VPjr Posted October 26, 2007 Author Share Posted October 26, 2007 quote:Originally posted by ANC2 Let us assume all of these grand schemes are in place. Who pays for it? Where is the money coming from? People are talking about the plan put forward by Ireland. Great! What is the cost to the Association in Ireland. Who pays for all this? I just learned from a friend in Quebec that Kevan Pipe lied to the press. The money used for running ALL the National teams is below $3 million and not 12 million as stated by KP. So again I will ask who funds all this? These Academy coaches / owners are charging thousands of dollars to its players. Not the $6.00 CSA gets presently for every registered player. The funding issue is a major issue. When we were speaking with Vince Ursini on Tuesday night, i specifically asked him why the CSA doesn't attach a cost to whatever strategic plan they decide to present and actually try to sell it to clubs, coaches and parents. Basically, get your stakeholders (the people who generate 60% of the CSA's funding) to buy into the plan. The resistance to a larger levee to fund an expensive strategic plan will be clearly less fierce if the stakeholders understand where their money is going and if they know that there will be a detailed accounting of how those monies were spent and what those extra funds accomplished. This not much different than if I go to my BOD to get approval for a marketing plan that requires supplementary funding, over and above my normal budget. It's alot of work but if you are asking for someone's money, you better be prepared to justify what you are going to deliver with that money. The CSA is also going to need to start working MUCH Harder to secure national sponsors. National Sponsorships are neither easy nor usually all that lucrative but they really need to start beating those bushes in a big way. I have other ideas for revenue generation. They'll need to accept another meeting request for some point in the future to get those ideas put on the table. It really comes down to the soccer community deciding how much having top notch national programs is worth to the health of soccer in Canada. I believe if that national teams are successful, the grassroots will benefit because even larger numbers of kids will be drawn to the game at the house league and youth elite levels). I don't recall Kev Pipe claiming $12million was spent on National Teams but I'm sure there is a quote floating around somewhere. The reality is that the entire CSA budget is around $13million. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gordon Posted October 27, 2007 Share Posted October 27, 2007 Mediaguy, VP I say this with all due respect. You have choosen to be the pointy end of the spear which is something that I greatly admire, but in the last two days, you have handed control of the issue back to the CSA. You are getting spun and are falling into the traps they are setting. You need to stick to the knitting and stop allowing this to happen. You need to take back the intiative and control of the agenda and you need to understand that being fair, and passing along the CSA message, to your core constituency, only serves to assist the CSA in driving wedges into your support. Many points: 1) If you guys have lives, then you need to bring along someone who doesn't. You need to get your message out fast and clearly. Because at this point, the only outcome of your meeting with the VPs is that the CSA has been able to spin a message that you/we are simply a bunch of naive bumpkins who do not how it really is. But now you've been set straight by an interim Pres who is gonna "set things right". Nice message if you are the CSA, deflects form the fact that the VPS are part and parcel of the problem. A press release at this point is not enough. You need to get Lori Ewing into a room, and if you can't, you need to find a friendly journalist, and get a piece done, expressing your points and making very clear that you are not satisfied and laying out for all to see that the Vps are part of the problem. 2) You understand that the CSA has "lurkers" on this site. They know the contensious issues on the board and they are going to use that to try to drive a wedge in your support. The Women's team funding is a perfect example of that. Do not carry their message for them. You give it a legitamacy that they do not personally have with your constituency. Stick to your knitting. Do not feel any need to be "fair" when it come to their message, because they are not being fair in giving it. But we, your constituency, and the basis of your legitamacy, will start bickering over the issues raised. Do not sharpen their wedge for them. 3) Understand that they know the basic rule of public relations: get your message repeated three time and it becomes the truth, even if it is an outright lie. Don't help them by repeating the message. Because they are not repeating yours. 