When Will Canada Surpass the USA?

[Mister215Guy]

On 11/15/2016 at 11:56 AM, Ansem said:

At start, it will be...but CPL will narrow the gap overtime. I think you`re overestimating MLS a little bit. Strip them of their DP and an MLS game quickly becomes brutal to watch

Also, you have to give credit to the Canadian clubs since they give MLS some relevancy. Most American MLS players won't be good enough for League Two. The CPL needs to market itself as a proper league and another example of many things Canadians do better than Americans. 

[Mister215Guy]

Just watching the first 2 Hex matches don't you wish Canada was playing instead of the US? I doubt right now Canada is that bad (I'm sure the 8-1 loss to Honduras is history and Canada will never sink to that level again).

[hamiltonfan]

This is one of the most ridiculous conversations in my 16 years on these boards....a few too many delusional (new) folks here

[Macksam]

2 hours ago, hamiltonfan said:

2 hours ago, hamiltonfan said:

 

This is one of the most ridiculous conversations in my 16 years on these boards....a few too many delusional (new) folks here

You don't think down the road we can produce a better national team than the US?

[jpg75]

2 hours ago, hamiltonfan said:

This is one of the most ridiculous conversations in my 16 years on these boards....a few too many delusional (new) folks here

A few too many people mistakenly thinking this is a serious conversation.

[Bertuzzi44]

Title really should be "When will Canada surpass the USA again" as for many years pre-'94 Canada was considered better.

That said, even just by virtue of population and even climate, I answered "Never"...

[Floortom]

The score may have been a bit of a surprise but the US hasn't ever won in Costa Rica so last night wasn't a shock to me. A close loss in a highly competitive match versus Mexico and an away loss vs CR hardly ends their chances at qualifying for World Cup. I would be pretty surprised if they don't manage to at least get into the playoff spot. I mean, it was only a couple of months ago that they beat CR 4-0 in the Copa.

[Floortom]

The US is a perennial top 30 FIFA ranked team that has qualified for 7 consecutive world cups and has made it out of the group stages in 3 out of the last 4 world cups. It's almost incomprehensible to me that people are seriously entertaining getting to that level let alone surpassing it.

[red card]

It was how awful the US played and this being one of many low lites under Klinsmann when he promised  a new era that has Americans and now even most of the sports media calling for JK's head.

 

1st home World Cup qualifying loss to Mexico since 1972

1st home World Cup qualifying loss since 2001

1st ever loss at Columbus

1st loss to Guatemala since 1988 which was also the worst team the USMNT has lost to since the advent of the FIFA World Rankings

2015 was worst Gold Cup since 2000

1st ever losses to Jamaica and 1st loss to a Caribbean team on American soil since 1969

1st 3-game home losing streak since 1997

1st 4-game home winless streak vs. CONCACAF teams since 1965

Worst ever possession in a USMNT World Cup game of 32.5% vs Germany in WC 2014

Lost opening 2 Hex matches for first time ever

Most goals conceded in a qualifier since 1980 happened against CR last night

US should still qualify but the probability of being 1st or 2nd has been diminished which was the standard expectation. Now they'll need to outclass Panama which has shown to be continually improving for 3rd. Likely to beat Honduras for 4th but will be in playoffs against possibly Australia or Uzbekistan. Or I would like to see them play UAE or Saudi Arabia under the Trump regime.

 

 

 

[Moldy9]

10 minutes ago, red card said:

It was how awful the US played and this being one of many low lites under Klinsmann when he promised  a new era that has Americans and now even most of the sports media calling for JK's head.

 

1st home World Cup qualifying loss to Mexico since 1972

1st home World Cup qualifying loss since 2001

1st ever loss at Columbus

1st loss to Guatemala since 1988 which was also the worst team the USMNT has lost to since the advent of the FIFA World Rankings

2015 was worst Gold Cup since 2000

1st ever losses to Jamaica and 1st loss to a Caribbean team on American soil since 1969

1st 3-game home losing streak since 1997

1st 4-game home winless streak vs. CONCACAF teams since 1965

Worst ever possession in a USMNT World Cup game of 32.5% vs Germany in WC 2014

Lost opening 2 Hex matches for first time ever

Most goals conceded in a qualifier since 1980 happened against CR last night

 

 

 

Well, you know all of Latin America are always motivated when playing the yanks and now with Trump as their soon to be president there's a little extra motivation.

