Jump to content

  • Articles

    Manage articles
    Show all categories
    Guest

    Soccernomics: Hope for the little guy?

    By Guest, in Onward Soccer,

    You’re going to be hearing a lot about Soccernomics, the breakthrough study of soccer numbers by Simon Kuper (Soccer Against the Enemy) and economist Stefan Szymanski.
    If you’re interested in the nuts and bolts of why games are won and lost, and which clubs and nations are likeliest to prevail, just race right out and grab a copy now.
    [PRBREAK][/PRBREAK]
    I have almost half an entire bookshelf devoted to Bill James, the legendary baseball stats wizard who changed every thinking person’s approach to baseball by actually counting everything up, and inventing new stats – on-base percentage – that actually correlated directly with on-field success.
    Soccer, of course, doesn’t have nearly as many stats – but high-data computer programs like ProZone are already changing that.
    Kuper and Szymanski have broader statistical models – population, national wealth, international soccer experience – that neatly predict which nations should win, which can’t and … fascinatingly … which over- and underachieve.
    Canada – bless us, every one! – turns out to be one of the most underachieving soccer nations on the planet. England – confirming the honest, outspoken fears of many – consistently wins more than it is entitled to.
    There’s far too much in this thrilling book to deal with in one go, so here’s a couple of juicy tidbits to chew on:
    - Spending money on salaries definitely wins soccer games. Splashing out on transfer fees does not.
    - Outrunning your opponents doesn’t win. Outsprinting them does.
    - Spending big money on managers – does not win trophies.
    Okay, that’s a lot of bar fights that just started. While the inexorable drift of Soccernomics is that bigger is better, the book does hold out an intoxicating hope for fans like myself who want to see brilliant, gifted smaller teams win trophies now and then.
    When Olympique Lyon dominated French soccer for most of the past decade, they had four different managers, and didn’t splash out a lot on transfer fees. They scouted really well, and gobbled up under-valued young prospects who could just flat play the game of soccer. Michael Essien, anybody?
    And you don’t get sentimental about these players, either. When the world comes knocking with its chequebooks swaying, you sell – for every last franc, farthing or flapdoodle seed you can pocket. By then, you already have your next unknown stars in the reserve team.
    Interestingly, this is almost exactly the model Brian Clough used to lift tiny Nottingham Forest to consecutive European Cup titles in 1979 and 1980. Interestingly, Forest’s decline set in soon after they broke the world transfer record to land Trevor Francis. They still conquered Europe, but precious hot air was gushing out of the balloon by then.
    It would be easy for a fan of small teams to be gloomy reading this book, because the numbers seem to be sliding so inexorably towards the super rich. But just as Bill James opened the door for the Oakland Athletics to underspend and outperform the mightiest franchises in baseball, so does Soccernomics show the way for brilliant sides like Olympique Lyon.
    As the message spreads, young genius managers will arise. And well-constructed, trophy-grabbing minnows will soon be swimming with blind, directionless sharks.
    Onward!
    Guest

    Soccer gambling comes home

    By Guest, in Onward Soccer,

    And so, the story breaks from Macedonia, that the referee in Canada’s recent 3-0 loss to the Former Yugoslavian Republic had more on his mind than the fair arbitership of an international soccer friendly.
    The over-under number on the game was 2.5. The ref – and a large international gambling syndicate – had “over.” Four penalty kicks – some outright odd – were whistled. Canada (bless them!) were gifted two, and squandered both.
    Nobody’s innocent like us, eh?
    [PRBREAK][/PRBREAK]
    Yeah, I know. What if some of the Canadians had “under?” Declan Hill, in his definitive book “The Fix,” points out reassuringly that you rarely get action going both ways on a fixed game. It’s far more likely that a player, team or ref gets bought, and the smart money overloads on one particular result.
    As I write this, there’s no reason to believe anyone other than the ref was involved in pole-screwing what should have been a decent little outing for two sides that didn’t get invited to the World Cup dance in South Africa next year. Canada just happened to be on the field at the time.
    Next time, though, we may not be so lucky.
    A couple of years back, I encountered an ad on Craigslist, looking for a soccer announcer. Having some modest qualifications, I enquired. The gig would have paid a flat, rather nice per-game amount, if I were willing sit up in a corner of Toronto’s Lamport Stadium with a cell phone, updating gamblers on the score and circumstances of matches in the semi-pro Canadian Soccer League.
    I turned it down, but I know friends who signed on. I’m happy for them – Canadian soccer is a tough game to make a buck in – but I have a greater, deeper concern.
    Fixing soccer matches is not a matter of glamour and high-profile. Certainly big games are vulnerable, but better opportunities often exist off the beaten path. Macedonia-Canada wasn’t exactly top of the bill that day. But a lot of money had clear reasons to believe the ref was going to ensure at least three goals, regardless of the intentions or abilities of the two teams on the pitch.
    Canadian Soccer League games are clearly worth investing in. Our tiny teams are being tracked, minute by minute. Anyone watching this league for five minutes knows there is absolutely no money in it, and the people who run it – however well-intentioned and hard-working – are cryingly naïve.
    So you lost half a million quid on Manchester United? How ‘bout making it back with a sure thing on North York Astros, or Italia Shooters, or Trois-Rivieres Attak?
    I’m not pointing any fingers or naming any names. As far as I know or can prove, Canadian soccer is clean. But the money doesn’t care where the money comes from. We would be painfully over-innocent to ever believe such things could never happen here.
    We’re entering a year where – for a while – it’s going to seem like fixes are everywhere. The evidence is rising, and – as Monty Python would brilliantly put it – even the police are beginning to sit up and take notice.
    The more the heat rises, the deeper the money will dive. Italy’s Serie C? The Cypriot League? The CSL?
    For those of us who love the game, two immense challenges await:
    - Don’t lose faith
    - Don’t be surprised
    International soccer gambling money is already in Canada. It’s been here for at least two full years. May the vigilance of all be equal to its reach.
    Onward!
    Guest

    Update

    By Guest, in Onward Soccer,

    So, a week ago Thursday, I ducked out of town for a quick little Thursday-to-Saturday visit.
    [PRBREAK][/PRBREAK]
    Along about Friday lunch, I wasn’t feeling so good. Whether it was flu, or what kind of flu it was or wasn’t – well, we’re never going to know for sure. But a week came and went, and I was too wiped out to write.
    I feel much better and stronger now. I finally got home last night, and I’m ready to fire up some serious soccer writing.
    Oh – and I’m in love.
    The conversation resumes tomorrow.
    Onward!
    Guest

