Jump to content

Canada-Belarus March 29th


Blackdude

Recommended Posts

Great just great... how ridiculous is that?! A world cup qualifying year and a confederations cup Gold Cup tournament and we are going to have TWO friendlies leading up to the Gold Cup?!? Not just two friendlies but two european friendlies, I doubt we get MLS players for Belarus... ah well guess we'll just put the full team together in WCQ right...

Agreed...this is just shocking. This situation isn't getting any better - in fact I think it's getting worse.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • Replies 126
  • Created
  • Last Reply
Agreed...this is just shocking. This situation isn't getting any better - in fact I think it's getting worse.

^This.

And why I agree is simply because qualifying for a World Cup is more and more difficult each time out. The stakes in terms of preparation and financing continue to go upward while Canada's outlook continues to lag behind and stagnate. We seem to lack ambition and that does not translate well to the fence-sitting prospects who have other international opportunities.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

we talked with the team manager before the game and he wasn't really optimistic about another friendly before GC.

Are you talking about the prospective Belarus match?

Because Stephen said it was just a matter of 'crossing the t's and dotting the i's" on Tuesday. The match will almost certainly be announced by the CSA shortly:

The interview:

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Are you talking about the prospective Belarus match?

Because Stephen said it was just a matter of 'crossing the t's and dotting the i's" on Tuesday. The match will almost certainly be announced by the CSA shortly:

The interview:

I think he means another on top of the Belarus friendly

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Great just great... how ridiculous is that?! A world cup qualifying year and a confederations cup Gold Cup tournament and we are going to have TWO friendlies leading up to the Gold Cup?!? Not just two friendlies but two european friendlies, I doubt we get MLS players for Belarus... ah well guess we'll just put the full team together in WCQ right...

Although I completely agree I believe it takes alot of work and especially cash to set up friendlies. I would love to see more games but in reality I think the CSA is doing the best they can. I was at the Greece game and the stadium was about 90% full with the capacity being only 17K. I'm not sure how much tickets were but I can't imagine they were more than 10 or 15 euros, maybe Jeremy or PCA know.

I imagine that in alot of these cases the CSA ends up paying to play these games because unfortunately we're not much of a draw. Just specualtion on my part, if anybody has any idea as to how the process actually works I'm sure theres alot of us who'd love to know.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Although I completely agree I believe it takes alot of work and especially cash to set up friendlies. I would love to see more games but in reality I think the CSA is doing the best they can. I was at the Greece game and the stadium was about 90% full with the capacity being only 17K. I'm not sure how much tickets were but I can't imagine they were more than 10 or 15 euros, maybe Jeremy or PCA know.

I imagine that in alot of these cases the CSA ends up paying to play these games because unfortunately we're not much of a draw. Just specualtion on my part, if anybody has any idea as to how the process actually works I'm sure theres alot of us who'd love to know.

That's typically not the case Matt.

The host nation almost always picks up the bill for the away team for a friendly. Safe to say Canada's transport and accommodation costs for the match were likely completely covered by Greece in this case.

While the turnout wasn't massive, approx, 16K, I would venture a guess that it was still a profitable affair for the Greek FA. Decent money from ticket sales, extra match day revenue (concessions, beer, merchandise, etc..) and potentially some tv money.....

The problem for Canada is that we can barely ever guarantee that hosting a home friendly will turn a profit. See Peru and Honduras back in September.... This is why we 'prefer' to play on the road, it's a less risky business. But, of course, there is never the opportunity for us to make a profit by doing so...

Link to comment
Share on other sites

And by playing road friendlies we run the risk of not being asked to play, that's probably the main reason we have missed FIFA dates on our calendar. You're not always going to find an opponent that wants to a) play you and B) pay your costs 10 times a year indefinitely.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Do you know for certain that the CSA lost money on both friendlies? I know that was a foregone conclusion for the Montreal game (pitifully small attendance and cheap tickets) but I would have thought that money was made on the game at BMO (decent attenance, more realistic ticket prices). Please let us know what you know!

I know the tickets we had in our section we're reasonably priced but I think that was a result of Jamie pulling some strings and the rest of the tickets for the game were way over priced IIRC

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Do you know for certain that the CSA lost money on both friendlies? I know that was a foregone conclusion for the Montreal game (pitifully small attendance and cheap tickets) but I would have thought that money was made on the game at BMO (decent attenance, more realistic ticket prices). Please let us know what you know!

