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Ice hockey starts to slip as Canadians also fall for soccer (from FT UK)


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Interesting article in the UK FT this weekend...

Ice hockey starts to slip as Canadians also fall for soccer

By Simon Kuper

Published: January 30 2010 02:00 | Last updated: January 30 2010 02:00

Every nation has shared moments - snaps to stick into the national photo album. For Americans there was the moon landing and, for the French, De Gaulle marching into Paris in 1944. For Canadians, many of such moments have come from ice hockey. Next month's winter Olympics in Vancouver are supposed to provide another shared moment: if Team Canada make the men's hockey final, experts expect the largest television audience in Canadian history.

Hockey is still Canada's number one national symbol. But its dominance is starting to slip. Canadian television commercials ahead of the Olympics show rural hockey players flitting over frozen ponds. But a new Canada is emerging: one that prefers soccer.

Hockey is a way for Canadians to commune with their landscape, like the Swiss skiing or Americans watching basketball in air-conditioned malls. For generations, the men who pulled on Canada's maple leaf jersey have been national ideals of masculinity: brave, mostly rural, unmistakably Canadian. Team Canada is so beloved, it even unites the "Two Solitudes" of French and English Canada. The team's victory in the Olympic final of 2002 drew what, even now, is the country's biggest ever television audience. When a survey last year asked 1,000 Canadians to name the most representative national symbols, hockey topped the list, well ahead of multiculturalism and free healthcare.

Yet many Canadians now feel hockey is under threat. Americans have lured some beloved Canadian clubs south, and the immigrants who pour into Canada rarely bother with the expensive sport. About a fifth of Canada's population, and more than half of Toronto's, was born abroad. Some of these people do fall for hockey - the legendary television programme Hockey Night in Canada also broadcasts in Punjabi - but most stick with soccer or even cricket. In Canada, once the last soccer-free zone on earth, you can now watch the sport non-stop on cable television. Many Canadians do.

The new soccer team Toronto FC last year averaged attendances of 20,344, about 1,000 more than the iconic Toronto Maple Leafs hockey team. Vancouver will acquire a Major League Soccer team next year. Montreal wants one too.

Even native-born Canadians are falling for globalisation's favourite sport. Last December, for the first time, the website of The Globe and Mail newspaper crashed due to excess traffic - during the draw for the soccer World Cup. And a recent government handbook for immigrants ends a long paean to hockey with the stolid admission: "Soccer has the most registered players of any game in Canada."

Hockey is still easily Canada's favourite sport, cautions Jay Scherer, sports sociologist at the University of Alberta. However, many hockey fans worry that history is against them. They know that a Canada where hockey was just another sport would not quite be Canada. Stephen Harper, the conservative prime minister, always claims to be writing a book about hockey. It will detail "aspects of early professional hockey in the city of Toronto," he has said. This sounds worryingly like a heritage project.

Visiting Toronto this winter, I left the streets full of frozen immigrants and ducked into the Hockey Hall of Fame. It was like visiting the past. On videos inside, giant farmboys with unadulterated Canadian accents eulogised legendary coaches. Practically everyone in the hall was white. As for today's Team Canada, says Mr Scherer, "if you look at the faces, all but one are white. That stands in contrast to a lot of the changes in Canada."

The Canadas of hockey and soccer should coexist more easily than French and English Canada have done. Occasionally an old hockey pundit derides unmanly soccer players, but many young Canadians love both sports. Hockey still fills the national photo album. But one day all of Canada will gather around the television for a soccer game.

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In Canada, once the last soccer-free zone on earth, you can now watch the sport non-stop on cable television.

On the whole a good article but the first bit of this sentence is clearly a bit of a stretch. Canadian pro soccer has almost 50 years of history now if you choose the ECPSL as the starting point and it is over 80 years if the NSL is factored into the equation. What has changed in recent years is the level mainstream cultural acceptance.

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it's hard to see the decent grains with all the crap sometimes, it kinda bugs me when other papers shoddy up Canada from their perspective. like when this guy says 'streets full of frozen immigrants' it just sounds like all he's thinking about walking around is immigrants? what is he scared of them? doesn't have anything actually interesting to think about? and how does he know who's an immigrant or not? did he talk to them all? (i'm pretty sure I don't need the sarcasm and this guy thinks white = canadian and the editor was just as stupid).

Then, when he talks about team Canada(he's talking about hockey right?) he shows a ridiculous amount of opinion. Isn't almost everyone on team canada white? maybe these definitions aren't quite up to this guys BNP heirarchy but generally doesn't white vaguely mean european decent and thats about it? so this guy comes in and not only tries to split up our teams on vague racial lines, he then tries to skewer it all on his silly racial lines showing just how ignorant and bigoted he is.

