U13 2012

Is it any wonder that Canada has not made it to the WC in... 26 years? In this city fields (the few that exists in the inner core) have been ready for weeks and kids still cannot play on them until May 15, because it has "always been that date" that fields open.

The sad local status of soccer is overshadowed by deeper problems at the top.

Read on, from Stephen Brunt at Sportsnet.. This is not an endorsement of anyone at all.

"This much is undeniably true: some of the major stakeholders in soccer in this country think that there’s something very wrong at the top.

[...]

Funding agencies, both private and public, have lost faith in the governance of the CSA, to the point where they effectively seized control of the finances of the women’s national team on the eve of last year’s World Cup in Germany, and now are wary of reinvesting.

And Canadian supporters, though they may have little appetite for the fine points of sports administration and bureaucracy, have long had a strong sense that their game and their national teams have been ill served.

How could it be that a country in which soccer is the number one participation sport (every one of those participants pays a tithe to the CSA, totaling $7-million annually) and which continues to produce world-class players, seems to be falling farther and farther behind the rest of planet football, at least in the men’s game?

Returning to the World Cup, in which Canada made its first and only appearance in 1986, seems an increasingly impossible goal, not because we don’t have the talent – even excluding those famous few who have opted not to wear the colours of their country - but because at some fundamental level we simply don’t have our act together.

Thus the vague but intense anger directed at the people in charge. Those "Sack the CSA" signs that have popped up in Canadian stadiums express a widely held view in the soccer community.

And so what will take place on Saturday at the CSA’s annual meeting in Ottawa could indeed be a watershed moment, with men’s 2014 World Cup qualifying ongoing, and with the women’s World Cup coming here in 2015.

The presidency of the organization is up for grabs among three men – the incumbent Dominic Maestracci, vice president Victor Montagliani, and another vice president, Rob Newman, who has positioned himself as the reform candidate, and who has been publicly endorsed by the four Canadian professional clubs: FC Edmonton, Montreal Impact, Toronto FC and the Vancouver Whitecaps.

Behind the scenes, Newman is also being hailed as a white knight by some of those who will control the purse strings to significant amounts of funding in the future, and who believe passionately that the only viable option is for the old guard – in the form of both Maestracci and Montagliani - to go. (Though it must be pointed out that Newman, like Montagliani, worked under Maestracci and has been around for a dozen years.) Meanwhile on Wednesday, the Canadian Soccer Alumni Association threw its support behind Montagliani, with a group of former national team captains – including Paul Staltieri, Jason Devos, Frank Yallop, Bob Iarusci and Colin Miller adding their personal endorsements. Montagliani is regarded in some circles as more of a “soccer guy” than a “business guy”, which they see as a positive. But regime change, however necessary, is not going to be simple to achieve.

The national team players, male and female, have only two of the 936 votes in play. The professional clubs have only four. The outside funders have none.

Where the election will effectively be decided is in the control of two huge blocks, Quebec and Ontario, which in a weighted system each control 25 per cent of the vote. To win the presidency, a candidate requires 50 per cent of the vote plus one, and if no one achieves a straight majority on the first ballot, the third place finisher is dropped. Control Quebec and Ontario, in other words, and you only need a single additional vote to win.

Maestracci, a Quebecer, has his home province locked up, so Ontario is especially crucial. And though the Ontario Soccer Association has already carried out a secret ballot to decide where its 234 votes are going, the results will not be revealed until Saturday.

The bottom line is that if Newman, who comes from Saskatchewan, doesn’t get that Ontario vote, he can’t win. And the betting is that Maestracci has no room to grow outside of Ontario, which could pave the way for a Montagliani victory.

Sort of like a political convention, in other words, with exactly the same kind of backroom deal making and arm twisting and backstabbing. In the past, the CSA president has had huge influence in the distribution of all kinds of goodies – including appointments, trips to FIFA tournaments and conferences. It’s not at all hard to imagine the type of conversations that are going on right now.

But here’s the bottom line: unless there is a strong signal that the CSA’s status quo has changed on Saturday, the sense of disaffection, of opportunity lost, of grim resignation, will be profound among some of those who matter most to the game in Canada.

 Soccer in this country, literally and figuratively, simply cannot afford that".

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