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No, no, a million times, NO.


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Wanting to have your cake and eat it too isn't difficult to fathom. If loyalty is not shown to players who have come up through the Canadian development system and young Canadian players can see that they could easily be ditched down the road the moment some second rate player from elsewhere finds out their grandfather was born in Winnipeg you forfeit the right to start preaching to them about traitordom and loyalty. Loyalty is a two way street. Complain about Bircham as much as you complain about OH and there is an intellectual consistency. Having said that I hope OH winds up nowhere near BMO Field. Clearly a marketing move if it happens rather than about strengthening the roster.

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Apples to oranges.

Bircham decided to suit up for us because he knew he'd have no chance of ever playing for England. It's the same reason that Canadians suit up for the German and Italian (and other) national hockey teams. They're not traitors in my book.

OH playing for England, to continue the hockey comparison, is akin to Brett Hull playing for the US - traitordom.

Also, I'm not sure which burgeoning young star Bircham was holding back with his 17 caps. We're not a notoriously deep program.

Replace Brett Hull with Sidney Crosby -- because OH could have been equivalent of 'the Kid' for our CMNT. Hull was never going to make Team Canada when he made that decision. OH would have been the star and cornerstone of our CMNT.

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Guest HamiltonSteelers

I secretly want OH to sign for TFC. Never got the chance to bellow how much I despise him. As a player and healthy, objectively speaking, he's good. Given that he's clearly been drinking malk for most of his life, healthy and OH lasts as long as the flavour in a piece of Bazooka Joe chewing gum.

I envision him bagging a brace and there being utter silence or outright malice towards him. Would rush home to hear how the ESPN crew explains to the home audience what's going on.

"Toronto is up 3-1 and the crowd is upset about something..."

"uh... I think there was a foul in the box and the fans felt there should've been a booking..."

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Complain about Bircham as much as you complain about OH and there is an intellectual consistency.

BBTB, you should know better. You are being totally deceitful.

Bircham was never asked to be on the England team.

Bircham never promised to play for England in a televised interview.

The Whore is such because he pledged his loyalty to Canada and then betrayed us.

No other player has done this. Not young Bunbury nor deGuzman.

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I think BBTB's main point is that we have some players on the MNT that have, shall we say, "loose affiliations" to Canada. Why would a player feel like he owes something to the MNT and the CSA if they were to turn around tomorrow and replace him in the starting XI with some (insert nationality) guy who married a Canadian girl after he had spent a week vacationing here. We have guys like Will Johnson who was born in Toronto and then moved away when he was 1 years old and never set foot back here before playing for us. Isidro Sanchez's mother lived here for 5 years, got a passport and then her son is eligible to play for us...alrighty then.

I'm the first to call these whores out and OH is an utter douchebag and the grand daddy of all the defectors, but this whole practice of bringing guys in with tenuous ties does disturb me a little. We can claim everyone else is doing it, but 2 wrongs don't make a right.

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BBTB, you should know better. You are being totally deceitful.

Bircham was never asked to be on the England team.

Bircham never promised to play for England in a televised interview.

The Whore is such because he pledged his loyalty to Canada and then betrayed us.

No other player has done this. Not young Bunbury nor deGuzman.

Actually Bunbury did say he couldn't imagine not playing for Canada, so he did pull the ol' bait & switch & is a duplicitous traitor in his own right, just like OH. But i'm with you that i've got nothing against Jono De Guzman, he never made any guarantees to us about playing for the CMNT or wax poetic about how great it'd be to play for Canada, that & the fact he was living in Holland since he was in his early teens, I gives him a pass.

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Whoever brought up Brett Hull, in my opinion is off. Hull is not a traitor. He has a Canadian father and an American mother. He also spent much time in the US while his father was playing. I was disappointed when Hull chose the US, but I understood.

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Whoever brought up Brett Hull, in my opinion is off. Hull is not a traitor. He has a Canadian father and an American mother. He also spent much time in the US while his father was playing. I was disappointed when Hull chose the US, but I understood.

Brett Hull tried out for a Canadian U-18 team and got cut. That was the determining factor in his decision to be American, nothing to do with his mother, who still lives in North Vancouver, or his formative years. He was happy to be Canadian until he found out he wasn't good enough to play on the U-18 team, even if his dad was Bobby Hull.

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OH created the precedent which made it ''acceptable'' for other players such as JDG#2 , Azmir, Teal and Junior Hoilett ( potentially) to turn their backs to Canada. OH could have been the backbone and the start of the solid foundation for our national squad , but he refused to take on that role.

Until we have a true superstar who can give out nation credibility both at the the club level and on the international scene, our team will stagnate.

OH cold have been a national hero. Today , he is almost unknown by the average Canadian ,hated by Canadian Soccer fans and soon to be fogotten by the English who have no need for him anymore.

This is the key for me as well. This is why I believe our anger is not only justified...but necessary. Everytime we display this anger, we express that these actions are not acceptable!

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Guest HamiltonSteelers

For what it's worth, first Brett Hull suited up for the US in 1986. That season he put up all star numbers for the Flames... Moncton Golden Flames.

He was picked up at the time when the depth of American-born talent wasn't as prevalent as it is now. He took the opportunity to play for a national team when, perhaps, his first choice might never have chosen him.

2-3 years later, he was a superstar. 2-3 years AFTER he accepted the offer to play for the US.

I can understand if any of these legitimate turncoats (OH, Teal, Assmir) if they were passed over and THEN played for someone else, but it wasn't the case.

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Guess there is no way of knowing to what extent OH was a plan B option if Frings has said "nein" but the good news is the danger of him being signed as a DP has passed. I'm not going to dignify one of the previous posts about my views on national team eligibility with a direct response. It's not difficult to fathom that from a fan's perspective recruiting on the basis of "I'll play for them as my second choice on a tenuous technicality because I'm not good enough for the higher ranked country I genuinely belong to" makes sense because it helps their team win in the short term and everything revolves around the next game and the next major tournament when the issue is viewed from that vantage point. The problem is that it creates and reinforces a culture amongst pro level players in which national team selection is no longer viewed in terms of raw visceral level patriotism but starts to be seen in cynical career move terms in much the same way as most players will sign for whichever team offers most money regardless of who they supported as a boy. How players rationalize things once the genie is out of the bottle on that is not necessarily going to match the way the fans see it because the interests and perspectives of the two groups are different.

If the CMNT unilaterally adopted a higher set of standards where eligibility is concerned and championed them rather than pushing FIFA's regulations to the absolute breaking point with players like Marc Bircham, the CSA would be in a stronger position to make life awkward for defectors like OH and that might eventually have a healthy deterrent effect.

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Now that our DP slots are all taken, if for whatever reason OH is willing to take a non-DP salary, I'd sign him.

I think it's worth a gamble. I really don't think the Canadian brush off thing will an issue (so long as he plays well).

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The total of six discovery signings that were available for the 2011 season have almost certainly been used up as well so even if he's willing to sign for a bargain basement rate there's probably no way to do it right now. This is a dead issue right now in other words.

Ok, my logic of MLS contracts is not very advanced. What constitutes a discovery signing?

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