CANCELLED WC Prep Match #1: Canada vs Iran - Sunday, June 5 BC Place, Vancouver

[Unnamed Trialist]

26 minutes ago, Obinna said:

Funny enough, if the government had given the victims enough closure we possibly could have moved on to the point where the game could have proceeded. The whole debacle seemed to be swept under the rug, which is where I am sure the government prefers to keep it (hence the pressure on the CSA from them to cancel the game). 

One reason that there is no closure is that Canadian investigators have shown that the supposed Iranian investigation was a cover-up, deliberately falsified information and contained patent falsehood.

There is also evidence of sources from Iran being then repressed, imprisoned or silenced for leaking information of the cover-up. 

All this is easy to find online, through reliable sources.

The country most interested in closure is in fact Iran. Canada does not seek this kind of closure because, rightly so, they are not going to agree to and sign off on a clearly unreliable and falsified Iranian report.

While you could blame Canada for inaction in the pursuit of truth and justice, you can't ask the country to close the book on something that offers neither.

Iran admitted responsibility, with an explanation, and have offered a settlement. They'd love to get it behind them. They are not helped by their ally Russia, who continues to spin another story. Likely their acceptance of the offer for a friendly was seen as a way for them to get closure. 

Edited May 27, 2022 by Unnamed Trialist

[Obinna]

22 minutes ago, Unnamed Trialist said:

One reason that there is no closure is that Canadian investigators have shown that the supposed Iranian investigation was a cover-up, deliberately falsified information and contained patent falsehood.

There is also evidence of sources from Iran being then repressed, imprisoned or silenced for leaking information of the cover-up. 

All this is easy to find online, through reliable sources.

The country most interested in closure is in fact Iran. Canada does not seek closure because, rightly so, they are not going to agree to and sign off on a clearly unreliable and falsified Iranian report.

Iran admitted responsibility, with an explanation, and have offered a settlement. They'd love to get it behind them. They are not helped by their allie Russia, who continues to spin another story. Likely their acceptance of the offer for a friendly was seen as a way for them to get closure. 

Like I said to you before, all of that very much resembles other alleged cover ups that we dismiss (which I won't repeat again), but even if the reports from the Canadian side are true (not saying they aren't), the fact Iran hasn't admitted guilt is irrelevant, because Canada doesn't need agreement from Iran on what happened in order to take action that brings the victims closer to closure.

Maybe I shouldn't be using that term, closure, because in a sense you can never get full closure when your loved one is killed, one could argue.

What I mean is that had the Canadian government taken enough action against Iran there'd perhaps be a sense of justice, which would help the victims move on, maybe even to the point there wasn't such angst at playing Iran?

I know someone mentioned Canada already placed Iran on sanctions (don't know if that's accurate or if how much they are related to that particular incident), but clearly that was not the justice victims were looking for, otherwise they wouldn't be crying out to the Canadian government to do more. Now the game is not going ahead, conveniently for the government, and so they can return to the status-quo, hoping with time that people slowly put the incident behind them, without crying and kicking up too much of a stink for them to do something about it. 

Edited May 27, 2022 by Obinna

[Ally McCoist]

48 minutes ago, ag futbol said:

I don’t think he’s  100% squeaky clean but I think given all the other good Herdman has done for the program I can look the other way. 

I also think others at the CSA should be more well-versed at navigating government politics and taking care of that piece. Herdman can only know so much. Ultimately someone has to tell him “if you do this, here are the risks” or just outright veto the idea.

But without knowing the back room conversations that were had on this we’re flying blind. Either someone at the CSA fucked up by not asking or someone in the ministry of Sport. Or, the ministry fucked up by not clearly stating the issues (or understanding the issue) when the CSA asked. Or, CSA was advised of the risks and made a stupid gamble.

That’s sort of the core of it. 
 

 

 

Exactly. Herdman's the last person to be blamed here. If this was his idea, he was looking at it from a purely soccer perspective. I doubt Herdman knows a whole lot about Canadian geopolitics.

[Mattd97]

51 minutes ago, Obinna said:

My gut feeling is that playing Iran was totally Herdman's idea, but I have trouble casting much blame on him. He's gotten so much right so far. 