    Argos at BMO II: The CFL case against

    By Guest, in Onward Soccer,

    So let’s move away from being angry soccer fans protecting our little park on the Toronto waterfront from the churning, chiseled cleats of the Blue Helmet Brigade downwind at the SkyDome.
    Let’s look, instead, at why moving the Toronto Argonauts to BMO Field would be a bad deal for the Boatmen, their fans – and the game of Canadian gridiron football.
    [PRBREAK][/PRBREAK]
    - Why would a team getting free rent in a large covered stadium directly connected to the subway want to move to a cramped park with weaker transit connections and scything winds that often make it the coldest, most exposed place in the entire Greater Toronto Area?
    - Why would the CFL agree to play on a field that is fully 35 yards too short? The 115 yards of north-south at BMO can’t even handle a smaller American field, let alone the large, freewheeling pasture CFL fans adore.
    - Why would the Canadian National Exhibition and the city – who have just accepted $5-million from Maple Leaf Sports and Entertainment to install grass at BMO and build other soccer facilities around Toronto – turn around and destroy that grass for soccer? Especially when MLSE is also putting up funds for new seating in the stadium’s north end?
    - Why do people think BMO Field will be the second coming of Molson Stadium in Montreal? We all know the CFL’s Alouettes moved to the tiny park on Mount Royal, and became a huge hit with local fans. But when you walk out of Molson Stadium after a game, you’re surrounded by the Old World essence of Montreal at its finest – with restaurants, bars and nightclubs in profusion. Postgame at BMO is concrete, tunnels, a draughty train station, highways … a truly unappealing, inconvenient wasteland, the honest truth be told.
    Argo fans, we’re talking about reduced convenience, thousands fewer seats, serious weather exposure, a huge compromise in the rules of the game, and nowhere to go afterwards.
    Who, exactly, is that a good deal for?
    I’m all for trying new things – but this move is a non-starter for plenty of solid CFL-related reasons.
    Onward!
    Guest

    Keep sailing, Argos!

    By Guest, in Onward Soccer,

    Years back, my memory recalls an incident in a prominent Northern Ontario city I’m just about certain was Sault Ste. Marie.
    A major curling event was scheduled, and curling ice installed in the big arena. The local junior hockey team – displaced for two weeks by the intricate subtleties of high-level rock-throwing – were departing on an extended road trip.
    But before they left, some of the players thought it would be amusing fun to don their blades, and do some hard skating drills on the curling ice.
    [PRBREAK][/PRBREAK]
    The ice was destroyed. The event nearly had to be cancelled. Curlers the world over reacted in horror. Hockey folk didn’t much get what all the fuss was about.
    And here we are again, perhaps – as one more time the Toronto Argonauts seek to cast their carnivorous cleats in the general direction of BMO Field.
    Just as curling ice needs to be smooth, even and free of gouging ruts, so too does soccer grass require protection from the grinding, concentrated destruction of gridiron football. What is the point of building a real soccer stadium, and finally being allowed to install truly good grass, if the surface is destroyed nine or more times a year by a brutal, gouging, grinding rival game?
    Soccer fans are already reacting in horror. The problem is getting CFL fans – and local politicians – to care.
    For what it’s worth, though, I don’t get the sense the Argo invasion is actually all that serious a threat this time around.
    The team is losing games and money at an appalling clip. We’ve recently learned that their owners are being financially propped up by the owner of the British Columbia Lions – and have been since they arrived.
    The Argos famously bailed out of two earlier, abandoned Toronto soccer stadium plans, primarily using Canada’s hosting of the FIFA Under-20 men’s tournament in 2007 as leverage for a better rent deal at the Dome With Sky Formerly Known As SkyDome.
    Now, with the team up for sale, any and everything that could make the Boatmen seem more attractive is – once again – in play.
    But before we start getting the entire south-end support section of ravenous Toronto FC fans stomping and chanting at every single Toronto City Council meeting throughout 2010, let’s take a collective deep breath, and consider … the obstacles.
    - The playing surface at BMO Field is 75 yards wide. That’s sufficient for the CFL, although it leaves next to nothing for the huge bench areas most gridiron teams require.
    - BMO’s field is 115 yards, end-to-end. A CFL field is a whopping 150 yards long. Big end-zones are essential in the pass-heavy three-down gridiron game. Even if they were shrunk to 15 yards – something the league has said it would grudgingly accept – we’re still 75 feet short of playable.
    - The field is already hemmed in tightly by grandstands on three sides, and a plan has been approved to add some permanent seating in the open north end.
    - Any lengthening of the playing surface would require the demolition of the south end, extension into and across Princes Boulevard, and the building of new – and movable – seating for several thousand people. That takes money, and …
    - There’s no money.
    - For the Argos to play at BMO Field in 2010, the fundamental rules of CFL football would have to be altered. Expanding the field and getting stadium capacity up to the current Argo level of along about 26,000 would take two full years, at least.
    - The three levels of government, having already paid the entire shot for the stadium’s construction, are unlikely to smile on this plan – especially given the hugely loud and vocal public opposition that will arise. Not only are TFC and Canada soccer fans loud, they are brilliantly organized. They will be heard.
    - About the only reason grass is being installed at BMO in the first place is that private money is paying for it. Maple Leaf Sports and Entertainment – owners of Toronto FC – are in an awkward position. They can’t really publicly oppose another team moving into a stadium which public money built for them. But the $5-million they are investing in the new turf certainly raises the bar higher than the financially battered Argonauts can comfortably leap.
    Far more likely, I think, is that the Argos are threatening to leave the ‘Dome in hopes that the ‘Dome owners – Rogers Communications – will buy the team. Possible, I suppose, but if I’m a landlord with a struggling tenant who’s managing to pay the rent, last thing I want to do is buy that business.
    But vigilance is always appropriate, and it’s not a bad time to work up some strategies for effective public opposition of any attempt to dock the Good Ship Argo at the pleasant port of BMO Field.
    This is crucial. If Canada is to have soccer – real soccer – it has to protect the grass at BMO Field. The park is finally free to become the true home of Canada’s national soccer teams, and the day isn’t far – I truly believe – when TFC will pass the Argos as Toronto’s fourth professional sports team.
    The Canadian Football League is both a sporting and cultural institution in Canada. Yesterday’s Grey Cup game was a blast. And did you know the CFL draws just about exactly the same average number of fans per game as the Spanish La Liga?
    But gridiron lines – and gridiron cleats – destroy both the atmosphere and artistry of the beautiful game. And to permit these atrocities for the benefit of a struggling, bankrupt franchise whose financial seizures have already dealt multiple setbacks to the Canadian soccer dream is simply not a reasonable option.
    The CFL does NOT belong at BMO Field. We’d all better start thinking of simple, effective ways to explain that to people.
    Onward!
    Guest