TFCRegina, maybe it's a little small of me but I have trouble listening to anything someone says if they embarress themselves on the way (or try and load up something perfectly neutral with their silly agenda and ignorance)

edit: and that line about TFC out selling the maple leafs made me laugh too, it may be true but if the maple leaf waiting lists were toilet paper, I'd be king in prison.

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it's hard to see the decent grains with all the crap sometimes, it kinda bugs me when other papers shoddy up Canada from their perspective. like when this guy says 'streets full of frozen immigrants' it just sounds like all he's thinking about walking around is immigrants? what is he scared of them? doesn't have anything actually interesting to think about? and how does he know who's an immigrant or not? did he talk to them all? (i'm pretty sure I don't need the sarcasm and this guy thinks white = canadian and the editor was just as stupid).

Then, when he talks about team Canada(he's talking about hockey right?) he shows a ridiculous amount of opinion. Isn't almost everyone on team canada white? maybe these definitions aren't quite up to this guys BNP heirarchy but generally doesn't white vaguely mean european decent and thats about it? so this guy comes in and not only tries to split up our teams on vague racial lines, he then tries to skewer it all on his silly racial lines showing just how ignorant and bigoted he is.

TFCRegina, maybe it's a little small of me but I have trouble listening to anything someone says if they embarress themselves on the way (or try and load up something perfectly neutral with their silly agenda and ignorance)

edit: and that line about TFC out selling the maple leafs made me laugh too, it may be true but if the maple leaf waiting lists were toilet paper, I'd be king in prison.

Well, this guy is English so he probably doesn't know any better.

That frozen immigrant line pissed me off as well. He probably just saw a bunch of people of Asian and Indian ethnicity and automatically went, "Immigrants!!!"

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Simon Kuper who I met in Dec is one of the most well known soccer writers around and he is Dutch oops and from my home town Leiden..I had some great concersations with him and I must say that I never ever gave him these ideas.I guess he is just playing the number games and not aware of the real fabric of this nation.I must say that there is that fear by hockey people and the media thar soccer is on it's way to become no1 and that is an obvious no no.

Anyway Simon is the author of a book called SOCCERNOMICS and that will explain his way of thinking.

I am corresponding with him so this will be brought to his atterntion.

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...maybe these definitions aren't quite up to this guys BNP heirarchy...

Did you read the article all the way through before reaching that conclusion?

The Canadas of hockey and soccer should coexist more easily than French and English Canada have done. Occasionally an old hockey pundit derides unmanly soccer players, but many young Canadians love both sports. Hockey still fills the national photo album. But one day all of Canada will gather around the television for a soccer game.

That vision of the future is in tune with the Dutch traditions of liberalism and tolerance rather than the outlook of somebody like the late Pim Fortuyn.

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edit: I didn't quote him but this is a response the bringbacktheblizzard

ummmm, you took my bit out of context. you know, maybe your right, maybe he's just confused, but come on, when someone seems to consider french and italian people non white it sounds like their some 50's loser who thinks their a genius cause a moronic racial heirarchy is trickiest thing they can wrap their ignorant heads around. sure their's good stuff in the article but Canada does not really care for that divisivness (where a new world country, not that makes all the difference but things are more vague in a country where 95% of the population decend from immigrants) that this guy is trying to apply on us, to a canadian, whiteness is usually a vague ethnic indicator, to this guy it's something special and exclusionary and he puts that bias into the article (even if it's nor directly, it comes out in these horrible phrases that don't seem to ring any alarms in his head)

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This article sucks. I have read so many articles on this very topic - how hockey is "losing ground" to soccer. Many of them have been interesting, and all of them better written.

I also think this whole "immigrants don't (typically) play/follow/like hockey" is bull. As I have said on this very forum many times, I know TONNES of immigrants or children of immigrants (myself included) that love hockey, and bleed Canadian red whenever our national ice hockey team plays. The recent IIHF U20 gold medal game between Canada and the USA drew huge numbers. At the article says, the upcoming Canada games at the Vancouver Olympics are expected to draw the biggest TV audience in Canadian history, which would break the record held by the 2002 Olympic ice hockey team.

Finally, although the Canadian ice hockey team is predominately Caucasian, the author contradicts himself. He is basically saying, "look at how white team Canada is, immigrants don't play hockey!" Well, maybe, but their children do.

Should be playing soccer:

Italian - Luongo, Spezza, Bertuzzi, Cammalleri, Ciccarelli, Colaiacovo, Del Zotto, Esposito, Ferraro, Peca, Giordano, Recchi, Ricci, etc...

German - Toews, Friesen, Niedermeyer(s), Getzlaf, Neufeld, Froese, Krahn, Bauer, Schmidt, Morenz, Baum, Buchberger, etc...