I imagine Herdman liked the idea of Iran as it made sense with the States co-operation and were a good test.  Coaches at that level are so secluded from the world and focused on their career I doubt the very personal and recent Canada-specific Iranian context wasnt known or considered.  I'm sure CSA liked it cause we've got a large diaspora for tickets and cause theyre cheap (obvious missed red flag cause no one wants to play them).  I'm sure the governments immediate reaction during planning was much the same of Trudeaus infamous answer 'well that seems dumb, but its a soccer game so whatever' and let it go through.  Some people here noted it was a terrible idea, most were probably like me thinking 'yikes, but whatever lets play a good team' and figured maybe thered be some upset people but its a soccer game who cares. 

 

Then it snowballed.  It was both no ones fault but also very much everyone's fault.  There are dozens of countries in the world that Bontis himself bragged about wanting to play us.  I dont blame them for not thinking it would get here, but i definitely blame them for not badly miscalculating the risk and not just playing someone else.

 

 

In the end I mostly just blame berhalter and blame the american team.  Thats easiest and something we can all get behind 

[Ally McCoist]

35 minutes ago, ensco said:

I also think the desire to rotate venues hurt us.  Don't know if we should do something about that or not. It is not hard to imagine that we could have easily had Ecuador in Toronto.

I blame the Vancouverites for wanting a match to be held on the edge of the Earth.  

JK JK DON'T TORCH ME

[JAVIERF]

One thing for the craic.  Canada is becoming a football nation because your discussing football and politics with the same passion.  Football is extremely connected with politics and with arts.  Kudos to the canucks, you are not that far away now from the ultras, barras bravas and hooligans now, no nice guys Jim Carreys no more, my men.  

On the other hand, we Argentina cancelled a match vs Israel in Barcelona for political reasons, a riot appeared from the  Palestine people living there, that stopped the match, we Argentina cancelled, the Israeli went to TAS and after a lawsuit an agreement was reached.

 

Your case was a bad choice, but if you cancelled it, there is gonna be money for them, because of compensatory and punitory damages

[Obinna]

43 minutes ago, Corazon said:

This should not be ignored.  Ecuador was willing to put together a friendly in Toronto on short notice vs Iran before what I can only assume was inevitably scrapped due to the politics of Iran.  At this point last week, maybe CSA should have thought that perhaps their game would also be cancelled and start planning on an Ecuador friendly in Toronto.  It seems like Ecuador was willing to play in Toronto and on short notice.  

Obviously this would have caused a bit of a headache and additional funding but to me it seems like it was a missed opportunity.  Perhaps the dates didn't align for Ecuador and/or Canada with Nations League though.

To add, even before the emerging backlash we could have been proactively working on an alternative (in Toronto, for example) instead of having to be reactive after plans fell apart. Again, we are still talking about how the CSA were caught blindsided and need people on their staff with diversity, etc., but for all we know they were aware of the risk but believed (maybe naively) the power of sport could overcome the power of politics, as they basically said a week or so ago in their press release.

If that were the case then why not have, or have been working on, a failsafe in Toronto, Montreal or wherever, hell even Vancouver? I can blame the CSA in that regard.

Couldn't they have been, for example, having talks with Bolivia on the side in the event their gamble on sport over politics never paid off?

Edited May 27, 2022 by Obinna

[JAVIERF]

Trudeau Jr is the only true winner on this affair, Mon frères c'est incroyable qui La Canada ne faire pas cette match du avec le pseudo européen Uruguay/Argentina le plus pays de foot européen dans la Sud-américain région

[JAVIERF]

Et aussi le Uruguayenne et les argentins mange très bien le canadien poutine, le nom est " El Gramajo" là-bas

[Obinna]

9 minutes ago, JAVIERF said:

One thing for the craic.  Canada is becoming a football nation because your discussing football and politics with the same passion.  Football is extremely connected with politics and with arts.  Kudos to the canucks, you are not that far away now from the ultras, barras bravas and hooligans now, no nice guys Jim Carreys no more, my men.  

On the other hand, we Argentina cancelled a match vs Israel in Barcelona for political reasons, a riot appeared from the  Palestine people living there, that stopped the match, we Argentina cancelled, the Israeli went to TAS and after a lawsuit an agreement was reached.

 

Your case was a bad choice, but if you cancelled it, there is gonna be money for them, because of compensatory and punitory damages

That's interesting, thanks for sharing that. 

I can see Argentina and Israel coming to an agreement quickly, but maybe that won't be the case with Iran and Canada given the nature of the conflict and the cancellation. 

[Obinna]

14 minutes ago, Ally McCoist said:

I blame the Vancouverites for wanting a match to be held on the most beautiful edge of the entire Earth.  

JK JK DON'T TORCH ME

This is how the Vancouverites read it.

