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Another comment about the f&^%#@g Gold Cup and....


hectorj

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I will snap!

We are out of the World Cup, which we have to wait 2.5 years for and then wait two years for the next cycle to start. This is death.

The Gold Cup is a bush league tournament that the big boys don't even take that seriously. The fact that we do fairly well in it is, for the most part, inconsequential. It hasn't led to success in the World Cup, obviously. It is an appetizer for the World Cup, which we just flamed out of in the second round for the third straight cycle. The Gold Cup is for the loyal fans; the World Cup is for all sports fans. No one but us care about the Gold Cup.

Compounding the problem is that CONCACAF can stick us in the Group of Death once more in four years and what do we say in our defence? According to the WC results in the past three cycles, we are in the ranks of Cuba, St Vincent, El Salvador. Jack Warner is probably having a good chuckle over our predicament. It makes his job easier next cycle.

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Jack Warner will not be around next World Cup cycle. Look at him, he's in his 80s. Cruel to say but I'm sure the coach-a-bower is already traveling the road towards his door.

I'm of exactly the opposite mind. The Gold Cup is a ways to a means. It's a vessel for boosting our FIFA rankings.

It's a summer tournament which allows us an opportunity to gather our best players for a stable period. Other teams don't attach a lot of importance to the tourney and so opens the door for us. And whether or not they attach importance to the tourney is moot. The point rankings earned is rewarded regardless.

AND because it is such a second rate tourney and we have an improved chance of succeeding in it if we take it more seriously than the opposition we have an opportunity to put some winning matches on TV. Nothing better for promoting Canadian international soccer than Canada actually being seen winning.

Long and short, no the Gold Cup isn't up to the WCQ tournament, but we should jump at the chance to use it to increase our FIFA rankings towards a seeding so when it does come time for WCQing we don't end up in another Group of Death.

Even if we have to stumble and bumble our way into it I'd like to take our chances with The Hex, and not just some 6 match mini-tourney.

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quote:Originally posted by Trident

Well, didnt we do well pre WCQ and still get an undeservedly bad seed?

Yes and no. We made the semi's and lost. Had we beaten the USA and Mexico to win the damned thing we would have picked up a **** pile of points.

And when CONCACAF decided to use 6 month old rankings to determine seedings for the draw, in effect discrediting the value of the federations own championship, CSA HQ decided to let the matter slide rather than pursue a gorilla campaign to discredit the move.

The 2009 and 2011 edition of the Gold Cup could play an important part in the rankings/seedings for the next WCQ draw. It will be impossible for CONCACAF to dismiss the performance of both tourneys. And if we do well, the CSA must lobby and lobby hard to see that the 2011 results are not ignored.

The point I'm really trying to make about the Gold Cup is that because we don't use up enough of the international calender to build up our FIFA rankings (for a number of reasons) the bi-annual Gold Cup is a great chance, and a fairly cheap one at that, to amass a "nest egg" of FIFA points which would subsidize the leaner point earnings we get over the rest of the calenders.

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You say the big boys don't care about the Gold Cup then why did Mexico sell out the Azteca for the 2003 Gold Cup final...

And even if they didn't care, Canadian soccer supporters can't be limited to less than two months every 4 years of important matches.

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Who cares if the big boys care?

WE CARE. If they don't care then they are morons!

Gold Cup is the biggest competition for national soccer on the continent! It is our Euro! A chance to win something!

Of course we should care about the Gold Cup as it is a ticket to the Confederations Cup and in the end the same prize of winning the Gold Cup is the same prize as winning Euro.

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quote:

And even if they didn't care, Canadian soccer supporters can't be limited to less than two months every 4 years of important matches.

Care or don't care, that's only 3 weeks more every 2 years

That's a very big and serious problem for our football

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The GOLD CUP is worth something! I'm not going to go on about points already mentioned by others, but by winning the Gold Cup you qualify for Confederations Cup. Although I am sure the winners of the 07 Gold Cup will be in South Africa in 09 rather the winners of the upcoming Gold Cup. The Confed Cup is not the World Cup, but it consists of pretty good teams and is a good experience for the players. Now with that said we just have to re-instate Hart.