[Mister215Guy]

22 minutes ago, Floortom said:

The US is a perennial top 30 FIFA ranked team that has qualified for 7 consecutive world cups and has made it out of the group stages in 3 out of the last 4 world cups. It's almost incomprehensible to me that people are seriously entertaining getting to that level let alone surpassing it.

FIFA rankings don't mean much other than how good teams are "on paper." The US is ranked 25 on FIFA but plays like a 75th ranked team. When was the last time Costa Rica looked that dominant against Concacaf opponents? Also, would Canada give up 2 goals against Guatemala in 15 minutes?

[Mister215Guy]

OK, I'll prove I'm not a troll trying to agitate things. I'm just curious what if Canada had called up Landon Donovan back in 2000 how different would the MNT's history be?

[BuzzAndSting]

20 minutes ago, Mister215Guy said:

OK, I'll prove I'm not a troll trying to agitate things. I'm just curious what if Canada had called up Landon Donovan back in 2000 how different would the MNT's history be?

Why would he have been called up? He was never, ever going to play for Canada.

[Blackdude]

5 minutes ago, BuzzAndSting said:

Why would he have been called up? He was never, ever going to play for Canada.

Because Canada was better than the States in 2000, duh. 

[Macksam]

3 hours ago, Floortom said:

The US is a perennial top 30 FIFA ranked team that has qualified for 7 consecutive world cups and has made it out of the group stages in 3 out of the last 4 world cups. It's almost incomprehensible to me that people are seriously entertaining getting to that level let alone surpassing it.

Unless you're in your 70s or terminally ill, you and 23 other people choosing "never" is incomprehensible to me.

First of all, FIFA ranking doesn't mean jack shit. The USA was ranked number 7 when the 1998 World Cup began. I still have the old Toronto Sun News Paper from 18 years ago that highlighted this. When I saw that back then, I puked in my mouth at how awful that was. To amplify its ridiculousness, The Netherlands, who had one of their best teams of all time imo during that tournament, were ranked 14'th I believe. Just think about that. That number 7 ranked country arguably ended up being the worst team during the whole competition.

Second, are you blind to what's happening in the rest of this forum? CPL discussion is the talk of the town on here. What the hell do you think that entails? Your post makes it seem like we're just resting on our fucking laurels, doing nothing to improve the sport's situation in this country when that isn't the case. I encourage you to visit other pages and threads on here. You might gain some insight.

Third, you're just saying it's incomprehensible because it's the USA, and they're 10 times bigger than us without even giving any decent critical thought towards it. Belgium, a country 30 times smaller than the USA, was behind them 10 years ago. However, now, Belgium are exponentially better than the USA. What changed? It was how the country approached youth development. They changed their structure, not so different (I know it's not a perfect analogy) from what we're trying to do with the advent of a new professional league.

I think it's time you stop having a pop culture view on things and actually critically think about stuff before you come to the conclusion that something is incomprehensible. That goes for you other 23 as well that voted never. Again, if you're dying soon and only said never because you have a selfish point of view where you feel nobody should experience it because you won't, or you're just a loser cuckold, all I have to say is fuck off.

[Blackdude]

2 hours ago, Macksam said:

Unless you're in your 70s or terminally ill, you and 23 other people choosing "never" is incomprehensible to me.

First of all, FIFA ranking doesn't mean jack shit. The USA was ranked number 7 when the 1998 World Cup began. I still have the old Toronto Sun News Paper from 18 years ago that highlighted this. When I saw that back then, I puked in my mouth at how awful that was. To amplify its ridiculousness, The Netherlands, who had one of their best teams of all time imo during that tournament, were ranked 14'th I believe. Just think about that. That number 7 ranked country arguably ended up being the worst team during the whole competition.