I know the tickets we had in our section we're reasonably priced but I think that was a result of Jamie pulling some strings and the rest of the tickets for the game were way over priced IIRC

There was not a very big difference in the ticket prices between Montreal and Toronto. In Toronto the single ticket price was $24 and the group price was $23.50 if you bought your tickets through Jamie. In Montreal the ticket prices were $20 plus $5 service charge for individual tickets and $17 for group purchases plus a $15 service charge on the whole order (about $1.50 per ticket). None of us has any control over the ticket prices as they are set by the CSA.

The main difference in ticket price was that the service charges in Montreal were less than half those charged in Toronto. All of that money goes to Ticketmaster not the CSA. The extremely high service charge Ticketmaster charged in Toronto was the reason Jamie undertook the very difficult process of buying our tickets as a group and sending them to everyone ie, we were worried that the price of the ticket plus the high service charge might discourage people from attending so he did this so people would not have to pay the service charge. If you did not buy your tickets to the Toronto game from Jamie (which if I remember correctly was the case for dsqpr) and instead bought them online from Ticketmaster, then it might have seemed like you paid a lot more for the Toronto game but the difference was mostly the really high service charges for that game.

I did my best to find out why the service charges were so different in both cities but it seems like a complex procedure. My best guess is that even though Admission is owned by Ticketmaster they are pretty independent companies. I think that the CSA probably did not negotiate with either company very much and just accepted what price they gave them and Ticketmaster decided to charge exorbitant fees while Admission did not.

The next time we play in Toronto we will have to contact the CSA and make sure they arrange a decent service charge price because I don't think Jamie or anyone else should have to go through the process of ordering and sending out tickets like happened this time.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

There's a reason Bolivia v Finland was cancelled. The agency that set up the February friendlies in Antalya allegedly fixed the matches and Bolivia wanted nothing to do with that agency in march and pulled out. I don't think we want to fill that void. I'm nervous enough about whether our game with Belarus is going to be clean.

http://espn.go.com/sports/soccer/news/_/id/6120752/fifa-opens-fixing-probe-matches-turkey

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Alright, time to lay down the insane "this match has to be fixed for this to possibly happen" bets. I call 2 - 1 Canada, two of the three goals coming on penalties in each half, first half for us, second half for them. Four yellow cards, three to us and one to a Belarussian, two in the first half and two in the second half (one to each nation per half). Guaranteed our second goal scored by Peters in the second half before the 70" off a corner.

$50 - who's with me?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 2 weeks later...

I'll geek out here on throw down the first possible roster for this one:

FWD: Simpson, Occean, Ricketts, Hume, McCallum

MID: Hutchinson,Jackson, Pacheco, Nakajima, Marrello,

DF: de Jong, Ledgerwood, Pozniak, Straith, Peters, Edgar

GK: Hirschfeld, Borjan

----

-Bernier and McKenna will probably have come back from injury but only just - no point damaging relationships with clubs over older vets who we know well.

-Leave Friend out I say - a lot of others in this squad are hardly playing (Peters, Edgar, Straith, Jackson) but they are young and will probably be huge contributors for the Gold Cup and to the MNT in general for many years to come (plus very few alternatives with MLS players presumably not being called up). Friend will not.

-Marrello's a holding mid - could be interesting to call him out to make up the numbers - and why not recognize his club status? I'd say bring Lam too but JEF play two days earlier.

Thoughts?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I'll geek out here on throw down the first possible roster for this one:

FWD: Simpson, Occean, Ricketts, Hume, McCallum

MID: Hutchinson,Jackson, Pacheco, Nakajima, Marrello,

DF: de Jong, Ledgerwood, Pozniak, Straith, Peters, Edgar

GK: Hirschfeld, Borjan

----

-Bernier and McKenna will probably have come back from injury but only just - no point damaging relationships with clubs over older vets who we know well.

-Leave Friend out I say - a lot of others in this squad are hardly playing (Peters, Edgar, Straith, Jackson) but they are young and will probably be huge contributors for the Gold Cup and to the MNT in general for many years to come (plus very few alternatives with MLS players presumably not being called up). Friend will not.

-Marrello's a holding mid - could be interesting to call him out to make up the numbers - and why not recognize his club status? I'd say bring Lam too but JEF play two days earlier.

Thoughts?

I'd say Dwayne De Rosario deserves inclusion after his strong performance in the Larissa match.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I'd say Dwayne De Rosario deserves inclusion after his strong performance in the Larissa match.

I doubt we get MLS players for this one unless needed but they won't be from TFC thats for sure

Kreis would definitely let Johnson come

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Archived

This topic is now archived and is closed to further replies.


×
×
  • Create New...