I’m going to start a new Onward! series tomorrow.
(Yes, I know I haven’t finished the artificial turf one yet. Bens are like that sometimes.)
Now that the Gold Cup is lost, Canada’s senior men’s soccer team faces two long years without a meaningful game. Three, if all you really care about is trying to qualify for the 2014 World Cup.
We find ourselves at several difficult crossroads.
- The team has a popular coach, who seems able to win. But he’s also hugely inexperienced on the world stage – and seemingly the perfect choice for his other job (his real job) as Canada’s technical director. So who should be the coach? And how do we fill the other job?
- Our oft-embattled soccer bureaucrats have entered a period of seeming stability, where some things seem to be progressing, and others aren’t being massively screwed up. Is it real? Is it illusion? How will we know – and what happens next?
- How many promising young players will develop into useful internationals? How many more will simply walk away to pursue their World Cup ambitions in other nations?
- What is happening with the Voyageurs? Canada’s national fan group is losing members, and its website is no longer Canadian soccer’s forum of record. How did that happen? How can it unhappen?
These questions now will be tackled – one at a time – more as a form of rabble-rousing than hard journalism. The stories will ask more questions than they answer – but the whole point will be to stir up some badly needed discussion.
Things are just a bit too quiet down here right now. Let’s see where this can go.
Onward!