Cross-Canada caution

[condor]

Vancouver and Montreal aren't overly thrilled about Toronto's pro soccer developments.

The Toronto soccer stadium continues to thunder its way through city hall. The once-unattainable dream of Major League Soccer north of the border is becoming a near-runaway certainty.

Frankly, it's an idea that's taking a lot of getting used to. After all the false starts -- all of which have come since the dreary collapse of the impossibly imaginary Canadian United Soccer League -- it just doesn't seem possible.

And there are still a lot of reasons to wave the caution flag.

It's hard to find anyone, anywhere, who thinks the proposed Toronto soccer stadium will actually be a sound, money-making business. But now that three levels of government and Maple Leaf Sports and Entertainment are calling the shots, that obstacle has been all but obliterated. If Mayor David Miller and the Toronto Maple Leafs want to build it, a 20,000-seat stadium will almost certainly come.

But there are other concerns -- actual soccer-related ones. Vancouver has just announced that it, too, is building a soccer park. And Montreal, where five-figure crowds have been known to pop up to watch the USL's Impact, appears set to build as well. And in both places, there are well-informed voices speaking out against Toronto's imminent entry into MLS.

As soon as the Toronto deal hit the newspapers, Vancouver soccer legend Bob Lenarduzzi told Neil Davidson, the fine soccer writer for Canadian Press, that too much was happening, too soon.

"… As far as our game goes, we have not been doing a good job from bottom to top," he cautioned. "We need to start at the bottom. We need to build a strong foundation and move on from there. We seem to be putting far too much emphasis on one MLS team in our country, and that being a cure to our woes at the international level. I don't think it's going to work that way."

I've got all kinds of time for Lenarduzzi. As both a player and coach, he has been there and done that more than just about any Canadian soccer man ever. Hundreds of games in England, an original member of the NASL's Vancouver Whitecaps, a player for Canada in the 1986 World Cup, head coach of the national team for many years, his is not an opinion that should ever be ignored.

And he's not the only dissenter. Montreal Impact owner Joey Saputo also has some heart-felt concerns.

"I think we're rushing in too quickly," he told Davidson. "And unfortunately we're making decisions today without really looking at the full scope of how it's going to affect the game, not only in Montreal and in Vancouver and Toronto, but across the country."

Saputo is that rarest of birds, a Canadian soccer owner who has actually won a league championship. A couple of them, actually. The Impact are a tremendous example of how you play in the lower divisions, and still develop players for the national team. There are days when Canada coach Frank Yallop seems to be building his team's future around a core group of Montreal teammates, including brilliant young goaltender Greg Sutton and the crafty, energetic Sandro Grande.

But while I see merit in both men's arguments, I do not ultimately agree.

To Lenarduzzi, I would say that while starting from the bottom is a fine and shining ideal, the entire system needs so much fixing right now, it really doesn't matter where you start.

It's always seemed to me that Canada does a pretty decent job of developing young players up until their middle teens. Check out the finals of a major Canadian tournament like the annual Robbie in Toronto, and you'll see exciting talent and some very well-coached teams.

The snag -- as far as the elusive dream of re-qualifying for the World Cup is concerned -- is that there is currently no first-division men's professional soccer in this country anywhere. That imposes a significant ceiling on overall player development. It doesn't so much affect the very best players. They'll find jobs playing somewhere else in the world. The best of the best won't be playing MLS in Canada until they hit the downsides of their careers.

The problem is for the next tier of players: the Suttons and Grandes, if you will. These are the guys who need a higher level of soccer at home. Give them a shot at the MLS, and they will become better players. Let's toss goalie Lars Hirschfeld onto this pile. He's had shots with Tottenham Hotspur and a few other European clubs, but now he's tending the pipes above the Arctic Circle for Tromso of Norway. Don't you think his life might be simplified a bit if he could play for the reborn Toronto Blizzard?

Ultimately, if we don't fix the top of the soccer chain in this country, it won't matter how many good young players enter the system at the bottom.

As for Saputo, he has a more practical concern. He doesn't want to lose all his best players to Toronto. It's a very legitimate worry. Personally, I don't care which of Toronto, Montreal or Vancouver gets into the MLS first. But we need someone to get there, and if all the money is falling behind Toronto this month, well so be it.

For a year, maybe two, the Montreal Impact and Vancouver Whitecaps will, indeed, lose good players to Toronto. But MLS expansion into Canada is not likely to stop with one club. The league itself has strongly indicated it wants more than one club up here.

Can Saputo come up with $10-million-plus to get the Impact to the show? Maybe; maybe not. The Whitecaps, however, already have a bazillionaire owner, who has just shown the extent of his commitment by announcing the construction of a soccer-specific stadium on the Vancouver waterfront.

If Toronto gets in -- and we'll know that one way or another in the next two weeks -- it says here Vancouver will be join them in one year, two tops. Once they're both in, Montreal is inevitable -- assuming the entire league doesn't pancake out of existence in the meantime.

The time for caution is over. It is not insignificant, to me, that the real driving forces behind the Toronto soccer stadium -- the ones who are actually going to get this deal done -- are not Canadian soccer people. Yeah, the CSA is in there, but there's no way they are driving this bus.

It's falling to Maple Leaf Sports and Entertainment, Toronto Mayor David Miller and MLS to open the door for the future of the Canadian game. Once that's in place, our best soccer people -- Lenarduzzi and Saputo among them -- can fill in the all the gaps.

Their appeals for caution are valid, but caution is not ultimately going to help. It took practically every owner and official throughout Canadian soccer for the last quarter century to create the current mess. If other people suddenly want to invest the better part of a hundred-million bucks in kick-starting the solution, let's all be grateful.

... And then let's all get to work.

Onward!

http://www.sportsnet.ca/soccer/columnis ... 54220_5128

[Daniel]

Un article de Ben Knight publie sur sportsnet.ca.

Je sais que t'as mis l'adresse, mais c'est important d'avoir l'auteur, aussi.

Edit: Ben est present sur le forum des Voyageurs ou son article est discute.

[Y]

Après trois paragraphes, c'est évident que c'est Benny

[Bxl Boy]

Please speak in english in this section...

[Y]

Write

Well, it was Dan's fault!

Just kidding...

I wrote that one should recognize Ben's style very quickly.