us nowhere. Canadian soccer 1.0 mindset.

And lastly, I want to add that I am not saying the media should protect Canadian soccer. The association has a reputation of not being transparent and the media putting pressure on them to be better is a good thing.

However, it's all about a better Canadian soccer landscape. Hunting down every instance of drone usage and reporting on it in a way that makes us out to be cheaters is (I fear) going to turn a lot of people off to Canadian soccer, which may be great for clicks but not so much for the growth of the game.

[king1010]

 

[RS]

14 minutes ago, Obinna said:

From my point of view, we have a media that's covering the game more and more, which is excellent, but on this specific issue they are making a mountain out of a molehill.

I could be wrong, but I can't see media in the so-called football nations blowing up this specific story out of proportion. Why? Because spying on opponent training is relatively common.

Can I introduce you to the British tabloids?

[Kadenge]

I'm with you on this @Obinna. I think after what happened with Bev, the 1 yr suspension & 6 point deduction, all and any Cdn coaches will want to keep squeaky clean moving forwards. Yet there seems to be a quest to find similar dirt on the Men's team.  There's a part of me that feels there's motivation to pursue possible allegations with the CMNT in the past so that Canadians can't say this was gender driven.  The facts are that a contractor/staff memeber was caught operating a drone and charged by  French police. There is no uncertainty. Yet the headlines read "Men's and Women's teams". I wonder whether if it was the CMNT coaching staff involved at the Olympics if the treatment would have been the same. 

[WestHamCanadianinOxford]

38 minutes ago, RS said:

Can I introduce you to the British tabloids?

You sure?

15th story down in the Sun sports page 

Trippier's rocky marriage best it by a bit.

 

https://www.thesun.co.uk/sport/29514743/canada-women-six-point-deduction-spygate-olympic-knockout/

 

10th on Mirror football page 

10th on the Mail sports page 

20th on the Daily Express sports page.

 

 

Edit: To be fair, they would probably care more if their women qualified.

Edited July 27 by WestHamCanadianinOxford

[mpg_29]

My issue with this whole debacle now is that any reform around spying is going to be exclusively internal to Canada and not global. Is FIFA and regional confederations going to have clear rules and security at events to enforce particularly against spying? No. So this whole thing is totally self-inflicted.

We are punished because we got caught and admitted.

[Pomoxis]

1 minute ago, mpg_29 said:

We are punished because we got caught and admitted.

We got caught. Are you suggesting this would have played out differently if drone dude had denied he worked for Canada Soccer?

[RS]

16 minutes ago, WestHamCanadianinOxford said:

You sure?

15th story down in the Sun sports page 

Trippier's rocky marriage best it by a bit.

 

https://www.thesun.co.uk/sport/29514743/canada-women-six-point-deduction-spygate-olympic-knockout/

 

10th on Mirror football page 

10th on the Mail sports page 

20th on the Daily Express sports page.

 

 

Edit: To be fair, they would probably care more if their women qualified.

I’m not talking about this specific case, I’m talking about the assertion that media in football countries wouldn’t want to make their own teams look bad.

[RS]

15 minutes ago, mpg_29 said:

My issue with this whole debacle now is that any reform around spying is going to be exclusively internal to Canada and not global. Is FIFA and regional confederations going to have clear rules and security at events to enforce particularly against spying? No. So this whole thing is totally self-inflicted.

We are punished because we got caught and admitted.

Are you suggesting the assistant coach who got arrested for flying a drone in restricted air space shouldn’t have admitted it?

[mpg_29]

4 minutes ago, RS said:

Are you suggesting the assistant coach who got arrested for flying a drone in restricted air space shouldn’t have admitted it?

By "admitted" I'm talking more about the open-airing of everything in the press which may have influenced some things 

[Unnamed Trialist]

19 minutes ago, Pomoxis said:

We got caught. Are you suggesting this would have played out differently if drone dude had denied he worked for Canada Soccer?

