Capping Players for Future Potential

[Ian Kennett]

I am all for it particularly if a country, such as Canada, has a limited pool of top rate players who can make an impact at the international level.

Take the case of Dani Fernandes. For whatever reason, Frank Yallop did not see fit to include this guy into our national team for games against Luxembourg and Portugal. This was despite the fact that several of us wrote to and emailed the CSA about Greece and Portugal beginning to show interest in Fernandes months before. In a case like that, especially if the player wants to play for Canada, I say include him and get him into the picture. Why do you suppose that Scolari persued Fernandes and Portugal asked him to get involved? No it was certainly NOT because Fernandes was ready to step in and take over. Rather it was because the insightful Portuguese national staff saw the potential in Fernandes and claimed it for their future. If Ortugal can do this, certainly Canada ought to have done the same thing when we had the chance. To heck with "Sutton and Stamtopoulos are better just now so we should not upset the apple cart." Nonsense!

Now there is a guy like Issey Nakajima-Farran whom some of us feel is an average guy on a crumby team in a so-so league in Denmark. But wait. This is the same league in which Atiba Hutchinson plays successfully, and in which Nakajima-Farran, all 23 years old of him, is scoring quite regularly for that weak team against stronger league opposition. Why would we not show interest in such a player and tell him that we want him to play for Canada? Do we risk that one day he may be a top level player playing for another country?

I say that Canada must express strong interest in any eligible player who has enough talent to be a legitimate prospect for our national team because Canada does not yet have a large, deep player pool. We need. at the very least, the depth, and in some cases, we will be fortunate to persuade a future great player to choose us. What on earth is wrong with that strategy?

[Daniel]

You can't cap a player with a friendly.

Canada's only official games are GC and WCQ. These should not be wasted on fringe players who might turn up for other nations.

There are more official games at the youth level, but as we've seen with De Jong, they don't seem to mean much.

[RJB]

quote:Originally posted by Daniel

You can't cap a player with a friendly.

Canada's only official games are GC and WCQ. These should not be wasted on fringe players who might turn up for other nations.

There are more official games at the youth level, but as we've seen with De Jong, they don't seem to mean much.

Are you sure about that? I thought that friendlies that fall on matchdays within FIFA's international fixture calendar count as official.

[Daniel]

Honestly, I'm not 100%, but this is what's been said in the past.

Can we settle this once and for all or are the rules unclear?

[Daniel]

http://www.canadian-soccer.com/forum/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=7608

Still would like a link to the actual rule.

[Ceres]

quote:Originally posted by Ian Kennett

Now there is a guy like Issey Nakajima-Farran whom some of us feel is an average guy on a crumby team in a so-so league in Denmark. But wait. This is the same league in which Atiba Hutchinson plays successfully, and in which Nakajima-Farran, all 23 years old of him, is scoring quite regularly for that weak team against stronger league opposition. Why would we not show interest in such a player and tell him that we want him to play for Canada? Do we risk that one day he may be a top level player playing for another country?

Vejle is perhaps a modest looking team by European standard, but it's still a team playing at top-flight level in Europe so you should not fool yourself by thinking that it's a crappy team or any poorer than e.g. a NT from a smaller country. This year Vejle beat the Malawi A-NT (ranked 94 on the World Ranking) by 2-0 in a test match in August. Vejle fielded more or less a B team so Issey Nakajima-Farran did not get to play, but still Vejle were clearly the better team in that match, despite the fact that they were getting their ass kicked in the Superliga.

.

[JamesW]

I am against it. I feel that winning now will make players want to play on our side. Not England's or Holland's teams.

[bettermirror]

an absolute no-no. you can't just go capping players because they may or may not develop into top players, and because they may or may not be able to play for other countries. this is a great way to develop dissension in the ranks. the current players would view this kid coming in as a wannabe of sorts and not receive the trust or respect from other players a tried and true compatriot would. results would suffer and we'd all come on here bitching and complaining we can't beat Panama - whether it be the case with our first choice XI or not. unbeknownst to us of course half the bloody team are people being capped "just so they can't play somewhere else." as i said, a "very bad no-no." just like next year i won't select players for my team because they may or may not work out - i am going to pick the players who deserve to be there.

