Canadian Premier League

[dyslexic nam]

20 minutes ago, GuillermoDelQuarto said:

this is really interesting, I had no idea.

I feel like this is something we should talk about

 

i'll start.  IF MLS teams are somehow involved(looking at MLSE) is there some way to ensure that it doesn't become reserve squads through the loan rules?  

I don't wanna hear that MLS squads shouldn't be involved, thats a different discussion which we have(IMO) already beaten to death.

I wanna see if theres a reasonable way for them to be involved that keeps the 1a(MLS)/1b(CPL) sort of mentality I mentioned earlier

I just don't see how that is possible.  MLS clubs will not loan out players that are solid first team prospects and  who may be needed by the parent club.  At least I don't see how/why they would do that if it would threaten their own results.  In every case of player loans I have seen, it is a player (often young, with growth potential) who is unable to break into the first team, loaned out to a lesser club so that they can get valuable playing experience.  Yedlin, Januzaj (or whatever), etc.  The model is always the same.

The byproduct of this arrangement is that one of the parties is clearly superior to the other.  The player not deemed good enough for one club (usually even as a bench/depth player) is deemed a potential starter at another.  Otherwise the loan wouldn't make sense from either perspective.  But that dynamic clearly indicates a hierarchy amongst the clubs, and I am not sure calling things 1a and 1b changes anything.  An entity like MLSE would not agree to reduce their competitiveness in MLS by diluting their squad strength between two entities.  Thus I don't see how there can be a relationship with player loans where one of the teams (the recipient team) is not clearly understood to be the subordinate.

[mianjo]

I assume that  the Fury would come under these rules the transfer window for Canada is  Feb 18 2016 to May 11 2016  and  July 4 to Aug 8 2016  dates for 2017 have not been posted yet

For England they have and they are Jan 1 - Jan 31/17 the dates for the 2nd window have not been set yet but will be probably they same time frame as last year

https://www.fifatms.com/itms/worldwide-transfer-windows-calendar/

[mianjo]

3 minutes ago, dyslexic nam said:

I just don't see how that is possible.  MLS clubs will not loan out players that are solid first team prospects and  who may be needed by the parent club.  At least I don't see how/why they would do that if it would threaten their own results.  In every case of player loans I have seen, it is a player (often young, with growth potential) who is unable to break into the first team, loaned out to a lesser club so that they can get valuable playing experience.  Yedlin, Januzaj (or whatever), etc.  The model is always the same.

The byproduct of this arrangement is that one of the parties is clearly superior to the other.  The player not deemed good enough for one club (usually even as a bench/depth player) is deemed a potential starter at another.  Otherwise the loan wouldn't make sense from either perspective.  But that dynamic clearly indicates a hierarchy amongst the clubs, and I am not sure calling things 1a and 1b changes anything.  An entity like MLSE would not agree to reduce their competitiveness in MLS by diluting their squad strength between two entities.  Thus I don't see how there can be a relationship with player loans where one of the teams (the recipient team) is not clearly understood to be the subordinate.

MLS teams do this already, the players they loan out are not ready for regular MLS play but are too good for reserve or U18 teams, for Instance Ottawa Fury were loaned Ryan Richter from Toronto FC for part of the 2014 season, also Jeremy Gagnon-Lapare  was loaned by the Montreal Impact for a few months in 2015.

[Complete Homer]

I think Nigel Reed is getting behind the idea of CPL

" "Unless or until there is a fully professional league in Canada, this country will continue to ride on the coattails of Major League Soccer and ultimately fail to produce talent in sufficient numbers to rise above international obscurity"

http://www.cbc.ca/sports/soccer/mls/toronto-fc-not-canada-team-1.3891444

[BringBackTheBlizzard]

On 2016/12/09 at 2:49 AM, baulderdash77 said:

Halifax with a new 8,000 seat stadium close to downtown instantly becomes a viable market IMO.  It even has a chance to be a sensation since there's no sporting competition for them in the market...

Back in the original CSL era the main problem with the smaller markets was that the expenses required for them to field a competitive team were significantly higher than those based in the Golden Horseshoe, Montreal and lower mainland BC, because local players could not get the job done for them unlike an outfit like the North York Rockets that may have had very few fans (Rocket Robin notwithstanding) but had a catchment of many millions heavily skewed towards recent immigration to draw from when it came to recruiting players.

Once teams in the smaller markets burned through their startup capital (which at its most extreme only took two or three games in London, Ont. with the Lasers in 1990 and in other cases a season or so as with the Calgary Kickers after winning the title in 1987) they had to move to cheaper priced soultions with elite local amateur players, which led to a substantial drop in playing standards and a level of play that made it difficult to attract a paying crowd of more than a couple of hundred. In a similar way, the Kings of Donair or whatever they will be called will need to bring most of their roster in from outside and pay a premium to get players to relocate to Halifax, if they want to be able to challenge for a title.