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quote:Originally posted by hectorj

Compounding the problem is that CONCACAF can stick us in the Group of Death once more in four years and what do we say in our defence? According to the WC results in the past three cycles, we are in the ranks of Cuba, St Vincent, El Salvador. Jack Warner is probably having a good chuckle over our predicament. It makes his job easier next cycle.

We have to stop whining about the whole "Group of Death" thing. First, Jamaica shouldn't have been that tough. Second, we were going to have to face these teams in a group stage one way or another, this year or next. If we couldn't beat them this year, what makes you think we could have beat them next year? All an easy first round group would have done is given Mitchell a chance to solidify his status before leading us out of the World Cup, and then we'd be stuck with him for another four years and not have a chance for the next WC either.

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I think we are better off not getting to the Hex if we were not going to qualify anyway. Now we have a better chance of getting rid of Mitchell and getting some reform at the CSA.

We need a four year program under a new coach with the next WCQ as the only goal. Results at the next Gold Cup would be nice but we need to be playing the younger players who will be crucial to the next WCQ campaign. The results have to be subservient to player development.

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quote:Originally posted by Grizzly

We need a four year program under a new coach with the next WCQ as the only goal. Results at the next Gold Cup would be nice but we need to be playing the younger players who will be crucial to the next WCQ campaign. The results have to be subservient to player development.

Spot on. No point playing the Nashes and Hastings of the program the next time around when we need the likes of Ledgerwood and Edgar to solify spots, even if this means we go out earlier in the Gold Cup.

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[quote]Originally posted by Cheeta

Jack Warner will not be around next World Cup cycle. Look at him, he's in his 80s. Cruel to say but I'm sure the coach-a-bower is already traveling the road towards his door.

Warner will stick around as long as possible. He is a power hungry tyrant who will be clawing anyone who tries to take him out before he is ready. He looks like Robert Mugabe and acts a lot like him too.

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quote:Originally posted by dsqpr

I see your point Grizzly but if we hadn't played Honduras in this round how would we have known that we'd lose to them in the next one?! Hindsight is always 20/20 but I'm pretty sure we all wanted to advance to the final six, DM or no DM. Additional revenue, more matches for our players and for us.

But I concede that not getting there could be a blessing in disguise this time around, if it serves as a catalyst for the change that is so badly needed.

No one can predict what would have happened in the next round. However, we played Honduras twice and as much as everyone wants to pin the blame entirely on Mitchell, Honduras just looked like a better team to me than we did. Much more technically skilled, faster and physically very strong so we couldn't even push them around like we can with some of the smaller Central American teams. Their players also have a very good tactical sense by which I mean the type of tactical sense gained by years of training under good coaches/systems. They also played very well off the ball. Maybe under a better coach we could have played a tactically more effective formation but from what I saw the Honduras were just a more skilled team than we were. I could see Honduras doing well if they qualify for the World Cup while quite honestly if our team had qualified the results in the WC would have been embarrassing.

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Honduras looked better because they have a better coach! They are not better than us talent wise. Ramon Nunez is an MLS reject and they play with a team of domestic leaguers.

Give us a real coach and we would be the team looking better no doubt in my mind.

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quote:Originally posted by Keegan

Honduras looked better because they have a better coach! They are not better than us talent wise. Ramon Nunez is an MLS reject and they play with a team of domestic leaguers.

Give us a real coach and we would be the team looking better no doubt in my mind.

The coach can only be blamed for so much and people are going way overboard in this. Our team just was not as good as we thought it was. There is nothing wrong with having a team of domestic players when you have a decent domestic league. Honduras has a league of 10 teams composed mostly of Honduran players. We have 3 professional teams with the USL teams being roughly 50% Canadian and the MLS team being about 20% Canadian. Most of our players are playing in 2nd tier European leagues and some are even on 3rd tier European leagues so we should not overrate them just because they are in Europe. Nunez is not an MLS reject. He played well for FC Dallas and had a poor short spell at Chivas which happens to a lot of players. I would consider his transfer to Olimpia from Chivas to be a lateral one. I don't see any evidence that from the current Champions League that MLS is superior to the Honduran league. Marathon has already beaten DC United 2-0 and is in a three way tie for first place while DCU is at the bottom of the group. Before I am convinced of DeRo's skill level I would like to see one time in an important national team game against a good team that he scores a goal like Costly's goal against us. We should have had a better coach but we need to develop some better players as well. That is why we need a coach who will have a 4 year plan to create a much stronger team for the next WCQ than we had for this one.