4) There is a powerful, but false, sense of accomplishment that comes when one feels that they are being made privy to insider information. It is one of the ways that "we" are trained to manipulate the media. Do not fall into that trap. They will tell you sh*t, they will tell you the truth when it works and they will make you think that you are getting somewhere, when in fact, they are simply trying to undermine your momentum. Nykamp is an excellent example, and you have both, already, started to spin for them, unintentionally, the message they need to get out, and that is to remove the focus from the extraordinary dysfunction and incompetence from the hirnig process and start to put focus on the Board taking the tough decision to "protect" the interests Canadian soccer. Do not fall into this trap. Mediaguy, in your summary, even though you tried to put some focus on the flawed hiring process, the message the CSA wants out there was the stronger element of your paragraph on the matter. Do not assume any responsibility to be FAIR to the CSA. Because they are not going to be fair to you. They are not repeating your message for you. 5) "They" are a group of perhaps 10-12 people. It is far easier to keep 10-12 people on message, shoulder to shoulder, than it is for a loose coalition of 100s, maybe 1000s. They understand that. You need to as well...not just intellectually, but practically. DO NOT ASSIST THEM in undermining your support. 6) Understand that you have been able to place them under a level of pressure and scrutiny that they do not like. They wish to blunt that. You need to find ways to keep that pressure and scrutiny on them. You need to stick to the knitting, you need to keep that message in the forefront - hard I understand. Develop and articulate a small number of key messages and do not deviate. If you are going to report on what the CSA is saying, filter it through these key messages. YOU DO NOT HAVE TO BE FAIR TO THE CSA. 7) We need to start driving a wedge into their base of support. Specific targets would seem to be the provincial associations in the Maritimes, the territories, Saskatchewan and Manitoba. The three pro teams as well. Organize, through the message boards, groups to lead those intitiatives in each province or city. Give us key messages and talking points. Yes, lurkers, specific intel to take back. I'm not worried about it. Change is coming... Guys, you have achieved a tremendous amount thus far. I and many others tremendously admire and respect what you have accomplished! The black T-shirt effort far exceeded expectations and gave impetus to a groundswell of support for change. But we are only just into it. There is still a long haul yet. Keep your focus. This is not criticism, and I hope you'll take it as constructive advice becasue you've done wonders thus far. We just just gotta make sure the momentum is not blunted. And yes, I will be part of the intiative in Saskatchewan if you want to do that. Lead it even, if no one else is keen. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cheeta Posted October 27, 2007 Share Posted October 27, 2007 quote:Originally posted by Gian-Luca Wow. That is quite the statement of Ursini's part. Isn't it though? And from his point of view, sadly, it's also probably true. Which of course tells you more about the man's priorities and the financial genius of the CSA than it does about the reasoning behind pissing away nearly 2 million dollars in order to NOT have a CEO. I think the irony is that for CSA reformers, yes indeed, Ursini is quite right. From OUR point of view those millions are the best money the CSA could have possibly spent. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cheeta Posted October 27, 2007 Share Posted October 27, 2007 Gordon, good post. Think the lads got their **** together on this one and am completely confident they got a handle on who's playing who for what purpose. Would go so far as to write that they seem to be entirely in their element on this. As you wrote, they've taken the initiative and are in the front ranks of the barricade. I know they're operating some scheme out of sight, below the surface as it were and am comfortable with that. Glad to tag along for the ride. Found this tid-bit reeeeallly interesting. At one point, Ursini acknowledged that "the tail was waging the dog" when it comes to many decisions that the CSA makes. To wit, Canada is currently operating against FIFA regulations in that we do not have a one member, one vote system at the board level. As a result, the provinces, specifically the larger provinces, are controlling the agenda and, many feel, are preventing reforms. This is complicated stuff and one of the reasons we are making sure we have all the facts a in place before we go public with the press release. We learned Monday that FIFA has requested that Canada address this issue, but Ursini said Tuesday that he didn't feel that it could. If the CSA tried to force the voting issue, Ursini said, some provinces could resort to not registering teams, thus denying the CSA its player registration money. Ergo, things stay the same. I think it was Trillium who raised the idea of creating director catchments based entirely on membership numbers. Catchments which wouldn't necessarily be hindered by provincial boundaries. The directive above, FIFA's one-man one-vote equality at the BoD level, could only function with that sort of director catchment. Doesn't matter what Ursini is or isn't