    Not the NASL

    By Guest, in Onward Soccer,

    Oh, for Pete’s and pity’s sake!
    So the Team Owners’ Association – the breakaway USL-1 group trying to form a new division-two pro soccer league north of Mexico – needs a name.
    [PRBREAK][/PRBREAK]
    It’s a bit of a poser. History has already burned through United Soccer Association, National Professional Soccer League, American Professional Soccer League, A-League and United Soccer League. American Soccer League may be out there, but where your two biggest and strongest franchises are safely tucked away in British and French North America, that just won’t play sufficiently at home.
    So they’ve gone and resurrected North American Soccer League. The biggest success – and most horrendous failure – in the history of the beautiful game in the Americas.
    Not on my watch you don’t, buckos!!
    I grew up on the western edge of the University of Toronto campus, just south of Bloor and St. George. I went to junior high school in Yorkville. If you know your Toronto geography, you can easily visualize an adolescent me walking by Varsity Stadium just one heck of a lot.
    One day, a big colourful sign went up, informing a largely indifferent Bloor Street that the North American Soccer League was in town. “Toronto Metros” didn’t mean much to me – but the names of all the upcoming opponents were up there as well.
    Boy and man, I have always loved and admired the usually hopeless plight of really obscure pro sports team. In one glance at a billboard, I was introduced to the Rochester Lancers, New York Cosmos, Montreal Olympique, Dallas Tornado, St. Louis Stars, Atlanta Chiefs and Washington Darts.
    Soccer – frankly – bored me back then. But this league electrified me from the start. I had no idea how cool it was to have division-one pro soccer three blocks from my home. But certainly, I started going to the games.
    And every spring, a new sign went up on Bloor Street. And here came the Philadelphia Atoms, Miami Gatos, Los Angeles Aztecs, Portland Timbers, Tampa Bay Rowdies, Baltimore Comets, Boston Minutemen – Team Hawaii! Connecticut Bicentennials!
    I found myself wallowing in all this – with utter joy. I still didn’t even like soccer that much, but the team names and colours hooked me – and wild out-of-control expansion just brought more and more and more.
    And the soccer had its strong points, too. It didn’t take long to understand that when the Rochester Lancers came in, that was an intense, edgy game. Pretty much everyone hated the Cosmos even before Pele showed up. They were awful then, too, but still easily connected with the deep-dislike reflex of many fans, mine own good self included.
    Oh, and Toronto Metros-Croatia beat the Minnesota Kicks 3-0 in Soccer Bowl ’76. A freaking championship! In Toronto! Incredible! Those hopeless Maple Leafs hadn’t hoisted a Stanley Cup in nine whole years!
    For me, the North American Soccer League was a joyous whirl of misplaced optimism. I wasn’t there where in ended – at Varsity Stadium! But the things we love in our youth tend to delight us throughout our lives, and the NASL will always stand high on my list of happy nostalgia.
    And for all that I – and all Canadian soccer lovers – have huge hopes pinned on the future progress of the Vancouver Whitecaps and Montreal Impact, these are still second-division squads, and their league in utterly no way at all matches the dreams, drama and demise of the NASL.
    If you go ahead with this, boys – and if you manage to get sanctioned by the USSF and how’s that going by the way? – I won’t be joining you.
    Oh, I’ll write about it, but I’ll come up with my own name, thanks. I may grant you “NASL2,” acknowledging you’re the second league to claim the moniker, and are a second-division outfit, as well.
    But understand – as far as myself and many others are concerned, you are digging in sacred ground.
    The Memphis Rogues are buried in that ground. The San Antonio Thunder, San Jose Jaws and Las Vegas Quicksilvers are buried in that ground. The Calgary Boomers and Edmonton Drillers are buried in that ground.
    I remember once, a couple of decades back, taking a midnight stroll past the gates of a graveyard on the outskirts of Whitehorse, Yukon Territory. There was a simple sign:
    “Please respect our privacy, as we respect yours.”
    The Team Owners’ Association is not the NASL, and will never be the NASL.
    Good luck and all, but go away – and leave my ghosts alone.
    Onward!
    Guest