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quote:Originally posted by Keegan

Who cares if the big boys care?

WE CARE. If they don't care then they are morons!

Gold Cup is the biggest competition for national soccer on the continent! It is our Euro! A chance to win something!

Of course we should care about the Gold Cup as it is a ticket to the Confederations Cup and in the end the same prize of winning the Gold Cup is the same prize as winning Euro.

You can say the same thing about the Copa Libertadores and Copa Sudamericana, but the latter is still tough to get excited about while the former is highly prestigious.

Winning the Euro is a huge prize in itself that greatly outweighs winning the confederations cup, nevermind qualifying for it.

The good news is that CONCACAF can do things to instantly improve the Gold Cup. But until it does some of these things the Gold Cup will continue to be a mickey-mouse tournament.

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There is a lot to be improved in the Gold Cup. However, the creation of the CONCACAF Champions League has greatly improved the continental club competition so hopefully CONCACAF can also improve the Gold Cup. I think the Champions League is also going a long way to strengthening the rivalries between CONCACAF nations which should improve how serious the Gold Cup is taken. Hopefully this will also lead to us playing a lot more friendlies against our CONCACAF competition.

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quote:Originally posted by Grizzly

There is a lot to be improved in the Gold Cup. However, the creation of the CONCACAF Champions League has greatly improved the continental club competition so hopefully CONCACAF can also improve the Gold Cup. I think the Champions League is also going a long way to strengthening the rivalries between CONCACAF nations which should improve how serious the Gold Cup is taken. Hopefully this will also lead to us playing a lot more friendlies against our CONCACAF competition.

I think the first improvement that should be made is no automatic qualification for the US, Mexico and Canada. I would love to play more qualifying games for the tournament. Even if it was just a week of qualifiers in the states or something.

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quote:Originally posted by leafdolfan

I would love to play more qualifying games for the tournament. Even if it was just a week of qualifiers in the states or something.

*cringe* That reminds me of the biggest problem with the Gold Cup --> It's held in the States every freakin' time!! Nothing says mickey-mouse more than that. [:o)]

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quote:Originally posted by amacpher

*cringe* That reminds me of the biggest problem with the Gold Cup --> It's held in the States every freakin' time!! Nothing says mickey-mouse more than that. [:o)]

There were rumours that Canada might host in 2009, but those have all kind of died away. I don't think the CSA would accept anyways. But I agree even if it was a joint Caribbean host, that would be a lot better.

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quote:Originally posted by amacpher

*cringe* That reminds me of the biggest problem with the Gold Cup --> It's held in the States every freakin' time!! Nothing says mickey-mouse more than that. [:o)]

It would be nice if this tournament rotated between Canada, Mexico, USA, joint Caribbean hosts and joint Central American hosts. The atmosphere at the matches would be so much better than in the US and it would give our team a lot more experience playing in hostile environments. One thing that unites Europe is the amount of fans travelling between countries for matches and we could certainly use a lot more contact between the nations in North America. It is pretty easy to forget that their is anything beyond Canada the US and Mexico in North America and I think it would be great for the many other countries in the continent to be more integrated. I really find it great in the Champions League to be playing teams from other countries and seeing what their fans/stadiums/atmosphere are like.

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quote:Originally posted by Keegan

Honduras looked better because they have a better coach! They are not better than us talent wise. Ramon Nunez is an MLS reject and they play with a team of domestic leaguers.

Give us a real coach and we would be the team looking better no doubt in my mind.

Stop the insanity please.

3 World Cup qualifying campaigns. Out in the semi-final round without a single win in each and every one.

We have never won a single, count 'em', one single game that mattered in the last three qualifying rounds. Quit telling me how talented we are, it's embarrassing.

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