worried about. His fears are either exaggerated or an anti-reform red herring to me. I very much doubt that anyone in Western Ontario or the Ottawa Valley would be overly upset about having their own</u> director representing their priorities</u> and needs along side the directors from Toronto at CSA Board of Director meetings. (I'm sure sometimes all the Ontario directors would vote as a block anyway). So who exactly again at the provincial level is going to effectively oppose that sort of FIFA mandated reform? Man, if nothing else that sort of BoD representative reform ALONE would be a very, very good start. This is a good target. An excellent target. A logical, fair, FIFA mandated reform that the current CSA governance structure will be hard pressed to defend against as it would leave the various provincial governance structures un-touched. They (the provinces) can keep-on keeping-on in whatever way they want and the CSA will completely seperate itself from provincal authority by mating itself directly to the tax paying grass roots. Oh-my-Gawd. It's genius. How do you argue against a reform which gives your membership a direct say in the national governance, that they are paying for, without just ending up sounding like some power hungry provincial nut-bar? ONE MAN ONE VOTE Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Richard Posted October 27, 2007 Share Posted October 27, 2007 I have been arguing for some time that a good part of the reform of the CSA must be direct election of directors by grassroots members. The present arrangement is so many levels removed from direct representation of grassroots members it is almost silly. Ordinary members elect club and league executives, club executives send unelected representatives to Districts, Districts and some league executives send unelected representatives to provincial AGM's where provincial board members are elected, provincial boards send representatives to sit on the CSA board. Grassroots members have a less than zero chance of influencing the CSA through the existing 'democratic' chain. By unelected I mean not elected by the grassroots membership directly. I can't imagine the outcry if that was how we tried to have our federal parliament representatives selected. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
fan Posted October 28, 2007 Share Posted October 28, 2007 Very good Richard that is a coherent reasonable post summarizing the issue very well. Wish you had of posted this along time ago, most people would of agreed or listened to this. This is what many passionate soccer fans have been trying to accomplish realizing the futility of the present CSA system thats why they are so many excellent external soccer programs in Canada and even in some cases very private.Parents with talented kids and intelligent Canadian soccer people have jointly been ignoring the CSA for over a decade now. I want to see a day where we can all come together and create a truly democratic and flourishing Canadian soccer organization. This CSO would bring our sport to the heights of competency and democracy bringing joy and fun back to the participants. I hope it is possible with all soccer participants in Canada getting to vote on starting a new organization and completely removing this one. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bill Spiers Posted October 28, 2007 Share Posted October 28, 2007 quote:Originally posted by Cheeta Found this tid-bit reeeeallly interesting. At one point, Ursini acknowledged that "the tail was waging the dog" when it comes to many decisions that the CSA makes. To wit, Canada is currently operating against FIFA regulations in that we do not have a one member, one vote system at the board level. As a result, the provinces, specifically the larger provinces, are controlling the agenda and, many feel, are preventing reforms. This is complicated stuff and one of the reasons we are making sure we have all the facts a in place before we go public with the press release. A comment first - at the CSA Board level it is already one person, one vote. More accurately, one Director, one vote. So the Director representing Ontario has the same vote as the Director representing the North West Territories. The members of the Executive also have one vote at the CSA Board level. It is only at General Meetings that voting is based on player registration monies paid to the CSA. Now I could be wrong, but my reading of what Vince said was that FIFA is pushing for one member, one vote at General Meetings - as well as the CSA Board. In other words, Ontario would only have one vote at the AGM - the same as the other provinces and territories - and not 25% of the total votes that they have now. I haven't seen any suggestion (from FIFA) that voting should be extended to the grass roots registrants which is what your footnote seems to be suggesting. ONE MAN ONE VOTE Do you really think that Sepp Blatter and Jack Warner are in favour of soccer individuals having a vote as opposed to "block voting" which can be more easily controlled? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