Hopefully it's easier to sustain crowd interest in the present day now that after a generation of the youth soccer registration boom more of the population has some concept of what the offside rule is all about etc. On the plus side as well, no longer having the inflationary effect of the Cosmos being willing to lose well in excess of $5 million a year should help to make it less expensive than it has been in recent years to field a D2 quality team in North America with players that are on the fringes on MLS terms and might bring break even down to somtheing a lot more reasonable/achievable.

[BringBackTheBlizzard]

4 minutes ago, Complete Homer said:

I think Nigel Reed is getting behind the idea of CPL

" "Unless or until there is a fully professional league in Canada, this country will continue to ride on the coattails of Major League Soccer and ultimately fail to produce talent in sufficient numbers to rise above international obscurity"

http://www.cbc.ca/sports/soccer/mls/toronto-fc-not-canada-team-1.3891444

...or he is angling for a broadcasters job.

[Complete Homer]

6 minutes ago, BringBackTheBlizzard said:

On the plus side as well, no longer having the inflationary effect of the Cosmos being willing to lose well in excess of $5 million a year should help to make it less expensive than it has been in recent years to field a D2 quality team in North America with players that are on the fringes on MLS terms and might bring break even down to somtheing a lot more reasonable/achievable.

I think this is an under discussed point in the revenue sharing vs single entity talk. A cap in single entity is actually just an agreed upon budget that all teams are allocated. Worst comes to worst, everyone can together agree to lower the budget and adjust to the overall market, instead of a handful of teams remaining tone-deaf to the overall state of the league.

[BringBackTheBlizzard]

That is what has given MLS staying power. Making sure that nobody does a Cosmos financially leading to a crazy wage spiral and on the flip slide that everybody is able to field a team that is reasonably professional and hence actually worth watching. Any new soccer league in North America should follow that template to some extent, if they want to hang around. In original CSL terms once the startup capital was burned through it became clear after the first two or three seasons that the Vancouver 86ers were always going to be the western division champions by a very wide margin and the investor groups that had emerged in Calgary, Victoria and Edmonton soon tired of being their Washington Generals. Forget the gory details but vaguely remember that even Winnipeg would probably have folded as well in the absence of provincial government support from Gary Filmon. The problem is persuading the emerging 86ers franchise (could be Hamilton in this case) that it is in their long term interest not to blow everybody else out of the water in competitive terms by agreeing to a league funding model that helps to share the wealth a bit.

[-Hammer-]

14 minutes ago, BringBackTheBlizzard said:

That is what has given MLS staying power. Making sure that nobody does a Cosmos financially leading to a crazy wage spiral and on the flip slide that everybody is able to field a team that is reasonably professional and hence actually worth watching. Any new soccer league in North America should follow that template to some extent, if they want to hang around. In original CSL terms once the startup capital was burned through it became clear after the first two or three seasons that the Vancouver 86ers were always going to be the western division champions by a very wide margin and the investor groups that had emerged in Calgary, Victoria and Edmonton soon tired of being their Washington Generals. Forget the gory details but vaguely remember that even Winnipeg would probably have folded as well in the absence of provincial government support from Gary Filmon. The problem is persuading the emerging 86ers franchise (could be Hamilton in this case) that it is in their long term interest not to blow everybody else out of the water in competitive terms by agreeing to a league funding model that helps to share the wealth a bit.

I think you are completely right on this one. You have to run it as a revenue share with a cap. You can't expect most of the western prairie markets (where there is a much more limited presence for the sport compared to most of Ontario, and the CFL is the only summer league) to get on board with a league where they'll get spent into oblivion every season.

I think though, any potential owners know this is going to be a money loser for the first little while, so sharing what revenue is available is critical, and with revenue sharing almost always comes a cap.

[Complete Homer]

45 minutes ago, BringBackTheBlizzard said:

That is what has given MLS staying power. Making sure that nobody does a Cosmos financially leading to a crazy wage spiral and on the flip slide that everybody is able to field a team that is reasonably professional and hence actually worth watching. Any new soccer league in North America should follow that template to some extent, if they want to hang around. In original CSL terms once the startup capital was burned through it became clear after the first two or three seasons that the Vancouver 86ers were always going to be the western division champions by a very wide margin and the investor groups that had emerged in Calgary, Victoria and Edmonton soon tired of being their Washington Generals. Forget the gory details but vaguely remember that even Winnipeg would probably have folded as well in the absence of provincial government support from Gary Filmon. The problem is persuading the emerging 86ers franchise (could be Hamilton in this case) that it is in their long term interest not to blow everybody else out of the water in competitive terms by agreeing to a league funding model that helps to share the wealth a bit.