[villus]

Im not against it, but in the current situation I would be against it. In my opinion Canada should schedule more games, and if you can cap tie in friendlies, go ahead and book more games and field some B-teams where it is clear that it is not a first choice team and give some prospects a good look and cap tie them along the way(I'm talking u-23 type teams)

[BrennanFan]

First of all, !YES! you can cap tie a player in an international senior friendly.

And I'll agree with IK, Canada needs to start taking some risks with capping potential players. There is absolutely no reason we cant give one spot on the roster for a friendly to a guy like Issey and give him 5-10 minutes at the end of the game to cap tie him. This should happen in every game to increase our pool. we will not 'lose games' or field weaker teams by capping a guy in the last minutes of a meaningless friendly.

Thus far, we have not been doing this. Why are people happy to keep things the way they are? W have no reason to be content witht he status quo, we need changes and little things like this will take us into a better direction.

also, we should play more friendlies.

[analyst]

I'm in favour of CSA cap tieing players. CSA staff have said that they would consider inviting players to national camps, except the players have been cap tied to other national teams at an early age. If we are going to spend money sending players to national team camps and tournaments, then we should expect them to commit to Canada in return.

[loyola]

The idea of playing more friendlies is for the team to be better prepared before WCQ not to cap-tie everyone who's has a foreign parent. If we starts giving those minutes at end of a game to an "undeserving" player our team will suffer from that. Imagine the feeling for the 15 players who'll see their team loosing a 1-0 lead because the coach wanted to give 5 minutes to an unknown defender with some connexion to Canada?

How the players left out will react toward a coach that ignores them because he wants to cap players?

[Ian Kennett]

quote:Originally posted by loyola

The idea of playing more friendlies is for the team to be better prepared before WCQ not to cap-tie everyone who's has a foreign parent. If we starts giving those minutes at end of a game to an "undeserving" player our team will suffer from that. Imagine the feeling for the 15 players who'll see their team loosing a 1-0 lead because the coach wanted to give 5 minutes to an unknown defender with some connexion to Canada?

How the players left out will react toward a coach that ignores them because he wants to cap players?

I am NOT advocating that Canada include "undeserving players" and piss off other players on the team. If this were my position, then one would have to condemn Scolari, the Portugues coach, for wanting Dani Fernandes involved in the Portuguese national system. Fernandes is a deposit in the Portuguess "soccer bank" earning interest, and hopefully for Scolari, he will pay huge dividends in the not too distant future. Canada has few if any of these investments. Why could we not get Nakajima-Farran involved too? There is no reason. He has potential, and he is eligible, so get him involved.

My bad - The friendlies in question were against Luxembourg and Austria.

[redhat]

I don't really know where I stand regarding the cap-tie issue, but do know

that Canada needs a few more friendlies to see and evaluate players in their

talent pool.

I've never seen Issey play and am curious how he'd do with the

rest of the team. Maybe a friendly can be arranged with Denmark and then we can

see how good he is. (He may be another Rob Friend, but at a size of a Pesch.)

As for Thunder Dan, I think we screwed up, but I also think we have a lot more players

to evaluate before we label our programs as failures. Cap-tie? Like what happened to

Terry Dunfield?

[loyola]

quote:Originally posted by Ian Kennett

I am NOT advocating that Canada include "undeserving players" and piss off other players on the team. If this were my position, then one would have to condemn Scolari, the Portugues coach, for wanting Dani Fernandes involved in the Portuguese national system. Fernandes is a deposit in the Portuguess "soccer bank" earning interest, and hopefully for Scolari, he will pay huge dividends in the not too distant future. Canada has few if any of these investments. Why could we not get Nakajima-Farran involved too? There is no reason. He has potential, and he is eligible, so get him involved.

My bad - The friendlies in question were against Luxembourg and Austria.

What I meant by underserving is a player the coach knows is behind others players in the pecking order but will play him because he might end up elsewhere in the future.

That's the case with Issey. Currently we can safely name 5 players playing at a higher level than him: Radz, Friend, Occean, Simpson and Hume. We could've a case for Johnson and Gerba too. So calling him over one of those guys (if all are available) is calling an undeserving player.

