Comments on A More Splendid Life: Football and Canadian Nationalism

OTOH, how is the National Team to get more support...

2009-11-17T20:58:47.134-05:00

OTOH, how is the National Team to get more support (funding, sponsors, fans) if some of it's best players leave for (dubiously, ask Johnny de Guzman) greener pastures at first opportunity?

I think Canadians have every right to be upset when players like Hargreaves *are* developed here in Canada, and then choose to abandon them. How *should* the CSA react when it's successful products say "Thanks for the memories, but yer just not good looking enough anymore"?

You seem to have decide which is the chicken & which is the egg. I'm not so sure.

It's also easy to say "Well the system sucks, so why should they care?" but when has that attitude ever solved a problem? A modicum of loyalty is not too much to ask. If there are issues, they should be aired, not left for players not good enough to be wooed elsewhere....

The entire concept of pride and nationalism has be...

2009-11-11T14:26:25.489-05:00

The entire concept of pride and nationalism has been called into question by our ever more rapidly globalizing society. If a player feels the tug of two different countries, how should he decide? I think Richard has a good point about merit - Giusseppi Rossi could have strolled in as a starter for the US, but felt strongly about his parents' homeland in Italy.

As an American, I would have liked to see him in the red & blue - but this is an individual choice which the individual player must make.

Hey Squizz, thoughtful comments as usual. I agree...

2009-11-11T10:03:49.899-05:00

Hey Squizz, thoughtful comments as usual.

I agree that if we continue to remove impediments to moving between national outfits to the point where national team selection knows no national borders, international football is dead as the dodo.

However, I think there's a third way in maintaining interest in international football while preventing players with the option to play for another country from being shamed into choosing one and not the other.

Pride in the national team has to go beyond showing up flag in hand, whether you're a player or a fan. Pride in the national team should be reflected in our national set-up, which at the moment doesn't do enough to support homegrown talent, whether that talent plays for a provincial or academy team, in the CIS or the NCAA.

That pride has to be reflected at the highest organizational levels, and right now, with the "my kid is my kid and that's that" approach taken by the provincial and national soccer organizers, with Deloitte and Touche recommendations floating around like internet deadwood while the same stays the same, it's just not there. The players know it, and so do many Canadian soccer fans who might be otherwise more interested in what their country is doing.

It's unrealistic to expect players of the highest professional talent to want to stay when that professionalism is lacking in the CSA. Calling them out on pride seems to me like nothing more than calling them names on their way out the door.

Good piece as usual, Richard. But as someone who's...

2009-11-11T09:45:47.524-05:00

Good piece as usual, Richard. But as someone who's been called out on his supposed "rampant jingoism" in the past, let me offer a quick retort.

You are, of course, correct in saying that neither players nor supporters should accept a national federation unwilling to properly support them.

But it's the introduction of the idea of personal aspirations that irks many people. If players are suiting up for national sides based strictly on their individual desire to reach the World Cup, then what's the point of having restrictions on what nation players can represent? Hell, why have national teams at all?

If we're going to accept -- and I believe we all do -- that playing for artificial constructs such as "nations" in what is, admittedly, a game of kicky-ball is something important, then I think fans are in the right to question the motives of players who spurn their country of birth or predominant residence to play somewhere else.

If, on the other hand, we choose to step back and remind ourselves that it's a tad irrational to get hot and bothered about the athletic pursuits of strangers who happen to wear the flag of the country we happen to have been born in and/or live in, then we remove all the passion and excitement from the game.

And that's not something I'm personally willing to do.