NSXI - Interview with Vancouver Island FC Inaugural Signing Alexis McKinty

Everybody says Staq for captain, but imo he looks as much as a leader as Davies does on the field. Who knows what goes on in the change rooms but all the videos we see, he doesn't strike me as the strong leader with presence and personality. Believe it or not, the guy who shows up and plays within his abilities, rarely messes up, leaves it out on the field, and fights for his players and the country is... Kamal Miller. 

Actually, that's why2019 is a useful comparison.  It is the initial high water mark.  It will be a significant milestone when the sustained attendance passes the level generated by the initial enthusiasm of having a new league.

This lead me down a rabbit hole for another ex CPLer. Matt Silva now plays for Espinho in the Portuguese 5th tier

It looks like the USMNT are not playing a second match. Only Slovenia. It feels unlikely that other European teams will travel to the US. That news also kills our chances if getting a friendly against the USMNT (but that was always unlikely).  

Stefan Cebara is now with Europa Point in Gibraltar.

Time to pass the torch. Max needs to start getting reps ahead of the World Cup 2026; that isn't too far away! If he slips up or someone else passes him, so be it. But Max has definitely earned the opportunity. 

^  Still believe Valour is underperforming in the market, substantially underperforming, and if that can be corrected in 2024 (and boy would that take some vodoo) that alone would move the league numbers in a positive direction.  The disadvantages that come with the too large CFL venues can also be a strength.  Simple capacity.  That applies to Forge and Atletico as much as Valour.  Just one really good gate can go a long way to moving the needle for the season totals.  Wishfull thinking but the point stands.     

To be clear, someone brought up that attendance is better now than it was in 2019, so I just corrected them. I agree that year 1 was always likely to have the record for per game attendance for several years. I think it took MLS something like 17 years to beat it's year 1 average attendance record. Personally, before year 1 I didn't have any specific attendance targets. I just wanted to see where it was, then I assumed it would drop in year 2 (I didn't assume there would be a pandemic), and then my hope was that it would trend in the right direction from there. So far it has grown every year I was hoping it would. It grew 17% from 2021 to 2022. Some of that is artificial because there were still some restrictions in 2021, and hesitancy of course. Then it grew another 20% from 2022 to 2023. I'm guessing we won't grow at that high a rate again in 2024. We shedded Edmonton in 2023, which helps the average, and there is a good chance Vancouver will see a decline after year 1, but not guaranteed. Probably for us to grow by 17% or more again it would take new owners in York coming in and hitting it out of the park right from the get go, along with steady growth across the rest of the league.

I have read it and while I recognise its a good research and some of it my issues with it come from the fact I have a different stance then the author, I'd argue there is some other significant inaccuracies:  I) His statement that national teams who do very well depend on players in their domestic flight. Like, even if by the narrowest definition of very well it still leaves off Brazil, Argentine, and Belgium among the tier I countries of recent years. More broadly, most national teams who are worth a damn depend on players who have gone abroad to play at a higher level. That statement gives pretty Premier League in my backyard energy... II) Similarly, his statement is that Canada's soccer problem is its ''self-imposed shackles'', to use his own words, because it just hasn't come around to found a league of its own before and keep having teams in the US pyramid is just untrue. Canada's soccer problem is a) how to get the mass of genuine soccer fans we have to buy into the local stuff and b) that it is inherently more costly to have a Soccer club in Canada than almost anywhere else due to our countries' population centers being essentially placed in a straight line east to west. TBF he does mention geography but doesn't really go into it Hell, if anything you can argue its other way around: it isn't that being in the American pyramid prevented us from having the CPL but that we have the CPL because the Yanks didn't want to let us in as much as we would have needed to! All other things being equal a Canadian club playing in a league including the US would save a ton in travel costs and the magic number for attendance would be significantly lower then a club playing at the same level but just in Canada. If we had found to get say 12 clubs in MLS and USL and domestic status for Canadian players, or even having the quasi-domestic status that Canadian players arguably now have in MLS but earlier, we'd have been fine and there would have been no need or justification to make the sacrifices needed to get the CPL going. That's whole reason we have to accept that something like the CSB deal was needed, even if we don't like the specific terms. III) His statement that MLS clubs haven't done anything for smaller teams. That's just factually untrue. They have been the best customers, so to speak, in terms of giving a shot at a higher level for these clubs' players and the main source of loanees to the CPL. These have not only been great for the league financially but also played a key role in helping it build its credibility in the broader Soccer world. You had to have a Waterman and a McNaughton to have a Loturi. Oh, and even today a massive chunk of the CPL's rosters are made of veterans of the academies of MLS clubs. Earlier on it was the vast majority of said rosters. Of course, everyone is free to argue whether it's enough or not but it is both a very real and very substantial contribution. IV) His statement that its a done deal MLS clubs won't continue to dominate the Canadian Championship. Even a cursory glance at Soccer systems across the world will show that most of them have been dominated by one, two, or a few clubs for quite a long time at this stage. I have no doubt a CPL club is bound to win the Canadian Championship down the line but there is no reason to be overly confident that the norm will stop being an MLS club winning it anytime soon. V) The idea that the MLS clubs bemoan CPL participation and competitiveness in the Canadian Championship. That is simply untrue. Broadly speaking the attitude is that its awesome and add more luster to a title that make much of these clubs' trophy cabinets. Even having CPL clubs win it, which is bound to happen, would probably be taken in stride for that reason. VI) The idea that TFC was given the Champions League berth because the Federal Government treated them more favorably and the myth of them getting it being unfair to Forge. The actual reason that TFC got it is because, on a purely practical level, no club that operated from Canada during the peak of the Pandemic could play in an international tournament. No soccer club got an exception to those and the only reason we got a club in the 2021 CONCACAF Champions League at all was because the MLS clubs exiled themselves to the US to play their regular season.  Sure, we could have decided to not send anyone out of a sense of abstract fairness but what good would that have done to anyone? It wasn't unfair to Forge because Forge couldn't have played in that tournament aniway! (Incidentally, its part of why I am of the firm opinion that the ''2020 Canadian Championship'' shouldn't have been played and doesn't count in any way whatsoever but that's another kettle of fish).

Honestly, I don't feel a comparison with 2019 is fair or enlightening. There was bound to be a drop once the shine of novelty wears off, that's just how sport is.  Like, I have my concerns with how the CPL develops in some regards, and I'd obviously like the league's progress to be even faster, both for its own sake and for the money to once more go to the national teams, but outside of York United and VFC the attendence front is going ok to great, depending on the club.