    Seagull City SC

    By Guest, in Onward Soccer,

    And just like that, the team with the silly name is champion of men’s professional soccer, north of the south end of El Paso, Texas.
    They earned it, too – knocking off Columbus, Chicago and Los Angeles, after being just about as dead as dead can be entering their final match in the MLS regular season.
    So – just once – in honour of all that – I’m going to call them by name:
    Real Salt Lake.
    [PRBREAK][/PRBREAK]
    It’s hard to legitimize a name like that. D.C. United and the Houston Dynamo don’t run up against nearly the same credibility problems. Yoinking the appellation of Madrid’s Galacticos, and bolting it to Salt Lake City is stunningly similar to:
    - Oklahoma City Celtic
    - Hoboken Hotspur
    - Sporting Memphis
    None of those really get it, though. It’s hard to adequately satirize a name so uniquely and naively arrogant.
    - Utah Jazz
    And yet, Seagull City SC awake this morning with the one key piece of credibility they have never previously possessed – a championship.
    And how they got there is a case study for the MLS playoff system at its most – MLS.
    The Gulls were deader than dead when they lost 1-0 at Toronto FC on Danny Dichio Giant Banner Day at BMO Field. Real seagulls rode the swirling lakeshore downdrafts, while the Salt Lake ones sprawled vanquished on the ghastly green plastic of the Canadian soccer dream.
    But then Toronto lost in New York – and a whole bunch of other things happened, too. An impossible letter arrived from MLS headquarters, inviting the Cinderella Seagulls to play a series of playoff matches against the defending-champion Columbus Crew.
    They won.
    Then it was off to Chicago, for an event unique in the history of sport – an Eastern Conference final between teams from the Central and Mountain time zones.
    They won.
    And then, last night’s star turn in Seattle, downing David Beckham, Landon Donovan et al on penalty kicks to claim the MLS Cup.
    And no, it doesn’t really matter at all that SLC was a sub-.500 team this year. Struggling teams win cups all over the soccer world. The most tangible difference is that MLS, alone, gives its league championship to the cup lifter, instead of the team which prevails over the entire long grind of the regular season.
    But that’s all North American sports. No surprise there.
    My biggest knock on the Salt Lake team’s name is that I learned early-on it makes curious newcomers write off the entire league without a second thought. But championships do bring legitimacy – unless you’re the Tampa Bay Lightning of the NHL. (That’s actually a better name than RSL, because there’s a lot more lightning in central Florida than there is Spanish royalty in Utah.)
    All nomenclature aside, I love what Seagull City did last night. This is a fun little footy team.
    I knew they couldn’t bunker with Beckham crossing and Donovan ready to pounce. The best alternative was to push the ball, and keep it in the L.A. end as much as possible, so the Galaxticos would have to run the field anytime they wanted a shot on goal.
    This is a task the Salt Lake roster seems built for. Hard hustle and searching passes from Kyle Beckerman in the middle. Robbie Findley’s scorching speed up-front, alongside the up-tempo, who-knows-what’s-going-to-happen opportunism of Yura Movsisyan. Oh, and that deeply talented Will Johnson kid. Canadian, eh?
    I wanted to see them push, push, push all night, and bless their hard-running hearts, they did.
    It almost didn’t matter. L.A. took gamely to the challenge of having to push the ball 70 yards almost every time they got it. They took the lead on a spectacular three-man move, with perfect long passes from both Beckham and Donovan setting up a Mike Magee tap-in just before the break.
    Findley put two stamps on the equalizer – one sloppy, one sublime. Moments before the goal, he was played into the open, hitting mach two on the dead run to daylight. But his first touch was terrible, setting up a three-way collision that injured the hand of Galaxy goalie Donovan Ricketts. That didn’t help at all, shortly after, when Findley made a dazzling move to zip home a crazily bouncing Movsisyan rebound to tie the match.
    After that, it was mostly a question of could they keep running? (yes), and could they prevail in the shootout? (yes).
    Just as he had a week before in Chicago, SLC ‘keeper Nick Rimando stole the shootout. Only two saves this time, but those and the three he smothered in the East final must all have been on Donovan’s brain when the L.A. Whizbang hoofed his penalty over the bar.
    At the start of the season, many observers who thought they knew what they were talking about picked Salt Lake as the best team in the west. It just never got around to happening, even though they could be a blast to watch when they threw it into the high gears and just went sailing.
    And now, perhaps the most disappointing team in MLS this season (I’m not always Canada-centric, you know) – has won the cup.
    I admire the win, and the way they achieved it. I couldn’t even begin to tell you who the best team in Major League Soccer really is this morning, so in a land of forced parity and teams with silly names, let’s just let the cup speak for itself.
    All hail Seagull City SC – 2009 champions of Our Little League.
    Onward!
    Guest

    Do the right thing, France!

    By Guest, in Onward Soccer,

    There’s a simple, straight-forward solution to the France-Ireland World Cup qualifying handball controversy. Something that should have happened, but did not.
    Forget appeals to FIFA. Forget blaming the ongoing lack of replay technology. Let us return to a simple, often-outmoded concept – often forgotten in the modern world, but perfectly applicable to this situation:
    Honour.
    [PRBREAK][/PRBREAK]
    Forget Ireland having to ask for a replay. The team that should have offered one – is France.
    We all know, by know, that French striker Thierry Henry deliberately handled the ball, grabbing it off the end touchline, playing it to his foot, and setting up the goal that sends France to South Africa. Not that Ireland were going to qualify if it hadn’t happened. But the game was almost certainly headed to penalty kicks, essentially a fifty-fifty shot for the plucky, hard-working sons of the Emerald Isle.
    Henry, to his credit, admits he did it and charitably says the game should be replayed. FIFA – put in pretty much an impossible position – does not agree.
    But what would happen if the French football association simply invited the Irish back to Paris next week to play another match?
    There is a kind-of-famous precedent. In 1999, in the English FA Cup, Arsenal defeated Sheffield United on a goal scored after the Sheffield squad had sportingly played the ball into touch so an injured Arsenal player could recover. On the ensuing give-back throw in, Kanu of Arsenal – who all concerned agree innocently misread the situation – stole the ball, tore through the opponents, and set up what turned out to be the winning goal.
    Before the night was out, Arsenal manager Arsene Wenger – a Frenchman, bless him! – rejected the win, inviting the Blades back to Highbury for a replay. Arsenal went on to win anyway, but honour was satisfied. British bookies apparently lost millions, but honestly, who cares?
    Yes, France earned an enormous fortune from Henry’s handball. Yes, also, that was Ireland’s best effort, and it’s unlikely they would get that close to Les Bleus in the replay.
    But now their qualification to the World Cup is tainted, and there are people who will call Thierry Henry a cheat for the rest of his life.
    The whole replay issue is dangerously fraught. Canada could easily have appealed for two since 1994, both courtesy of Mexican referee Benito Archundia. I don’t blame FIFA for saying, essentially, that the referee made his call, and French travel agencies are now free to sell as many South Africa holiday packages as they ever possibly can.
    Arsene Wenger had it right. He knew his team won the match unjustly, and he gave it back.
    No appeal, no ruling, no decades and decades of post-match controversy and agony.
    France – unquestionably – is one of the world’s great footballing nations. The chance arose to make a hugely risky and sporting gesture, to atone for what will always now remain a ghastly stain on their sportsmanship. If they needed a day or two to mull it over, fine. But France needed to act before the Irish appeal made it as far as FIFA.
    One game, on one day, with pretty much the entire soccer-loving world watching – to resolve a situation that was dead-even anyway, until they won the match by cheating. A gala day out for all concerned – with tremendous drama, and justice for all.
    It should have happened. It did not.
    From here on in, a stain of shame is on French football – and is entirely self-inflicted.
    Onward!
    Guest

