Toronto FC. Montreal Impact. Vancouver Whitecaps.
Serbian White Eagles?
[PRBREAK][/PRBREAK]
The first three are Canada’s three top men’s professional soccer teams, set to begin play for the Voyageurs Cup when Vancouver visits Toronto tomorrow evening.
The fourth is a team that should be there, but isn’t.
White Eagles are champions of the Canadian Soccer League, which despite its largely semi-pro status, remains this nation’s only all-Canadian pro league.
For decades, from its founding in 1926 up to 1992, it was known as the National Soccer League. When I started noticing it, back in the late seventies, it was running multiple divisions in small stadiums and high school playing fields all over Toronto and the surrounding area.
The teams were largely ethnic social clubs – First Portuguese, Toronto Croatia, Toronto Italia, Panhellenic, Serbian White Eagles. Occasional teams joined up from other southern Ontario cities. I remember watching Montreal Castors play on the concrete plastic at Toronto’s tiny Lamport Stadium, before cramming into a minibus for the long ride back to La Belle Province.
This league has survived, in different forms and alignments, for the best part of a century. It kept pro soccer alive, bubbling on the back burner, through all the times and troubles when it appeared the sport would never find success here.
So now, in a time healthy growth and rising interest, we have three stand-alone sides ready to compete for a spot in the CONCACAF Champions League. Sportsnet has signed on to air the games, and fans are excitedly bracing for a half dozen Canadian derbies – that matter! – over the next six weeks.
Montreal already knows how good a prize this cup can be. After upsetting Toronto and Vancouver a year ago, they faced five Mexican and Caribbean opponents home-and-home before finally crashing out in the quarterfinals. Their final home match – at Olympic Stadium – drew 55,000 fans.
Admittedly, we’re in the early stages here. It makes considerable sense to limit the competition to the nation’s three biggest clubs, at least until it’s a little more established.
But, throughout the world of soccer, national cup competitions are open to amateurs and semi-pros as well. In this country, though, there are huge and significant obstacles.
Canada is far too vast and sparsely populated to run any kind of straight knock-out competition. You can’t just pull St. Catharines Roma of the CSL out of a hat, pair them with a side from the Rocky Mountain foothills of Alberta, and expect them to effortlessly set up a home-and-home set of cup-ties in the next four weeks.
But leagues at all levels crown champions every year. Let’s start with them. I’m nominating the CSL first, because it is the biggest, highest-level, most-established soccer loop that isn’t yet competing for the prize.
Serbian White Eagles, by the way, went 12-5-5 in the 2008 CSL season, knocking off North York Astros and Italia Shooters in the playoffs before scoring an upset win over the Trois-Rivieres Attak (farm club of the Montreal Impact), on penalty kicks in the final.
I don’t know if the current round-robin format would survive with four teams. Doubling the number of Voyageurs Cup games from six to twelve might easily sap the excitement and energy from what is quickly becoming the highlight of the Canadian pro soccer year. Maybe the CSL champ is randomly drawn against one of the three big clubs, in a two-legger to decide the third and final spot.
If this works, we don’t have to stop at the CSL. Let’s look at Professional Development League sides. I have no idea if eligibility laws would ever allow Canadian university teams to compete, but in the end, it wouldn’t be that hard to make the Voyageurs Cup a truly open competition.
Just take the various eligible champions, and play them off against each other until you have one left standing. Then throw them into the mix – in whatever format is agreeable to teams, networks and sponsors – and run a classic cup competition where big upsets – HUGE upsets – are occasionally possible.
Brampton Lions of the CSL knocking off Vancouver in the run-in, and getting a dream draw against Toronto FC at BMO Field on a nationally televised Wednesday night?
Maybe it’s not possible right now, but it certainly is in the future. I expect the next six weeks to cement this competition’s place in the Canadian sporting imagination. Once the heavy lifting is done, it’s time to do what all the rest of the world does – open the national cup to every team in the nation.
Admitting the Canadian Soccer League champions is the best – and most logical – place to begin.
Onward!