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Which defector are you least pissed at?


matty

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5 hours ago, jpg75 said:

Begovic i'm least pissed. He moved to Germany first and then arrived in Edmonton at age 11 before leaving for England at 16. The urban myth is that Bosnian mafia visited his parents to coerce him to play. 

This one was first reported without a source, bc the source was (supposedly) Hart.

I asked CSA brass about this once directly, a few years ago, they didn't comment directly, but said something like they have difficulties from all sides.

It could also be something Begovic made up to justify himself to the CSA, he was making all sorts of gutless statements in the media at the time so it wouldn't surprise me.

But we've had tons of problems with defectors and never a story like this, so there's something to it.

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3 hours ago, Oakenshield said:

Dangit, I didn't read the title well enough before clicking and voted Hargreaves. 

nope, too late! u clicked OH, no takey backies!   or should i say dOH?!

 

just a few more to make sure we safe ahead of that other guy in this pool...

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Although, I didn't like the way he jerked us around before choosing I had no problem with JDG 2.  He spent much of his formative years in Holland and he actually became a citizen which is what I think you should have to do before playing for an NT.

It is well documented that I wasn't a hypocrite on this issue because I thought it was ridiculous that Bircham was allowed to play for us.

But the Ho is in a league of his own when it comes to scorn.

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1 hour ago, Joe MacCarthy said:

He shouldn't be allowed to play for us either.  In the old days of Canada Cup hockey if you wanted to play for another country you had to become a citizen, simple as that.

I don't think that is a compelling argument since Arfield does have Canadian citizenship. 

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I guess I knew that (through his father?) but I sit corrected.  I am by no means an authority on citizenship obviously, so I gather citizenship is citizenship and that he has the same rights as the rest of Canadians do.  He could come here and draw EI and be entitled to healthcare immediately without hassle?

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6 minutes ago, Joe MacCarthy said:

He could come here and draw EI and be entitled to healthcare immediately without hassle?

In Ontario he would have to reside here for 6 months to get health insurance and I think for EI he would need to have worked a certain amount of hours. If he could prove a disability, he could probably collect disability payments, but I think he has other goals.

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Mannus shouldn't be on that list.

I don't have a problem with De Guzman, though he should have been more forthright about his intentions.

While he should have played for us, I have a spot for Thunder Dan from the old days of the Vees board version 1.0. You get to go to the World Cup vs not even being number one with Canada?  I can get it.

Begovic's switch was a bit jerky - particularly after being the first Canadian soccer player to have his own commercial, and a Canada-based one to boot!  But mafia problems or not, to his credit we had time to cap him and we didn't.  We kept playing Lars.  That was our mess up.

Bunbury made a youthful mistake in declaring his loyalty to the problem at the u20/23 level.  Had he not, I'd understand his switch.  That guy barely lived here.

Hargreaves?  Now that guy is a phoney-accented, generation-killing, three-timing douchebag.  He set the the expectation and mired us for years.  His name should still be blocked out like a swear word by this board.

"Owen Lee"?  Well, thanks for writing back but I burned your autograph.

 

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12 minutes ago, Marc said:

Begovic's switch was a bit jerky - particularly after being the first Canadian soccer player to have his own commercial, and a Canada-based one to boot!  But mafia problems or not, to his credit we had time to cap him and we didn't.  We kept playing Lars.  That was our mess up.

At the time Begovic was cap-tied to us; there was no reason for us to put him in that game beyond "let's throw this meaningless World Cup qualifier and play the kids." Then FIFA changed the rules and Begovic started telling lies about why he wasn't answering the phone before he got his Bosnian paperwork. The idea that Dale Mitchell and the CSA complacently assumed Begovic would never go back to Bosnia even though he wasn't captied is Fake News.

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58 minutes ago, Marc said:

Hargreaves?  Now that guy is a phoney-accented, generation-killing, three-timing douchebag.  He set the the expectation and mired us for years.  His name should still be blocked out like a swear word by this board.

I'm probably the only guy on this board who liked Stephen Harper but when he had his picture taken with the Ho, I gagged and wondered what ahole advised him to do that because had he have known the story, i doubt if Harper would have done it. 

I don't think there was any political hay to be gained from it unless it was just stated as a Canadian playing for ManU, I can't recall without looking it up.  Maybe it was him playing for England, if it was I'll puke again.

I'm still waiting for the guy smart enough to realize if he becomes famous enough to be Canada's soccer poster boy the marketing opportunities that might exist for him.

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4 hours ago, Benjamin Massey said:

 

At the time Begovic was cap-tied to us; there was no reason for us to put him in that game beyond "let's throw this meaningless World Cup qualifier and play the kids." Then FIFA changed the rules and Begovic started telling lies about why he wasn't answering the phone before he got his Bosnian paperwork. The idea that Dale Mitchell and the CSA complacently assumed Begovic would never go back to Bosnia even though he wasn't captied is Fake News.

You're trying to tell me that we couldn't have given him a game at the start of the cycle against St. Vincent or the end against Jamaica?  Please.  That last game Begovic was sat there on the bench, alongside leading lights like Andrew Ornoch and Chris WIlliams, watching, of all people, Kevin Harmse and Adrian Cann take the pitch.

Heck, that game featured Charles Gbeke.  On the pitch.  Yup.  Canada played Charles Gbeke that night.

Yes, the FIFA rule switch messed us, but Begovic was the future and Hirschfeld/Onstad (plus Sutton) were the past.  We failed to play an upandcoming keeper with Premier League training and first team starts in the UK at a time when we would give anyone a start, FT pro contract optional.

I'm a Lars fan, but over that period he had played a handful of club games over two years in Romania and a grand total of nein in the German second tier. Onstad flubbed it, again, versus Jamaica and wouldn't play another official game for us.

People called Mitchell out on it at the time, and it proved to be prescient.  It was an error in judgment by one of our worst coaches.

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4 hours ago, Marc said:

People called Mitchell out on it at the time, and it proved to be prescient.  It was an error in judgment by one of our worst coaches.

It was the classic demonstration of Mitchell's greatest weakness as a coach: he was unlucky.

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