    Mo’s new coach

    By Guest, in Onward Soccer,

    Whichever side of the Mo Johnston debate you’re on, you can argue your case based on Toronto FC’s hiring of Preki as their new head coach.
    The pro-Mo forces will say that leading a mid-talent Chivas USA team to 40 wins, 21 draws and three playoff spots in three seasons proves the man can get results. He certainly fits Mo’s demand for MLS experience, and his no-nonsense approach to defence and team attitude is long overdue in the Redcoat boot room.
    Mo blasters can counter – once again – that Mo gave a job to an old pal, and that TFC needs a GM who has wider, deeper contacts throughout the vast world of global soccer. Oh, and Preki-coached teams have never advanced past the first round of MLS playoff coin-flippage.
    I will not seriously try to argue against either side.
    [PRBREAK][/PRBREAK]
    This is a perfect Mo Johnston signing. The plus side looks compelling, while the down side is not so clear. It can take forever for the dichotomy to clear out. If the Torontos hadn’t crashed 5-0 in Joisey on doomsday, many folks might still think the present roster is adequate.
    Preki, called on the subject, said Toronto doesn’t have enough players to win, but can get more. That’s a clean, direct statement that Mo is working for him. TFC’s never had that before, and it’s long-gone time they did.
    Players will be gone. We already know Preki can kick can, because he canned Amado Guevara clean out of Chivas two years ago. Guevara came north, and has been consistently creative for Toronto FC ever since.
    But Mo’s huge signing of Julian DeGuzman essentially covered Amado’s spot, and it’s not like there aren’t huge holes (central defence, both wings, GOAL SCORING!!!) where the Reds don’t need help. The simple answer? Trade Guevara. But the man is having knee surgery, and who would ever make a deal for a player on those terms? Terrible timing for Toronto, but what else is new?
    Preki’s been known to coach from the back, too. His defensive preferences (often physically brutal) now guide a team where the defenders are shaky, everyone including the fullbacks press forward, and the whole shooting match concedes frightful, fatal flurries of late-game goals. Johnston promised pushing fullbacks from the birth of the franchise. Is that dream over now?
    It will also be interesting to watch the still-somewhat-old-school Toronto press corps grapple with a coach with only one name. You won’t find it in either the CP or Globe and Mail style books, but look for “Coach Preki” to be the consensus fallback.
    I think a no-nonsense drill sergeant who defends his own goal physically and can tell bad-attitude stars to go play for expansion teams is likely exactly what TFC’s current sorry state calls for. But Preki has also got to understand that DeGuzman and Dwayne DeRosario are not going to hang back chop-tackling fresh-faced NCAA grads when there is attacking to do ... and – gasp! – goals to be scored.
    Mo has to get this one right. And you’ll know it’s working when Preki starts telling Mo what he needs – and Mo goes out and gets it.
    (And the new players aren’t old Johnston buddies like Nick Garcia.)
    Thoughts, y’all?
    Onward!
    Guest

    Awards and such

    By Guest, in Onward Soccer,

    When your local soccer team’s attacker and defender of the year are a midfielder and a goalie, you know there’s still a long way to go.
    Such is so with Toronto FC in this year of Mo Johnston, 2009.
    [PRBREAK][/PRBREAK]
    No denying Dwayne DeRosario his TFC golden boot. Eleven goals in the MLS regular season, and an utterly clutch natural hat trick to spark the 6-1 Voyageurs Cup clinching comeback in Montreal.
    Rookie goalie Stefan Frei was honoured at the back, for his 98 saves in 26 starts. The young Swiss conceded a goal-and-a-half a game, far from stellar, but the very fact he won this award in the first place tells you a lot of those saves – and goals-against – were forced from the tentative positioning and play of the leaky back line he was backing up.
    I suppose if most teams made their ‘keeper eligible for individual defensive honours, a lot of them might win it. But the announcement felt so jarringly odd, I feel confident in saying this doesn’t actually happen that much.
    All of this begs two questions:
    1) If the TFC attacker of the year award had to go to a striker, who would get it?
    Why, Chad Barrett, of course. He of the five goals on 55 shots, 25 of which were on target. No, I don’t know if that short, square pass he played to the Kansas City goalkeeper on opening night counted as a shot. Barrett obviously thought the play was over, so he gave the ball away – all alone, wide open, ball at his feet, just off the left goalpost.
    Barrett’s tale of hard-hustling, misfiring woe been told too many times, of course. But Ali Gerba did nothing, O’Brian White didn’t get enough playing time, Pablo Vitti’s moments at forward were gnawingly unproductive, and franchise hero Danny Dichio only had three goals and a couple of helpers before he was eased out for what we continue to be assured was the greater good of all concerned.
    2) If the TFC defender of the year award had to go to a defender, who would get it?
    Better news, here. Nana Attakora (bless him!) got hurled into the void and did just fine. Poise, anticipation, good maturity for a youngster – and a couple of clutch goals down the stretch when the post-Dichio strike force dried up like a dewdrop in a blast furnace.
    A great story, but it’s still not a great recommendation for your roster when your most improved youngster is also the anchor of your D. Anchor of the future? Quite possibly. Today? Well, that’s yet another reason why the season ended early.
    Attakora has lots up upside – as does young Gambian Emmanuel Gomez – so time and maturity should make the TFC defence stronger. But even if Barrett and Gerba boost their productivity by half, DeRo still has them both pasted single-handedly.
    Which brings us back to what we already knew – Trader Mo has got some serious work to do before this team is as good as he wants us to believe.
    As long as we’re here, here are a couple of Onward! awards for the Toronto FC season just past:
    - Player of the Year Other Than DeRo: Amado Guevara. Everyone knocks him for cruising from time to time, but who on this roster didn’t? Only Chad Barrett, really, and how did that work out? Guevara is strong, creative and dangerous, and is off to the World Cup in South Africa with Honduras. TFC fans love the guy enough they don’t even seem to mind he plays for Honduras – the Canadian national team’s most voracious and dangerous natural predator.
    - Player I Always Get Ripped for Criticizing: Pablo Vitti. I could write 10,000 words of fantasy fiction about Jim Brennan, chickens and a Lamborghini Countach and I wouldn’t get carped at as much as I do for just happening to notice over seven long months that Vitti can’t produce. Yeah, he played out of position a lot, and yes he has a lovely touch on a soccer ball in traffic. But putting one ballerina out with ten gummy bulldogs does not a winning soccer team make. That might not be the ballerina’s fault, but there’s no reason to even think about doing it again next season.
    - Player I Most Wanted to See on the Field After TFC Coughed Up the First Goal in that Fatal Nil-Five Loss on that Dreadful Night in ‘Joisey: Danny Dichio.
    ‘Nuff said.
    Onward!
    Guest