It scares me when we start getting on the same page

Also, I got word of something that might represent a middle ground between your vision for CPL and the dominant narrative. Don't think it's appropriate to leak it today, Toronto soccer is mourning, but I think you'll be happy with it

[GuillermoDelQuarto]

3 hours ago, Complete Homer said:

I think Nigel Reed is getting behind the idea of CPL

" "Unless or until there is a fully professional league in Canada, this country will continue to ride on the coattails of Major League Soccer and ultimately fail to produce talent in sufficient numbers to rise above international obscurity"

http://www.cbc.ca/sports/soccer/mls/toronto-fc-not-canada-team-1.3891444

dunno if you noticed but that "Soccer Night in Canada" Banner is back on the side there.

[GuillermoDelQuarto]

3 hours ago, BringBackTheBlizzard said:

...or he is angling for a broadcasters job.

I think you could file that under "getting behind it" hahaha

 

[tovan1]

Going back to the Halifax rumours, I think a 8k modular stadium would work nicely if it was done like Bonney Field in Sacramento.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bonney_Field

https://goo.gl/Mdz1mf  

[Complete Homer]

3 minutes ago, tovan1 said:

Going back to the Halifax rumours, I think a 8k modular stadium would work nicely if it was done like Bonney Field in Sacramento.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bonney_Field

https://goo.gl/Mdz1mf  

I like it. I think the groups that go with larger grasslands but don't wrap the stadium worse for gameday experience 

[Gopherbashi]

10 hours ago, BringBackTheBlizzard said:

Once teams in the smaller markets burned through their startup capital (which at its most extreme only took two or three games in London, Ont. with the Lasers in 1990 and in other cases a season or so as with the Calgary Kickers after winning the title in 1987) they had to move to cheaper priced soultions with elite local amateur players, which led to a substantial drop in playing standards and a level of play that made it difficult to attract a paying crowd of more than a couple of hundred.

This is my ultimate worry with the CPL after a handful of seasons - a general race-to-the-bottom based on cost-cutting and economic realities - a slipping of standards as the league moves towards a semi-pro or pro-am setup, especially for lesser-used players.

[dyslexic nam]

9 hours ago, Gopherbashi said:

This is my ultimate worry with the CPL after a handful of seasons - a general race-to-the-bottom based on cost-cutting and economic realities - a slipping of standards as the league moves towards a semi-pro or pro-am setup, especially for lesser-used players.

That is why I posted in the Bekker thread that someone like him is an ideal candidate for CPL.

Right now, there are two opposing ideas that will need to be resolved.

First, is a general preference for our players to seek experience in Europe in the hope that they can climb the ladder to become an elite player.  This recognizes the experience they get in a well-oiled development machine, and the competitive environment that will push them to maximize potential.

Second, is the idea that CPL will need quality players -and many of them Canadians - to populate the league if we want it to be a success with a really solid on-field product.  An amateur league that relies on feel-good factor will not ultimately result in a sustainable league that elevates our status in the footy world - we need something that (in the long term) seeks to be at least something like MLS calibre.  But for that to happen, it can't be viewed as the 'last resort' option for guys like Bekker if a European opportunity doesn't materialize in the Dutch second division.  The league can't start out as the option that even diehard Canadian Nat fans view as a backup plan.  If that is the case, I fear our CPL euphoria may be pretty short lived.

[Complete Homer]

5 minutes ago, dyslexic nam said:

That is why I posted in the Bekker thread that someone like him is an ideal candidate for CPL.

Right now, there are two opposing ideas that will need to be resolved.

First, is a general preference for our players to seek experience in Europe in the hope that they can climb the ladder to become an elite player.  This recognizes the experience they get in a well-oiled development machine, and the competitive environment that will push them to maximize potential.

Second, is the idea that CPL will need quality players -and many of them Canadians - to populate the league if we want it to be a success with a really solid on-field product.  An amateur league that relies on feel-good factor will not ultimately result in a sustainable league that elevates our status in the footy world - we need something that (in the long term) seeks to be at least something like MLS calibre.  But for that to happen, it can't be viewed as the 'last resort' option for guys like Bekker if a European opportunity doesn't materialize in the Dutch second division.  The league can't start out as the option that even diehard Canadian Nat fans view as a backup plan.  If that is the case, I fear our CPL euphoria may be pretty short lived.

I think this will take some time, for both fans and players. I wrote an article about the domestic quota that will be posted tomorrow, and one of the things I pointed to as a barrier to an initial high quota is that a lot of players in the Bekker-type range will have reservations about an unproven league. Even Maxime Tissot, a prime candidate for CPL, said in an interview last year that he would consider it if it proves itself after a few seasons. I think we will see the league overpaying a lot of guys, both foreign and domestic, just to attract talent in the first few seasons. 