He could have stonewalled, or shut up, and they might still be waiting for his judiciary hearing.

[Unnamed Trialist]

8 minutes ago, RS said:

Are you suggesting the assistant coach who got arrested for flying a drone in restricted air space shouldn’t have admitted it?

Most people in the know say that if you get stopped by the police doing something, better to not say anything to incriminate yourself. As a matter of principle. 

Obviously, because he was detained, and he was thinking WTF, he admitted to a few things and got his 8 month suspended sentence, rather quickly at that. You can understand it, he was not going to take the rap for the entire programme. 

But still: if we'd shut up and just waited on things, we might have been able to ride things out until a bit. That is exactly what Uruguay was able to do at Copa, send in the appeals immediately and stonewall. 

As is, we are confessing to things we may not have done, finger-pointing, accusing across the board, letting it snowball, it is not exactly a "high" ground we are taking.

[SpursFlu]

I'm actually impressed we had the mentality to cheat to win at soccer. It's a nice change

Edited July 27 by SpursFlu

[RS]

Just now, Unnamed Trialist said:

Most people in the know say that if you get stopped by the police doing something, better to not say anything to incriminate yourself. As a matter of principle. 

Obviously, because he was detained, and he was thinking WTF, he admitted to a few things and got his 8 month suspended sentence, rather quickly at that. You can understand it, he was not going to take the rap for the entire programme. 

But still: if we'd shut up and just waited on things, we might have been able to ride things out until a bit. That is exactly what Uruguay was able to do at Copa, send in the appeals immediately and stonewall. 

As is, we are confessing to things we may not have done, finger-pointing, accusing across the board, letting it snowball, it is not exactly a "high" ground we are taking.

Regarding the asst coach who was arrested: You’re right — legally it can be advantageous to be quiet. But I’m operating on the assumption that he had some kind of legal representation present. Maybe I’m speculating too much, but he probably got off lighter by admitting to it.

As for Canada Soccer’s role in the aftermath, I agree that they probably could have put out a boilerplate response and waited on things to play out, but I suspect they knew how systemic the drone usage was and wanted to get ahead of the story since people like Westhead et al would be uncovering the details soon enough anyway.

Either way I don’t envy Kevin Blue for this. And of course the ones who were punished most harshly: the players.

[mpg_29]

Here's what needs to happen: we put up a public relations front of "ethical reform" around spying. But really we set a completely separate shadow organization at arms length from Canada Soccer. It creates a wall of "plausibility deniability" between it and Canada Soccer. This shadow organization will only employ ex-special forces personal that have experience in espionage and spycraft. No more hiring Derek who graduated from Humber College digital media program and had some fancy drone videos on his youtube page. These new drone soldiers will destroy evidence on the spot and will resist being arrested and getting interrogated by even the worst police.

Thoughts?

[reggietfc]

i like blue...but he made a rookie mistake,golf association and fifa are 2 different animals

[Obinna]

1 hour ago, RS said:

Can I introduce you to the British tabloids?

The English tabloids are critical of England, sometimes to the point of being unhelpful, but it ultimately comes from a desire to be a winner.

The Canadian soccer media, or at least the ones running with this, do not seem to be coming from the same place, at all.

[Obinna]

39 minutes ago, RS said:

I’m not talking about this specific case, I’m talking about the assertion that media in football countries wouldn’t want to make their own teams look bad.

Then we are just talking past each other, aren't we? I am making a criticism of our handling on this specific issue, because other countries if confronted with this specific issue wouldn't behave like this. Then your response is that we aren't the only country whose media want to make their own teams look bad. Well duh, that's obvious and was never my point.

[Obinna]

1 hour ago, king1010 said:

 

See here we have an American outlet, ESPN, going after Canada, which is a rival, and making them look bad, while making the USA look good, since they wanted to handle it behind the scenes.

And yet TSN is pulling in the same direction as ESPN, even though it's a Canadian outlet.

....or so I thought 🤔