Asian - Me, Kariya (all of them), Setoguchi, Nazem Kadri, Rai, Malholtra, Sawada, Yip, Paek, Tanabe, etc...

The list goes on...

So, instead what the author has done is define who plays hockey on financial lines - and we all know hockey is an expensive endevour. it has ALWAYS been!

Lame article. Next!

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I'm the grandson of immigrants, (not exactly unusual in western Canada), and I would have to say that the next time I read any article on Canada (on any subject) written by a European writer that displays any useful insight at all - well - that will be the first time.

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This article sucks. I have read so many articles on this very topic - how hockey is "losing ground" to soccer. Many of them have been interesting, and all of them better written.

Should be playing soccer:

Italian - Luongo, Spezza, Bertuzzi, Cammalleri, Ciccarelli, Colaiacovo, Del Zotto, Esposito, Ferraro, Peca, Giordano, Recchi, Ricci, etc...

German - Toews, Friesen, Niedermeyer(s), Getzlaf, Neufeld, Froese, Krahn, Bauer, Schmidt, Morenz, Baum, Buchberger, etc...

Asian - Me, Kariya (all of them), Setoguchi, Nazem Kadri, Rai, Malholtra, Sawada, Yip, Paek, Tanabe, etc...

The list goes on...

So, instead what the author has done is define who plays hockey on financial lines - and we all know hockey is an expensive endevour. it has ALWAYS been!

Lame article. Next!

A tiny bit off topic but Del Zotto is an amazing soccer player and has the skills and athelticism to go pro if he chose.

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edit: I didn't quote him but this is a response the bringbacktheblizzard

ummmm, you took my bit out of context. you know, maybe your right, maybe he's just confused, but come on, when someone seems to consider french and italian people non white it sounds like their some 50's loser who thinks their a genius cause a moronic racial heirarchy is trickiest thing they can wrap their ignorant heads around. sure their's good stuff in the article but Canada does not really care for that divisivness (where a new world country, not that makes all the difference but things are more vague in a country where 95% of the population decend from immigrants) that this guy is trying to apply on us, to a canadian, whiteness is usually a vague ethnic indicator, to this guy it's something special and exclusionary and he puts that bias into the article (even if it's nor directly, it comes out in these horrible phrases that don't seem to ring any alarms in his head)

Well, race is socially constructed so it really doesn't matter what he thinks as race itself does not exist. All you are in actuality is an ethnicity, nothing more. Terms like white and black have no bearing.

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I'm the grandson of immigrants, (not exactly unusual in western Canada), and I would have to say that the next time I read any article on Canada (on any subject) written by a European writer that displays any useful insight at all - well - that will be the first time.

Enjoyed that. Unfortunate for the oh-so-enlightened Dutch writer that he would be so clued out as to release this view the weekend that the Toronto and Calgary media abandoned all sense of discretion over the trade of one hockey player.

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Well, race is socially constructed so it really doesn't matter what he thinks as it race itself does not exist. All you are in actuality is an ethnicity, nothing more. Terms like white and black have no bearing.

Exactly, we're all one human race. The rest is phenotypes (skin colour, hair colour, eyes etc.), like categorizing different roses in Grade 11 biology class.

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That's all. Maybe that's just too much of a simple thing to understand for some people out there...

I got most of the ideas in the article I just made a terrible silly error in reading, I got a sentence backwards and thought this guy was aryan nation, but I'm gonna say this in defence of my silliness, if someone you were talking too thought WASP's were 'white' and other people from europe are not, well your probably talking to a super racist, I was however completely mistaken (I read 'only one white face' instead of 'all but one non-white face' or something like that

and thought what kinda of old fashioned hillbillism is this?)

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Some interesting points. I agree though that the sports that have to fear Soccer's growing interest in Canada are baseball, and to a lesser extent Football, not hockey.

To speak for myself... I fell in love with Soccer when I was around 20, and it quickly became the only sport I have interest in. While I'll always have a place in my heart for hockey, the thing that turned me away from it more than anything else was the NHL, and also my beloved Toronto Maple Leafs.

In my humble opinion, the NHL is a joke. It's treated by an american lawyer (Bateman) like some shitty brand that needs to be pushed in markets where it will never succeed. Canadians have put up a good fight in many ways, like fighting against Fox's laser pucks and the loss of two great teams (the Jet's and Nordic's), but we don't fight hard enough. It's a joke of a league which we allow to be crapped on every time that little shit of a man tries to "expand our market share". What's worse? Many Canadian's like what has to be the worst travesty of all...tie breaking shootouts. What a fucking joke.

I don't need to get into the Leaf's do I?

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