    Let the fella do his work

    By Guest, in Onward Soccer,

    Let’s assume that the rumour is correct. If it isn’t, it should be.
    Stephen Hart – any minute now – will be officially confirmed as the non-interim head coach of Canada’s national men’s soccer team, which still faces a very long wait before the next round of World Cup qualifying kicks off in 2012.
    This useful, competent and warmly optimistic and enthusiastic man has been gallantly wearing two hats for the Canadian Soccer Association of late, interim coach and technical director.
    [PRBREAK][/PRBREAK]
    Effectively, he’s been responsible for the future of the game at both the grassroots and international levels. In reality, coaching is the only one of those jobs where he has a tangible chance of succeeding.
    As each month passes, it becomes more and more clear that the CSA is in full spectator mode when it comes to player development. Hart is a fine man to oversee the job, but Canada’s pro teams, private soccer academies, local clubs and provincial programs are not sitting around waiting for bureaucratic bafflegab like “Wellness to World Cup” to become the law of the land.
    Faced with a recent FIFA circular mandating the registration and acknowledgment of academy players outside the traditional provincial system, the CSA is – surprise, surprise – backing down and deferring just enough to pass the problem on to the provinces.
    This is exactly the kind of bottom-up bureaucracy that has left Canadian soccer saddled with a national leadership vacuum for decades.
    Okay, that’s a bit blunt. I’m sure Hart himself would rather say that many useful options are being considered, and the best ways of going forward will be carefully implemented over time with the useful co-operation of all concerned.
    Regardless of wording, there is zip-over-bupkis chance that the clubs, academies, pro teams and provinces are pausing to ask “what would the CSA do?” before they sign up promising potential prospects.
    And they shouldn’t – because Metcalfe Street is so very far behind the curve. Even if the CSA can visualize a future, the implementation of what-will-actually-happen is already in full flurry without them.
    So it’s time to liberate Stephen Hart.
    No, he’s not one of those globetrotting coach-for-hires who’s led eight different nations to the last six World Cups. But that’s a doomed pursuit for Canada right now. What’s the guy going to do, with no major action on the slate until the next Gold Cup?
    Hart has two huge advantages: he knows the players – and he clearly loves the job and has done well at it. With an increasing number of Canada’s top players signed up by Toronto FC, and more certain to come home when the Vancouver Whitecaps join Major League Soccer in 2011, it’s a lot more possible to field useful Canada squads on both sides of the Atlantic.
    Grass at BMO Field? Rampant multiculturalism in Toronto? Sounds like great atmosphere for full international games to me. A visit by Portugal? Italy? ... England? Ka-ching!!
    With so much of Canadian soccer still being funded by registration fees on amateur players (a sentence I NEVER want to have to write again), it’s better to take the money we don’t pay Guus Hiddink and spend it on whatever really needs it.
    Stephen Hart is one of the most loyal and talented servants the Canadian game has. He consistently manages to coax creative, attacking soccer out of the same band of red-shirted maple-leafers former coach Dale Mitchell squashed into useless defensive blandness in last year’s utterly wasted World Cup qualifying campaign.
    No, I can’t tell you with anything other than my heart that Hart would have done better. But there is no possible way he could have done worse.
    Sometimes, the best thing to do with scarce resources is line them up so that every little piece counts for as much as it possibly can. Naming Hart fulltime coach of Canada does that elegantly, and exactly.
    Onward!
    Guest

    Edmonton?