If that can reconfort you, we know that our MNT coach is contacting between 25 and 30 players a few weeks prior to a game to tell them they might be call. We also knwo that Stephen Hart contacted DeJong to see what his plans were.

I agree that this Issey guy is an interesting prospect but I feel that the job of our staff is to contact him to check if he's interested and tell him to keep working hard and that he might get a call at some point. But I don,t agree with the cap him mentality.

[BrennanFan]

quote:Originally posted by loyola

What I meant by underserving is a player the coach knows is behind others players in the pecking order but will play him because he might end up elsewhere in the future.

That's the case with Issey. Currently we can safely name 5 players playing at a higher level than him: Radz, Friend, Occean, Simpson and Hume. We could've a case for Johnson and Gerba too. So calling him over one of those guys (if all are available) is calling an undeserving player.

If that can reconfort you, we know that our MNT coach is contacting between 25 and 30 players a few weeks prior to a game to tell them they might be call. We also knwo that Stephen Hart contacted DeJong to see what his plans were.

I agree that this Issey guy is an interesting prospect but I feel that the job of our staff is to contact him to check if he's interested and tell him to keep working hard and that he might get a call at some point. But I don,t agree with the cap him mentality.

I Cannot believe you think we have enough strikers that it would be wrong to call up a new guy to see what he can do. Radz is old, occean and Gerba are not on good form and may drop off the face of canadian soccer for all we know, hume and friend look good but are unproven and simpson is really a def/mid. we NEED more strikers and Issey is scoring at a level only below radz and friend and 'maybe' hume.

you really that worried about pissing off gerba or occean?

[loyola]

Ok, let's put it that way, I'm all for calling a player the coach wants to see but I'm against calling that player just to cap tie him because of FEARS he'll go elsewhere at some point. There's a big difference between looking at a player and cap tiying him out of fear.

If we call 4 forwards I think it should be Hume, Radz, Friend and Simpson (or DeRo). If one of those guys isn't available for whatever reason I'm all for giving a shot to Issey because the other 2 are out of season right now. Also, inviting him to a game won't necessarly mean that he'll play and we'll cap him.

BTW, his connexion to Canada looks as tenuous as Bircham's....

[mjoni]

There's a difference between cap-tieing out of fear, and recognizing that an untested player is having a break-out season. Sure, we could send our U20's to Hungary to lock them in, or we could call a bunch of untested guys to a training camp, and if one or two of them are worth it, bring them in for five minutes against T&T. Obviously, there's no point in waiting around until to see if any other country is interested, and then calling the kid a traitor.

In any case, guys that aren't showing good form for their club teams shouldn't be starting for the MNT. Guys that are playing at the highest level or on the up-and-up should be there. A coach's job is not to worry about who's feathers get ruffled, but to light a fire under everyone's ass and may the best man win his spot.

[Ian Kennett]

quote:Originally posted by mjoni

There's a difference between cap-tieing out of fear, and recognizing that an untested player is having a break-out season. Sure, we could send our U20's to Hungary to lock them in, or we could call a bunch of untested guys to a training camp, and if one or two of them are worth it, bring them in for five minutes against T&T. Obviously, there's no point in waiting around until to see if any other country is interested, and then calling the kid a traitor.

In any case, guys that aren't showing good form for their club teams shouldn't be starting for the MNT. Guys that are playing at the highest level or on the up-and-up should be there. A coach's job is not to worry about who's feathers get ruffled, but to light a fire under everyone's ass and may the best man win his spot.

Well said, Mjoni!

The more players in the eligible or capped player pool, the more competition there is for spots on the MNT. It used to be that there were about 15 automatics for the MNT because we do not have a deep pool of players. What we need are all kinds of players who are tied to Canada and who will then work their butts off to get noticed for every Canadian MNT game.

Loyola, there is nothing at all to lose by including one or two guys, out of an 18 man squad, who are on form at the moment and who have not played for us before. And, the Occean's and Gerba's who are not presently on form should not be in the running anyway. If I were king for a day, my options up front today would be to start some combination of Radzinski, Hume, Friend, or Nakajima-Farran, with De Rosario in the attacking mid spot.

Fernandes should be capped to Canada right now, not to Portugal. I wonder how upset some may be if he develops into another Craig Forrest type keeper. After all, he is young.

Cheers!