[Redpunkfiddle]

34 minutes ago, JAVIERF said:

Trudeau Jr is the only true winner on this affair, Mon frères c'est incroyable qui La Canada ne faire pas cette match du avec le pseudo européen Uruguay/Argentina le plus pays de foot européen dans la Sud-américain région

Incoming UT grammar and syntax policing...

[TGAA_Star]

Then why even choose Iran as an opponent to begin with? They could have chose any other country to have a friendly with or the second this friendly was canceled, should have made alternate arrangements to have a last minute replacement opponent set up. At the very least.

[ag futbol]

Well surprise, surprise. There’s more than one angle to this one:

https://www.iccongress.ca/statement_decision_soccercanada_cancel_friendly_soccer

I’m not sure it would have saved the day but bringing to light this sort of discourse earlier might have helped the CSA look more considerate. Nobody wins against grieving families though, unless it’s the US Gun Lobby.

Edited May 27, 2022 by ag futbol

[The Beaver 2.0]

1 hour ago, Obinna said:

This is how the Vancouverites read it.

What, is the earth flat now?

(Grenade!)

 

[The Beaver 2.0]

Oh, and for the record, we don't see beauty out here, we are beauty incarnate.

"Welcome to the Lower Lotusland. All are welcome, but few can afford to stay."

[ray]

16 minutes ago, ag futbol said:

Well surprise, surprise. There’s more than one angle to this one:

https://www.iccongress.ca/statement_decision_soccercanada_cancel_friendly_soccer

I’m not sure it would have saved the day but bringing to light this sort of discourse earlier might have helped the CSA look more considerate. Nobody wins against grieving families though, unless it’s the US Gun Lobby.

You wonder whether the match could have been saved had the CSA tried to look for Iranian Canadians in support of the match from the moment Trudeau made his statement.  At that point they knew circumstances were turning against them.  Might not have made a difference but I think there is a substantial, if silent contingent in the community that wanted to see the match go ahead.

Edited May 27, 2022 by ray

[Obinna]

12 minutes ago, ray said:

You wonder whether the match could have been saved had the CSA tried to look for Iranian Canadians in support of the match from the moment Trudeau made his statement.  At that point they knew circumstances were turning against them.  Might not have made a difference but I think there is a substantial, if silent contingent in the community that wanted to see the match go ahead.

Good point. One lesson to hopefully be learned from the CSA, amongst many.

[Bison44]

35 minutes ago, TGAA_Star said:

Then why even choose Iran as an opponent to begin with? They could have chose any other country to have a friendly with or the second this friendly was canceled, should have made alternate arrangements to have a last minute replacement opponent set up. At the very least.

I think the reason we ended up with Iran is because we didnt have a choice of "any other country".  The announcement was late most other teams had their dance card filled in and someone thought we could pull this off and Iran was willing to come because their phone doesnt ring very often.  Nobody seemed to be willing to defend the merits of this game and everyone loses in the long run.  And to think for the first few days we were worried it was so popular with the iranian community that they were going to outnumber the canadian fans. 

[RS]

8 hours ago, BuzzAndSting said:

To the comment, posting the domain of his email was a little to close to doxxing the guy for me.

To be clear, I didn't post the domain of his email. I posted that he had the email address from a particular school.

Subtle difference.

[yellowsweatygorilla]

2 hours ago, ag futbol said:

Well surprise, surprise. There’s more than one angle to this one:

https://www.iccongress.ca/statement_decision_soccercanada_cancel_friendly_soccer

I’m not sure it would have saved the day but bringing to light this sort of discourse earlier might have helped the CSA look more considerate. Nobody wins against grieving families though, unless it’s the US Gun Lobby.

IC Congress is pretty controversial .. according to some Iranian opposition activists I work with, at the last leadership race, pro-regime activists brought in outsiders, including non-Iranians to stack the board. If CSA worked with them, they'd be in an even bigger shit storm than they are right now...

[cornerkick]

https://www.sportsnet.ca/article/osorio-says-canadian-players-told-canada-soccer-they-were-against-iran-game/

[yellowsweatygorilla]

Confirmation that players petitioned CSA to cancel friendly. Respect to the players in what must've been a difficult decision.

https://www.timescolonist.com/national-sports/osorio-says-canadian-players-told-canada-soccer-they-were-against-iran-game-5416027

[canucksfan]

I can definitely understand the concern from the players, especially regarding the optics. 

They're finally getting attention and respect from the country and internationally, and the majority of what would have been shown on the news after this match would have been the protests with posters of dead children and families.

[gator]

Waiting for the players to be called tyrants!