Ottawa CPL Club

[Ottawafan74]

1 minute ago, BuzzAndSting said:

You’re looking at things as only who’s right and who’s wrong, everyone is wrong in this but I answered your question and explained why I’m upset with the Fury.

Did JdG shit talk the CPL? No one knows for sure but I’m guessing he did. Did the CPL tell players and their agents that the Fury won’t be playing 2019? No one knows for sure but I’m guessing they did. There’s no proof of any of it.

I never questioned “the word” of anyone from OSEG, I just don’t agree with how they handle this. I’m sure everyone from the Fury truly believes they’re the victims, but I don’t.

I also have issues with CONCACAF but in the end the rules are written and the Fury knew or should have known them a long time ago. 

So where is the conspiracy?!

Your attempt and others here to cast the Fury as the ones to blame. The narrative that has been pushed from day one when the Fury didn’t jump at joining the CPL. Instead of taking them at their word that they wanted to see how it developed, the story became they thought they were better than this new league and were at fault. You may not see them as a victim but you have to admit being told by the CSA and the USSF/USL they can play in this league but then have CONCACAF tell them a month before training starts sanctioning won’t happen... is shady. 

[matty]

43 minutes ago, dyslexic nam said:

Fury Fanatic WAS using twitter to slag CPL, and it sure seemed like that info was being fed to him by staffers in realtime.  He was clearly privy to info that only someone on the inside would have.

The recent journo article, by an Ottawa based reporter, was extremely inaccurate and used Fury insiders as sources.

The Fury publicly claimed that they didn't want to be forced into releasing their Camadian players as a reason to avoid CPL, and then a month later they released most of them.

The Fury claim to be blindsided by the desanctioning move but the CSA was aware and their head dude is on the board.

Yes, some of the "he said she said" bullshit can be interpreted one way or another, but there are a ton of elements to this story that are in the public domain and none of those cast the Fury in a good light.  

It's fully possible he did not know. Even if he's on the board, he's unlikely to be directly involved in CSA affairs and communications every day (it's likely no non-presidential member does) and it's possible the CSA does act independently of it's board when directly dealing with CONCACAF.

The Fury def did some bullshit but this is reaching in a similar way to the CPL were working with Vic to force the Fury in. Yes there is a chance he had knowledge of it but there is also a very good chance he did not.

Edited December 22, 2018 by matty

[Ottawafan74]

1 hour ago, BrennanFan said:

I had to look into this.  Between 2005-2013, the Fury's PDL team produced 2 professionals, Eddie Edward and Tyler Hemming.  Carl Harworth played their final year after playing PDL in London for a few years, so I'm not sure you can count him.

Notably, the other pro players to come out of Ottawa lately, Jamar Dixon and Johnathan David, had nothing to do with the Fury during their development years. 

 

There’s a defender from the 88’s that played in England and Spain, Martin John. Ken Caceros and Julian Edwards too played pro. Jamar remained with Gloucester while Johnny turned down all pro academies in Canada. He did train with the Fury over the last year or two. 

Also like to add had the pleasure of coaching a few of them as well as coaching against the others. David impressed me the most. At U9 he was a north south player who relied on speed. But you could tell each year he worked on his tactical and technical skills and a couple years later was by far and away the best player in the city/province. I’ll alwyays follow his career with pride. 

Edited December 22, 2018 by Ottawafan74

[BuzzAndSting]

27 minutes ago, Ottawafan74 said:

Your attempt and others here to cast the Fury as the ones to blame. The narrative that has been pushed from day one when the Fury didn’t jump at joining the CPL. Instead of taking them at their word that they wanted to see how it developed, the story became they thought they were better than this new league and were at fault. You may not see them as a victim but you have to admit being told by the CSA and the USSF/USL they can play in this league but then have CONCACAF tell them a month before training starts sanctioning won’t happen... is shady. 

Are you even reading my posts before responding? I’ve already said I blame the Fury, and also the CSA and CONCACAF. I also said I would have taken the Fury at their word but they’re the ones who attempted to control the narrative by leaking info on Twitter and then pushing out JdG, AJ and Goudie. I wished they had have left at simply “we want to wait and see.” I could have accepted that and been okay with going to a few games next year.