[dyslexic nam]

10 minutes ago, Complete Homer said:

I think this will take some time, for both fans and players. I wrote an article about the domestic quota that will be posted tomorrow, and one of the things I pointed to as a barrier to an initial high quota is that a lot of players in the Bekker-type range will have reservations about an unproven league. Even Maxime Tissot, a prime candidate for CPL, said in an interview last year that he would consider it if it proves itself after a few seasons. I think we will see the league overpaying a lot of guys, both foreign and domestic, just to attract talent in the first few seasons. 

I think that is probably what will be required.  And from the perspective of guys like Bekker, or MT, that may be enough.  A few years making more than they currently are (or can reasonable expect in Europe) may be the kind of incentive needed.  For guys in the middle of their career, there is hopefully enough upside to playing at home, in a league they would be helping to build, while getting paid a small premium to help attract local talent, just may be enough to make CPL a destination of choice - not necessarily purely for footballing reasons, but when the whole package is considered together.

[Ansem]

21 hours ago, Complete Homer said:

I think Nigel Reed is getting behind the idea of CPL

" "Unless or until there is a fully professional league in Canada, this country will continue to ride on the coattails of Major League Soccer and ultimately fail to produce talent in sufficient numbers to rise above international obscurity"

http://www.cbc.ca/sports/soccer/mls/toronto-fc-not-canada-team-1.3891444

More quotes:

"This is a team built by Americans, for Americans. There were eight of them in the TFC starting lineup, including captain Michael Bradley. They were selected by an American coach who reports to an American GM who, in turn, takes his cues from an American president."

"The stats don't lie. The plain fact is that the majority of Canadians who play for Canadian franchises are not being given sufficient opportunity to hone their skills. Young professionals in particular need competitive minutes to build up their experience, something impossible to replicate on a training field."

[BCM]

1 hour ago, dyslexic nam said:

I think that is probably what will be required.  And from the perspective of guys like Bekker, or MT, that may be enough.  A few years making more than they currently are (or can reasonable expect in Europe) may be the kind of incentive needed.  For guys in the middle of their career, there is hopefully enough upside to playing at home, in a league they would be helping to build, while getting paid a small premium to help attract local talent, just may be enough to make CPL a destination of choice - not necessarily purely for footballing reasons, but when the whole package is considered together.

If the fans don't turn up, that over-paying will abruptly end after the first year, and with it most (I dare not say all) of the hopes of those on this site for a legitimate professional league. Yes, that's a plea to potential fans!

[dyslexic nam]

17 minutes ago, BCM1555362349 said:

If the fans don't turn up, that over-paying will abruptly end after the first year, and with it most (I dare not say all) of the hopes of those on this site for a legitimate professional league. Yes, that's a plea to potential fans!

Yeah, but it is a catch 22.  Without a decent on-field product - predicated on attracting players of decent pro quality - the fans WON'T show up.  We are a biased minority that would likely do whatever is needed to support Canadian Footy.  Halifax doesn't get 8000 people like us to support a team.  They will need to offer something that will convince people to pay to go watch a footy game on a rainy September night, or at noon on a Saturday in Summer when the beach is calling.  To do that, the on-field product has to be much better than the University-level play that people already have access to.  I think owners will need to be prepared to eat losses for a couple of years on the hope that the long term prospects of this league are worth it.  Anyone planning on checking out if they don't see an immediate profit shouldn't be part of the initial CPL ownership group.

[Ansem]

33 minutes ago, BCM1555362349 said:

If the fans don't turn up, that over-paying will abruptly end after the first year, and with it most (I dare not say all) of the hopes of those on this site for a legitimate professional league. Yes, that's a plea to potential fans!

That's the whole point of only accepting owners with deep pockets fully aware they will lose money initially. They won't fold the league after 1 bad year, they will try to improve their fan base and build it up. Sacrificing the quality on the pitch is a sure way to fail

[BringBackTheBlizzard]

20 hours ago, Complete Homer said:

It scares me when we start getting on the same page

Also, I got word of something that might represent a middle ground between your vision for CPL and the dominant narrative. Don't think it's appropriate to leak it today, Toronto soccer is mourning, but I think you'll be happy with it

Safe to say this sounds ideal to me:

 

[Ansem]

16 minutes ago, BringBackTheBlizzard said:

Safe to say this sounds ideal to me:

 

The devil is in the details... That's going to be hard to get done according to CPL and CSA being adamant at refusing such schemes.

the "affiliate" word is a non-starter. MLSE should pursue being a minority partner of ownership.

[PopePouri]

26 minutes ago, BringBackTheBlizzard said:

Safe to say this sounds ideal to me:

 

I thought they'd do this. It was pretty evident with the partnership with London FC and their meetings with the CSA in their attempt to put a team in CPL. My thinking is that results of those meetings lead to the new club requiring "independence".

Similar to the Impact, I think TFC will fold its USL team for the CPL option.