    By Guest, in Onward Soccer,

    These are nervy days down in USL-1.
    With a bunch of teams actively gone and trying to form a new league of their own, the second tier of men’s pro soccer north of the Rio Grande is trying to make it sound like all is fine and dandy, thanks.
    Earlier this week, the league happily burbled it has four expansion teams in the works: Detroit, Boston, Ottawa and Edmonton.
    [PRBREAK][/PRBREAK]
    Ottawa – presumably – is the Jeff Hunt group, although they famously don’t have a stadium to play in. Edmonton? No owners named specifically, and none on the horizon as far as anyone can currently tell.
    As much as a financially sound pro team in Northern Alberta would be a great thing, this is far too eerily reminiscent of Edmonton’s last kick at the pro soccer can.
    Anyone remember the Edmonton Aviators?
    Here’s how I wrote it up for Sportsnet.ca five years ago, when these hype-propelled hollow men crashed and burned.
    ---
    July 20, 2004
    Crash landing
    Soccer’s Edmonton Aviators couldn’t live up to their own ambitions. So what else is new?
    Owning a minor-league professional soccer team in Canada sure ain’t easy. Talk about a faith-based initiative! Yeah, the world loves its footie, but this particular part of the world isn’t all that eager to dig into the wallets for tickets or replica jerseys.
    It doesn’t help any that this is only the A-League, where there are no big-name players in their prime, and the standard of play is, well, let us be kind and just say it’s naïve.
    So before this blast begins, let me just take a moment to express admiration for the owners of the Montreal Impact, Vancouver Whitecaps, Toronto Lynx – heck, even the Calgary Mustangs – who continue to hang in there and put the product on the field, regardless of the odds. Rest assured, I support your efforts, even if I’m not crazy about the league.
    And then there’s the Edmonton Aviators. Born a few months back to apparently strong local ownership, Northern Alberta’s latest soccer adventure pancaked on the runway this week. The franchise has been returned to the league, the next home game has been cancelled, and it seems very unlikely the team will escape the history book that is now slamming shut.
    It retrospect, it should have been obvious. The Aviators were born in a cloud of grandiose dreaming, exactly the flavour of far-fetched fictional fantasy that has flattened Canadian soccer hopes far too many times in the past.
    Specifically: The team announced it would play its games at Commonwealth Stadium before average expected home crowds of 11,000-plus. No, I didn’t like it when I heard it, but I opted to take an optimistic approach, figuring the truth would become clear soon enough, and the Aviators would settle into a smaller park and get properly about the business of creating a couple, then a few, thousand honest, loyal fans. That, after all, is how the A-League game is played.
    Surprise, surprise, the Commonwealth caper was a dud. Just over a thousand curious souls showed up for the opener. The team lost a lot, and games started getting shunted out to make way for Edmonton Eskimo football practices. Indeed, Commonwealth conflicts meant the Aviators’ inaugural schedule was heavily front-loaded with road games. That didn’t help either the team’s record or the generation of a fan base.
    So now, to the sad, resigned shock of the players, coaches and such fans as actually exist, yet another weak group of big-talking owners has been flushed back to reality, and another Canadian pro soccer team bites the dust.
    The timing is beyond terrible. After playing most of the season on the road, the Aviators were just about to start a run of eight games out of nine at home over the next five weeks. Whatever money this team was ever going to make – or at least not lose this year – was going to start coming in now.
    In Vancouver, Montreal and Toronto, A-League owners know they can’t afford to fantasize. Surviving one season at a time, selling season tickets one fan at a time, they gear their entire operations to financial survival, and hope their local minor soccer systems turn up enough young talent to lift their teams into contention. It’s not out of the question that the Whitecaps or Impact might even win a championship some day. That would really help, but no one’s counting on it.
    Contrasting all this to the Edmonton fiasco, I’m feeling pretty steamed.
    Folks, let’s talk about a Canadian professional soccer league. We’ve already got three of the teams that will be there. Unless, that is, either the Lynx or the Whitecaps (or both) get wiped out by the next few rounds of MLS expansion. Calgary? Too soon to tell. They played the big-stadium card as well, and no one is exactly saying they’re financially healthy.
    What we have to do – and I include myself here, because I didn’t lean hard enough on the Commonwealth crap – is stop the fly-by-nighters before they get started.
    Okay, admittedly, we don’t really have any power here, and I’m not saying Edmonton soccer fans should have boycotted the Aviators. But can we at least agree that there are two different ways of running an A-League soccer team in Canada? There’s the steady, patient, non-spectacular way (Vancouver, Montreal, Toronto, Calgary if they survive), which is the good and proper way forward.
    Then there’s the grandiose grab-bag gravy train (Edmonton, Calgary if they don’t survive). My question to all of us? Why do we believe these jokers? I bit on Edmonton because I wanted it to be true. I’m sure I’ve got lots of company. So what do we do the next time a Canadian soccer league proposal comes along?
    The biggest reason we can’t have a league now – maybe ever – is there just aren’t enough good owners out there willing to run a small team for marginal returns. This is why the CUSL proposal could never, ever, ever have flown. We have to understand that a new Canadian league would essentially be A-League north, with the talent level boosted a bit by a handful of international players in the early or late days of their careers.
    What we do not need – and must no longer tolerate – is the big-talking blowhard owner who makes huge promises and says “trust me.” It doesn’t work, people.
    What really galls me about the crash of the Aviators is that I believe there is a good chance this team could have caught on if it hadn’t lashed itself to the Commonwealth Stadium boulder before it leapt into the A-League sea. The local ownership seemed to have a good pedigree. They seemed like a pretty good approximation of what A-League ownership – at least when their mouths were shut.
    Well, they didn’t, and we all got fooled again.
    Can we make a deal here? The next time this looks like it’s going to happen, let’s all speak out against it.
    What’s that old saying? “Fool me twice, shame on me?” Well, this is more than twice, people. From the NASL to the CSL to the NSL to the CPSL to the CUSL to the Aviators, we’ve been fleeced more often than a blanket that got left in a laundromat dryer for a month.
    Not all ownership is good ownership. Let’s promise ourselves to all find the courage to say “no” to the next bunch of incoming glad-handing buffoons.
    …Or this is as good as it will ever get.
    ---
    Onward!
    Guest

    Toxic

    By Guest, in Onward Soccer,

    No one person, and no one factor, did in Toronto FC’s 2009 MLS campaign.
    The team was wildly inconsistent, and crashed out of the playoff hunt with a astonishingly awful 5-0 loss to New York Energy Drink, by far the gummiest pack of predators in the whole zoo.
    [PRBREAK][/PRBREAK]
    For the past two days, I’ve been digging up stats and writing about Danny Dichio. In no way am I claiming that a broken down striker who bagged just 3 goals and 2 assists was TFC’s most valuable player or best way forward.
    But I did show that TFC scored almost twice as often in games Dichio started. Something about the guy focused the Reds, and unhinged opposing defences. No one else in the Toronto strike force showed the same ability.
    So, if Dichio was forced into retirement by a rising clubhouse divide, what can be learned from this – and how can a recurrence be prevented?
    Let’s start by backing away from the “bad apple” search. Departing interim coach Chris Cummins coined the phrase, but didn’t elaborate. Everyone wants to know “who?” but it’s situational. A divide will have at least two sides, and one faction’s bad apple is the other’s shining-right-solid-citizen guy.
    I’ve talked to many, many people about this, and everyone’s got a different theory and version of who helped and who hurt. So I’m not in a position to name names.
    But I will run out a few things I know, in hopes it helps to move us all along.
    - TFC striker Chad Barrett, signed to a four-year deal by GM Mo Johnston, struggled all season. After coach John Carver resigned/quit/was fired/walked out, it became clear that Barrett was going to play, and Dichio wasn’t.
    - We were told Dichio was injured, but he didn’t play like he was. We were told he couldn’t go 90 minutes anymore, but in fact he went the distance five different times.
    - Eventually, absurdly, Cummins told the media Dichio was so hurt and old and done he couldn’t even ride airplanes to the west coast anymore. This was absurdly wrong, and I do not believe that story originated with Cummins.
    - Dichio and his agent met up with Mo in Denver, and hammered out a deal that let Dichio move sideways into a TFC coaching position. Dichio “retired,” just two days before Canada top man Julian DeGuzman signed on.
    - Mo later said he did not need Dichio off the books to sign DeGuzman. He may have felt he had to say that.
    - TFC strikers scored just two goals the remainder of the season. Defender Nana Attakora equalled them – over the same stretch of games – all by his lonesome.
    Many things combined here. Dichio and Barrett both wanted to play, and Cummins didn’t (or couldn’t) accommodate them both. As it began to boil up in the boot room, Cummins did not have the experience and/or authority to unify the squad. Neither could Toronto captain Jim Brennan.
    We were left with a fairly toxic workplace. In situations like that, “All For One” can easily degrade into every man for himself. There was far more wrong in New York than a misconstructed roster and the naïve tactics of an overmatched coach.
    Not enough players cared. It was win-and-you’re-in, and they parked and posed for the worst loss in franchise history. Too many soloists. Too much apathy.
    No Danny Dichio.
    Jeff Cunningham – Golden Boot winner with FC Dallas after getting run out of Toronto a year ago – said something important on “It’s Called Football” yesterday. He noted that being a striker is all about confidence, and when that gets taken away, it makes things very difficult.
    Toxic workplaces kill confidence.
    I have one more stat for you. The three strikers who were drummed off the roster in 2008 – Cunningham, Carlos Ruiz and Collin Samuel – have combined to score 45 goals since they were released. Toronto FC, in MLS ’09, scored 37.
    Remember that, the next time you hear Johnston say he’s looking to sign a 20-goal striker. There weren’t any of those guys in the league this year. The guy who came closest – Cunningham, with 17 – has already had BMO Field security tell him to clear out his desk.
    Mo’s not innocent in this, but he has a new, extended contract, and the backing of his bosses at Maple Leaf Sports and Entertainment. He certainly gets full credit for the DeGuzman and DeRosario signings, as well as some fine accumulation of young talent and paying for grass at BMO Field with last year’s sale of Maurice Edu to Glasgow Rangers. But it must also be remembered that Chad Barrett is his boy.
    Toronto FC urgently needs a new coach with real experience – and deep personal strength. Show me a guy with a decent track record, who can tell Mo to take a pill and still have a job on Monday, and that’s your man.
    We need a new captain, too. Too much infighting has been allowed to fester on Jim Brennan’s watch.
    You can fill your glass half-full, and say the Reds missed out by only one win, and having DeGuzman for a full season ought to take care of that just fine, thanks.
    You can drink your glass half-empty, and say any team that gets flushed 5-0 in the Jersey swamps has absolutely no chance of winning, even if it backs into the playoffs despite whatever awful pile of dysfunction and denial it’s been hauling like a trailer-load of ‘possum plop since almost the beginning.
    Your glass; your choice.
    I hope these three days of digging will help clarify things a bit. Never easy, when the pond is this polluted.
    Onward!
    Guest