And yes CONCACAF waiting till this point to tell the Fury they hadn’t been given sanctioning put them in a very difficult position unnecessarily but at the same time it was always a possibility the Fury did or should have known. There’s nothing shady about it, it’s how the rules are written in plain sight and it’s already been stated that the timing is par for the course. CONCACAF could have gone out of their way back in September to remind the Fury that sanctioning is not guaranteed but as per numerous reports they contacted the CSA as is protocol.

The victim mentality is strong!

[MtlMario]

I don't understand one thing. When everyone ( for  many months now ) expected Ottawa to join the CPL and everyone from owners to fans to reporters, didn't expect Edmonton to join, why didn't someone from the Fury group say something if they never intended to join in the first place? I think it's time to move this forum to "Cdn teams and leagues".

[matty]

20 minutes ago, MtlMario said:

I don't understand one thing. When everyone ( for  many months now ) expected Ottawa to join the CPL and everyone from owners to fans to reporters, didn't expect Edmonton to join, why didn't someone from the Fury group say something if they never intended to join in the first place? I think it's time to move this forum to "Cdn teams and leagues".

cause up until like june they were in talks apparently, after that the cpl continued to tease the idea of an 8 team league for 2019 (with most assuming OFFC) and fury went about normal business knowing what people were thinking about 2019 until September. Either could have said "we are currently not in talks" with each other months before the USL announcement but did not.

Edited December 22, 2018 by matty

[Macksam]

 

4 hours ago, BrennanFan said:

There's also the bitter reality that he correctly predicted the outcome of this mess from the beginning.  

I guess that makes up for all the times he’s been wrong.

4 hours ago, BringBackTheBlizzard said:

If anyone had suggested on here before about August that the Fury would threaten CONCACAF with CAS arbitration in order to stay in the USL they would have been subjected to all kinds of ridicule, because just about everybody was convinced that there was going to be an eight team launch.

Rather than finally questioning the motives of the people that misled them into believing that was the case, they need to find ways to believe that it's only delayed to 2020, or that the Fury have done something terribly underhand while pragmatically trying to avoid major financial losses, in order to keep their world view intact.

Very similar to how you like to keep your world view intact by harping on about the original vision of this league being CFL driven when it never was.

2 hours ago, Ottawafan74 said:

That’s quite the conspiracy. Completely off base but I guess you are entitled to your opinion. 

Where was the conspiracy?

[C2SKI]

3 hours ago, Ottawafan74 said:

CONCACAF tell them a month before training starts sanctioning won’t happen

Does Ottawa really start training camp in January?

[BringBackTheBlizzard]

2 hours ago, matty said:

cause up until like june they were in talks apparently, after that the cpl continued to tease the idea of an 8 team league for 2019 (with most assuming OFFC) and fury went about normal business knowing what people were thinking about 2019 until September. Either could have said "we are currently not in talks" with each other months before the USL announcement but did not.

At one point just after the World Cup, I think David Clanachan was quoted as saying they wanted the Fury on board and phrased it in a way that made it sound like less than a done deal. There were also occasional posts on here from people claiming to have seen evidence that the Fury were not on board, so it didn't come completely out of the blue.

The Fury had always made non-committal comments about monitoring what was happening with the new league that probably didn't need to be updated from their standpoint. If the eight team launch wasn't a done deal CanPL should have been a lot less gung-ho about it. Ottawa were never under any obligation to join.

[Kibby]

1 hour ago, C2SKI said:

Does Ottawa really start training camp in January?

Yes.

They're playing preseason games in feb, and season starts march

Edited December 23, 2018 by Kibby

[Macksam]

CanPL were gung ho about Ottawa? The league has literally never talked about Ottawa since they opted not to join. All the commotion has been coming from the Fury themselves. We have a club that plays the victim and a league that doesn’t give two fucks. That should tell you something. Also, the CPL’s existence does not rest on this club and nobody is setting it up to be a scapegoat. The Fury is a two bit operation that only wanted to stay in the USL because they can’t function without MLS teams paying their players’ salaries, that’s it. They are visionless. They are not what this league wants or needs.