Second, are you blind to what's happening in the rest of this forum? CPL discussion is the talk of the town on here. What the hell do you think that entails? Your post makes it seem like we're just resting on our fucking laurels, doing nothing to improve the sport's situation in this country when that isn't the case. I encourage you to visit other pages and threads on here. You might gain some insight.

Third, you're just saying it's incomprehensible because it's the USA, and they're 10 times bigger than us without even giving any decent critical thought towards it. Belgium, a country 30 times smaller than the USA, was behind them 10 years ago. However, now, Belgium are exponentially better than the USA. What changed? It was how the country approached youth development. They changed their structure, not so different (I know it's not a perfect analogy) from what we're trying to do with the advent of a new professional league.

I think it's time you stop having a pop culture view on things and actually critically think about stuff before you come to the conclusion that something is incomprehensible. That goes for you other 23 as well that voted never. Again, if you're dying soon and only said never because you have a selfish point of view where you feel nobody should experience it because you won't, or you're just a loser cuckold, all I have to say is fuck off.

I do think that being a larger country makes it hard to compare itself to Belgium because in Belgium, the players can travel across the country and play the best this country has to offer. You can't do that here for our youth. Belgium still had pro clubs and was reeling mostly because they wanted to make their top league pro and some clubs had to die like Molenbeek who finished 5th in their last D1 season to make the Belgium first division fully pro. So, there were problems because of that. It took some time before the players were developing, but I don't think that Belgium became better. They took a couple of steps back to make 3 forward. The thing is right now even if CPL happens, it's still an unknown right now on what it will look like for our national team. I do believe that if we want to be in front of the US youth development is the #1 place we can be better than him. The thing is that we haven't gotten results against them in CONCACAF except once in the past 8 years. 

If you ask people that voted never and call them losers. We have the same problems as the US. Add to that that we don't have the infrastructures right now to compete with them. I think they believe more about their logic because even if we get that much better with our team and make a World Cup thanks to CPL, you'd think that the US would see what we'd be doing if we get close and try to follow that or they'd already have done that before us. It's hard to say that we'll be better than the US in looking at our roster right now and looking at theirs. Do we have talent that can help us bridge the gap? YEs, but right now, I don't think we need to focus at the US, we need to focus at being better than T&T, Honduras, Panama, Costa Rica, Jamaica and El Salvador. 

You're also comparing Canada to Belgium, a country that has made 6 straight World Cups up until 2002. They had some troubles, but they worked it out. I think that you are also too much of a dreamer in comparing to countries that were already great and maybe they didn't have the amount of players, but it was enough for them to keep dreaming about becoming a pro footballer. Will CPL change that? And by how much? It's hard to know we can only speculate right now and people have seen leagues like the CUSL never starting and the CSL leaving after 7 years. I think there are many reasons why people are saying never and I don't blame them. I'd just say one thing to those people instead of calling them losers. If there's a CPL club in your region, support it. I'm sure most of the people would love nothing than to be proven wrong but they've suffered a lot and it's hard to being picked up and become a top team.

[kacbru]

3 hours ago, Macksam said:

Unless you're in your 70s or terminally ill, you and 23 other people choosing "never" is incomprehensible to me.

First of all, FIFA ranking doesn't mean jack shit. The USA was ranked number 7 when the 1998 World Cup began. I still have the old Toronto Sun News Paper from 18 years ago that highlighted this. When I saw that back then, I puked in my mouth at how awful that was. To amplify its ridiculousness, The Netherlands, who had one of their best teams of all time imo during that tournament, were ranked 14'th I believe. Just think about that. That number 7 ranked country arguably ended up being the worst team during the whole competition.

