From the Technical Director
This week Canada’s national under 17 team was eliminated from the World Cup following a
qualifying round failure at a CONCACAF tournament.
Well known Canadian soccer commentator Anthony Totera pretty much had a fit as a result.
He said he is totally fed up with excuses like: “We did our best” and it was “a good experience
for the future.”
He called for the coaching staff of the under 17 team to be sacked, insisting that we need
people in there whose sole aim is to win and ensure qualification.
Totera was particularly upset that one of the reasons for failing to qualify was a 2-1 loss to
Cuba.
With all due respect to the island nation, he said Canada should simply not be losing to Cuba.
Totera’s criticisms did not end there, noting that just about everyone on the Canadian squad
was from just two places, the Vancouver Whitecaps and Toronto F.C. academies.
In fact, 15 players were from those two organisations.
Totera argues that not enough effort is made to scour the country for players, noting that there
must be diamonds in the rough out there who have simply not been found.
This particular point is interesting.
Cuba has an area of 110,000 square kilometres. Canada is 10 million square kilometres.
Obviously Cuba has considerably less soccer players than Canada’s half a million or more male
participants, but it is fair to say that its network will have tracked down everyone talented
enough to compete at the national level.
Cuba will have done that through its 18 team national league.
The island nation also an advantage in that it is able to get its national players together more
often without the logistical nightmare of long distance travel.
For Cuba, the cost of gathering its players together is also negligible compared to Canada.
As such, the notion that one nation should be better than another based on size would be
wrong.
The idea that Canada may not be tracking down all its talented players has more merit.
Why that is happening is worthy of investigation.
Is it presumed that the vast majority of the best players must already be at the Vancouver and
Toronto academies?
It is presumed that because they are at the academies they are already playing and gelling
together?
Is the scouting network across the country unearthing all the talent that surely must exist in say
Alberta and Quebec, which has large numbers of players.
And surely there must be players in other provinces.
I am reminded of research done in Australia some years back which determined that most of the
best sports talents were from small towns, not big cities.
That is certainly the case with hockey in Canada.
I also remember many years back one of the best young players I had ever seen during an
Ontario Cup youth match was from Thunder Bay.
Of course, even if all the best talents from Canada were unearthed, how would the Canadian
Soccer Association get them together often enough to turn them into a winning team?
Who would provide the cash to do it?
A couple of years ago I was in Costa Rica researching their soccer set up and it was pointed out
to me that the scouting network across its youth and professional clubs was such that not one
single talented player, male or female, would be missed. Costa Rica, like Cuba, is small and its
intimacy allows for players to be seen, grabbed and nurtured.