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As a trainee journalist back in England I remember an organisation called Welwyn One World.
It’s object was to allow members to share the benefits of different cultures.
I remember an annual event in Toronto, when food from all over the world could be sampled.
Anyone from a certain country made a beeline for their nation’s products. It was instinctive. A
radar taking you home, even if in reality that was thousands of miles away.
I was guilty of it myself.
To an extent the above scenarios exist in Canada, especially among unregistered players.
Just as they want to taste their own food, vast numbers of soccer players remain with what they
know, or at least what their parents know.
Take the Ontario Player Development League, which was introduced two years ago to become
the hotbed of all the young talent in the province.
A noble cause and yet how many players in the league are from families who come from Brazil,
Argentina and Uruguay, from Nigeria, Somalia, Ethiopia or Ghana, from Serbia or Croatia, from
Romania, Bulgaria, Russia, from Greece.
Of course, there are some, but there are many more out there.
Going back 20 years or so, private soccer academies were virtually non-existent.
Nowadays they’re everywhere.
In truth, soccer in Canada is one massive jigsaw, where the pieces are in place to finish the
puzzle, but no-one can agree on how the pieces should be assembled.
That’s not to say everyone agrees on how soccer should be organized in any country, but in
most parts of the world the picture is more or less complete.
In just about all the footballing countries of the world there is a professional league, with each
club running its own youth teams.
The professional clubs scout their area - in some cases, depending on the rules, the whole
country and beyond - and bring the most talented players under their umbrella.
Apart from travel, the cost of playing for a professional club academy is nothing.
Canada does not have a professional league, but plans are afoot for 2018.
Montreal, Vancouver and Toronto play in Major League Soccer, but in truth, MLS is a U.S.
professional league.
Montreal, Vancouver and Toronto have youth academies, but membership is pretty much
restricted to kids who live within driving range of those clubs.
In the world’s second largest country, that’s a few parts of a jigsaw with thousands of pieces.
The under 17 national team that recently failed to qualify for its age group World Cup had 15 out
of 20 players from the Vancouver and Toronto academies.
Anyone who thinks this represents all the talent that lies hidden in such a vast nation is, frankly,
wrong.
This is one area where a professional league will make a considerable difference.
The fallout from this situation gets even more complicated because of cost.
Players within the Toronto, Montreal and Vancouver academies do so for free.
The multi-thousands outside looking in have to pay to play, from a few hundreds dollars up to
several thousand, depending on the level.
I know kids pay to play hockey too, but then there is a network of elite leagues all across the
country, with players constantly being monitored by National Hockey League clubs.
A talented hockey player in a small town in northern Ontario is regularly identified.
This is not the case with soccer.