Second, are you blind to what's happening in the rest of this forum? CPL discussion is the talk of the town on here. What the hell do you think that entails? Your post makes it seem like we're just resting on our fucking laurels, doing nothing to improve the sport's situation in this country when that isn't the case. I encourage you to visit other pages and threads on here. You might gain some insight.

Third, you're just saying it's incomprehensible because it's the USA, and they're 10 times bigger than us without even giving any decent critical thought towards it. Belgium, a country 30 times smaller than the USA, was behind them 10 years ago. However, now, Belgium are exponentially better than the USA. What changed? It was how the country approached youth development. They changed their structure, not so different (I know it's not a perfect analogy) from what we're trying to do with the advent of a new professional league.

I think it's time you stop having a pop culture view on things and actually critically think about stuff before you come to the conclusion that something is incomprehensible. That goes for you other 23 as well that voted never. Again, if you're dying soon and only said never because you have a selfish point of view where you feel nobody should experience it because you won't, or you're just a loser cuckold, all I have to say is fuck off.

How about we worry about trying to consistently prove that we are in the top 8 in CONCACAF before we have this ridiculous conversation...It's like asking what year you think we will win the World Cup.

[kacbru]

In other words, I'd give my left nut to see us lose to Costa Rica 4-0 in the hex.

[BringBackTheBlizzard]

6 hours ago, Blackdude said:

Because Canada was better than the States in 2000, duh. 

Is it really 16 years since the Gold Cup win? Time flies. Think the word surpass implies something more sustained than one tournament, so voted "Never" despite thinking "again" should have been in there. Canadian soccer was definitely ahead of what was happening in the USA in the late 80s after the original NASL folded and before the APSL started to pick up a bit of steam. The USMNT's emerging star forward Ted Eck had to move to Ottawa to further his career by playing with the Intrepid, who to put it charitably were not one of the CSL's powerhouses.

[Blackdude]

8 minutes ago, BringBackTheBlizzard said:

Is it really 16 years since the Gold Cup win? Time flies. Think the word surpass implies something more sustained than one tournament, so voted "Never" despite thinking "again" should have been in there. Canadian soccer was definitely ahead of what was happening in the USA in the late 80s after the original NASL folded and before the APSL started to pick up a bit of steam. The USMNT's emerging star forward Ted Eck had to move to Ottawa to further his career by playing with the Intrepid, who to put it charitably were not one of the CSL's powerhouses.

Never said that Canada was better than the US in 2000. I thought it was clear it was sarcasm. 

[Ansem]

Never say never. You can actually pinpoint in time when the US surpassed Canada and why:

1.Canada's record against USA when both national programs were identical "aka" none-existent 

Pre 1994 World Cup and MLS :  9 wins, 8 lost, 7 draws 

Advantage: Canada

2.Canada's record against USA when they reformed their program and started their Division 1 League "MLS"

Post 1994 World Cup and MLS :  0 wins, 8 lost, 3 draws

Advantage: United States

In both scenarios, the US still had 10 times Canada's population. With Canada reforming their pyramid, program and the creation of CPL, we can all agree that it will take time for Canada to catch up to the US due to them having a 22 years head start as of today or 24 years as of 2018. Until then, we will be below the Americans but I believe that we will narrow the gap over time.

Surpassing them? I believe we can but it will take at least a generation (20-25 years) only if we stay the course or further improve our program the entire time matching what the Americans are doing at the very least. However, I'm hoping the CSA won't seek to copy the USSF but hire someone that will not only allow us to win in CONCACAF in the long term but become more competitive against stronger nations. German disciplined style? Spanish possession style? Italian defensive and counter attacks? A more physical game? A combo of these to develop a "Canadian style"? Options are there but copying the US shouldn't be one of them.

*Personal opinion regarding the US program* : I feel that the American National Team peaked during the last World Cup. Since then, I haven't seen further improvement since but stagnation and we might start seeing a little bit of decline. They don't seem to be able to get to the next level. Might be a cyclical thing which makes more sense then a decline. Perhaps there are no coincidence between my opinion and all those talks about firing Klinsmann. The USSF seems to be making the same observation and they need something else to get to the next level. The odds of them not reaching Russia 2018 is very very real.