    More stats

    By Guest, in Onward Soccer,

    Did you further know?
    If you add up the MLS regular season, Voyageurs Cup and CONCACAF Champions League, Toronto FC played 36 competitive matches in 2009.
    Overall, they won 13, lost 13 and drew 10. You can’t really be any more of a .500 club than that.
    When Danny Dichio started, they were 5-2-1.
    [PRBREAK][/PRBREAK]
    History won’t remember this, but the bald-headed fan favourite from England played the full 90 minutes in five of those games – including consecutive 1-0 home victories over Chivas USA and the Kansas City Wizards, who just happened to be the two MLS division leaders at the time. He also went the distance in a certain 6-1 win over the Montreal Impact you might just vaguely remember.
    The numbers for Dichio as a sub are a little harder to get a read on. He came in 16 times, and the team won 4 and drew 5. They conceded 5 more goals than they scored with Dichio on the field, having broken even before he appeared.
    You’ll find this is a common ailment across the roster. Toronto FC conceded an appalling number of late goals, and Dichio’s average run-out as a sub came in the 71st minute.
    When Dichio didn’t appear, Toronto FC went 4-4-4.
    Soccer stats are notoriously hard to wring any solid conclusions from. So many numbers are simply unavailable, and 36 games is small sample, statistically.
    But I can certainly tell you the Reds scored almost 2 goals a game when Dichio started, and just 30 in 28 games when he didn’t.
    I also know, from multiple directions, that he was concerned and unhappy as the season wore on, and it became increasingly clear the eternally struggling Chad Barrett was starting, and he wasn’t.
    In the unhealthy, weakly guided, oft-divided atmosphere of the Toronto FC dressing room, this set off a chain of circumstance that ended with Dichio retiring from the game to accept a coaching post in September.
    Whatever tooth and killer instinct the TFC striker crew had, up to that point, clearly retired with him.
    In fairness, no less an expert than CBC colour man and former Canada standout Jason DeVos has told me – to my face, with emphasis – that Dichio was physically done as a player. I certainly don’t make a point or habit of disagreeing with the man, but the evidence of my own eyes – all season – said otherwise.
    Even injured, Dichio gave his all. Opposing defences had to work harder – and bend further – to cover him than any other striker TFC could deploy. Once he was gone, shutting down the Chad Barretts and Ali Gerbas of the world got significantly easier – and it wasn’t all that hard before.
    For me, the team’s handling of Dichio – the franchise’s first true fan hero – was the single biggest on-field reason Toronto FC didn’t make the MLS playoffs for the third consecutive season.
    I think we all have a right to know exactly which players, coaches – and team officials – stood against him.
    Onward!
    Guest

    Some amusing TFC stats

    By Guest, in Onward Soccer,

    Did you know?
    Since Danny Dichio’s final appearance for Toronto FC – a meaningless late-game run-out on September 5 in Denver – the remains of the TFC strike force (Barrett, Gerba, White, Pablo Who?) scored a whopping total of two goals.
    [PRBREAK][/PRBREAK]
    White blazed one home at the supporters’ end against Colorado, and Barrett found twine in Chicago.
    In the same time – over exactly the same stretch of games – young defender Nana Attakora also scored two goals.
    Taking the longer view, here is how frequently TFC strikers dented net throughout the 2009 MLS regular season:
    O’Brian White – once every 220 minutes
    Danny Dichio – once every 253.3 minutes
    Chad Barrett – once every 413.8 minutes
    Ali Gerba – once every 534 minutes
    Pablo Who? – once every 825 minutes
    Just for comparison purposes:
    Dwayne DeRosario – once every 222.2 minutes
    Amado Guevara – once every 399.8 minutes
    Nana Attakora – once every 826 minutes
    Nobody else broke one in a thousand.
    Also of note:
    MLS Golden Boot winner Jeff Cunningham (ex-TFC) – once every 112.8 minutes
    MLS Golden Boot runner-up Conor Casey (ex-TFC) – once every 130.4 minutes
    Cunningham, by the way, added eight assists. Barrett-Gerba-White-Pablo Who? combined for four. Dichio had two.
    Yes, I’m going somewhere with this.
    Onward!
×
×
  • Create New...