VPjr Posted October 28, 2007 Author Share Posted October 28, 2007 Richard is most certainly correct. Until clubs start to flex some muscle and demand more say, especially since they are the source of 60% of CSA income (and likely an even larger percentage of Provincial revenue), nothing will change. The current system is inherently undemocratic and lacks any semblance of accountability. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest speedmonk42 Posted October 29, 2007 Share Posted October 29, 2007 quote:Originally posted by VPjr Richard is most certainly correct. Until clubs start to flex some muscle and demand more say, especially since they are the source of 60% of CSA income (and likely an even larger percentage of Provincial revenue), nothing will change. The current system is inherently undemocratic and lacks any semblance of accountability. My god. Are you sure you want the clubs to have well... any say? If you put it to a vote tomorrow wrt to the community clubs, I am pretty sure you wouldn't have a national team program anymore. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Vic Posted October 30, 2007 Share Posted October 30, 2007 http://www.hockeycanada.ca/6/8/4/3/index1.shtml Provinces (Branch Presidents) have considerable weight, but their ability to hold ransom is neutralized by Officers, Councillors and Council Reps/Directors. Nitty gritty (By-Law Seven: Voting): http://www.hockeycanada.ca/index.cfm/ci_id/25220/la_id/1/document/1/re_id/0/file/2007_2008_e.pdf Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
VPjr Posted October 30, 2007 Author Share Posted October 30, 2007 quote:Originally posted by speedmonk42 My god. Are you sure you want the clubs to have well... any say? If you put it to a vote tomorrow wrt to the community clubs, I am pretty sure you wouldn't have a national team program anymore. That's not the feeling at my club. I am sure that there are some clubs that are very insular but I assume that there are some provincial associations that feel the same way. Clubs with real soccer people leading the BOD understand the importance of good national team programs. My club, I am glad to say, elected a person as president this past weekend that I feel understands who critical elite soccer is to the continued growth of the game. I did not go into full detail about my thoughts regarding giving more influence to clubs because I did not feel like typing it all out. IMO, for clubs to be given more direct influence on the CSA, they must be willing to buy into a package of reforms to improve how clubs currently operate. Again, I don't feel like going into huge detail because my opinions are not fully formed yet but I know that there are difficiencies at the club level that must be addressed before you can give clubs greater power. Not all clubs are created equal but, in my opinion, not all clubs that exist right now belong at the same table as others. You have full service clubs with the same essential power and influence as tiny mom and pop clubs that are being run out of someone's basement. They are not the same and can't be treated the same unless the little clubs are prepared to step up and offer everything the big clubs offer (ideally by merging with other small clubs). Ultimately, I think there are far too many clubs (particularly in Ontario...I'm not up to speed on other provinces frankly). Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Martyr Posted October 30, 2007 Share Posted October 30, 2007 quote:Originally posted by VPjr Not all clubs are created equal but, in my opinion, not all clubs that exist right now belong at the same table as others. You have full service clubs with the same essential power and influence as tiny mom and pop clubs that are being run out of someone's basement. They are not the same and can't be treated the same unless the little clubs are prepared to step up and offer everything the big clubs offer (ideally by merging with other small clubs). Ultimately, I think there are far too many clubs (particularly in Ontario...I'm not up to speed on other provinces frankly). I agree that many clubs are too small (and perhaps some are too big?). I wonder if bringing smaller clubs together will just bring us back to the system we have now - District Associations. I've always thought Districts should be merely administrative in nature - perhaps an extension or branch office of the Provincial Association. However, if Districts were to become the clubs (with all clubs within it's boundaries absorbed entirely) you might get the scenario you are describing. However, I can think of some fairly prominent clubs that would not accept this without a BIG fight. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DJones Posted November 5, 2007 Share Posted November 5, 2007 It's interesting to know how things work in other provinces. This article below (link) hits on many problems with developmental here in BC. We have some very progressive clubs but are handicaped from making more strides in development by the provincial association policies and boundaries and agreements that the Whitecaps hold. http://soccerpaper.com/edition/?p=242 Is this similar in other provinces? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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