[Macksam]

9 hours ago, Blackdude said:

I do think that being a larger country makes it hard to compare itself to Belgium because in Belgium, the players can travel across the country and play the best this country has to offer. You can't do that here for our youth. Belgium still had pro clubs and was reeling mostly because they wanted to make their top league pro and some clubs had to die like Molenbeek who finished 5th in their last D1 season to make the Belgium first division fully pro. So, there were problems because of that. It took some time before the players were developing, but I don't think that Belgium became better. They took a couple of steps back to make 3 forward. The thing is right now even if CPL happens, it's still an unknown right now on what it will look like for our national team. I do believe that if we want to be in front of the US youth development is the #1 place we can be better than him. The thing is that we haven't gotten results against them in CONCACAF except once in the past 8 years. 

If you ask people that voted never and call them losers. We have the same problems as the US. Add to that that we don't have the infrastructures right now to compete with them. I think they believe more about their logic because even if we get that much better with our team and make a World Cup thanks to CPL, you'd think that the US would see what we'd be doing if we get close and try to follow that or they'd already have done that before us. It's hard to say that we'll be better than the US in looking at our roster right now and looking at theirs. Do we have talent that can help us bridge the gap? YEs, but right now, I don't think we need to focus at the US, we need to focus at being better than T&T, Honduras, Panama, Costa Rica, Jamaica and El Salvador. 

You're also comparing Canada to Belgium, a country that has made 6 straight World Cups up until 2002. They had some troubles, but they worked it out. I think that you are also too much of a dreamer in comparing to countries that were already great and maybe they didn't have the amount of players, but it was enough for them to keep dreaming about becoming a pro footballer. Will CPL change that? And by how much? It's hard to know we can only speculate right now and people have seen leagues like the CUSL never starting and the CSL leaving after 7 years. I think there are many reasons why people are saying never and I don't blame them. I'd just say one thing to those people instead of calling them losers. If there's a CPL club in your region, support it. I'm sure most of the people would love nothing than to be proven wrong but they've suffered a lot and it's hard to being picked up and become a top team.

All valid points. Yes, the CPL will help, but a lot will depend on the underlying player development structure beneath that league. If we have a process which is more productive/effective than the US', I am positive that country would indeed adopt said practice. No doubt about that.

Now, the main advantage we hold, and which we'll continue to hold in the near future considering it's a cultural thing, is we draw way more top athletes to this sport per capita than they do. If at least 10 of the American MLS teams' youth system drew the type of athletes that Toronto FC's youth development system does, they arguably would have a World Cup contender by the next generation. However, because those kids don't play soccer, they don't get drawn in by American MLS teams. American versions of Raheem Edwards and Malik Johnson play high school grid iron football and that's not going to change anytime soon. That will continue to be a key advantage for us going forward.

[Blackdude]

51 minutes ago, Macksam said:

. American versions of Raheem Edwards and Malik Johnson play high school grid iron football and that's not going to change anytime soon. That will continue to be a key advantage for us going forward.

Are you so sure about that? I think that we do have the same problems as the Yanks in that department. In Belgium, they don't have that problem.

[Macksam]

3 hours ago, Blackdude said:

Are you so sure about that? I think that we do have the same problems as the Yanks in that department. In Belgium, they don't have that problem.

We do have similar issues but its nowhere near as bad for us, well at least not in the GTA. Hockey (if you play it) and basketball (if you meet the right measurements) will still take their share. However, I think our situation will only improve with more playing opportunities, such as when the CPL starts up.

[Blackdude]

7 hours ago, Macksam said:

We do have similar issues but its nowhere near as bad for us, well at least not in the GTA. Hockey (if you play it) and basketball (if you meet the right measurements) will still take their share. However, I think our situation will only improve with more playing opportunities, such as when the CPL starts up.

Still, it's probably just as bad, because I'm sure that in New York, it's the same thing that in the GTA.