 

Edited December 23, 2018 by Macksam

[Ottawafan74]

5 hours ago, Macksam said:

CanPL were gung ho about Ottawa? The league has literally never talked about Ottawa since they opted not to join. All the commotion has been coming from the Fury themselves. We have a club that plays the victim and a league that doesn’t give two fucks. That should tell you something. Also, the CPL’s existence does not rest on this club and nobody is setting it up to be a scapegoat. The Fury is a two bit operation that only wanted to stay in the USL because they can’t function without MLS teams paying their players’ salaries, that’s it. They are visionless. They are not what this league wants or needs.

 

CPL doesn’t want the largest market in Canada with a pro team not in MLS.  That’s your contention?  Incredible spin.  Republicans would be impressed  

If you don’t want them or need them, then just go about your business and don’t worry about the Fury. But you can’t.

[BringBackTheBlizzard]

Not worth arguing the point of whether CanPL and VM want the Fury in. They obviously do. USL isn't perfect by any stretch of the imagination, but there is greatly enhanced stability and economies of scale that come with having over 30 franchises that are difficult to achieve in a Canada only context with fully pro level soccer due to the smaller population involved.

Having the Fury around is going to be a constant reminder that there was another option available that could have been followed instead. CanPL will need to perform strongly for the question of whether USL might not have been the better way to go to be off the radar screen. Another four months and we will be into the realm of reality rather than aspiration, and it will finally be possible to make direct comparisons on that.

Edited December 23, 2018 by BringBackTheBlizzard

[1996]

1 hour ago, Ottawafan74 said:

CPL doesn’t want the largest market in Canada with a pro team not in MLS.  That’s your contention?  Incredible spin.  Republicans would be impressed  

If you don’t want them or need them, then just go about your business and don’t worry about the Fury. But you can’t.

 

7 hours ago, Macksam said:

CanPL were gung ho about Ottawa? The league has literally never talked about Ottawa since they opted not to join. All the commotion has been coming from the Fury themselves. We have a club that plays the victim and a league that doesn’t give two fucks. That should tell you something. Also, the CPL’s existence does not rest on this club and nobody is setting it up to be a scapegoat. The Fury is a two bit operation that only wanted to stay in the USL because they can’t function without MLS teams paying their players’ salaries, that’s it. They are visionless. They are not what this league wants or needs.

 

How about we let the CPL put a couple of seasons under their belt and see how it does before we start saying that the CPL can do without a major city in Canada like Ottawa . I’m pretty sure the CPL at this moment in time before a ball has been kicked gives a lot of fucks about Ottawa and this Ottawa with ready made owners. However, I will say that if the CPL gets off to a flying start and has a very promising season I could see the CPL becoming very confident where they might not need to concern themselves that much with the Ottawa market for awhile and just concentrate on all its other markets, but now before any games have been played for sure they would have loved to have the Ottawa Fury in the league. One question I have is how is the MLS paying Ottawa’s player salaries? I know they had a few Impact players farmed out to them, however the vast majority of their players are their own players that they the Ottawa Fury pay their salaries, you make it sound like they are a full fledged MLS farm team, a few salaries payed by the impact is not going to make that much of a difference and would not be a reason to stay in the USL. Moreover, let’s be careful with that “two bit organization” characterization of an organization , you never know we might be using it again one day but I hope not for soccer’s sake  in Canada . Hopefully this phrase will be a thing of the past when it comes to anything to do with soccer here in Canada but so far so good and things seem to be looking promising on many levels.

Edited December 23, 2018 by 1996

[Ansem]

23 minutes ago, BringBackTheBlizzard said:

Not worth arguing the point of whether CanPL and VM want the Fury in.

I think that they want Ottawa in CPL, not necessarily the Fury

26 minutes ago, BringBackTheBlizzard said:

Having the Fury around is going to be a constant reminder that there was another option available that could have been followed instead.

Except a few hardcores and Ottawa fans, no one cares about the Fury and USL. That constant reminder won't register with the overwhelming majority. You seriously need to stop exaggerating on that point.

53 minutes ago, BringBackTheBlizzard said:

CanPL will need to perform strongly for the question of whether USL might not have been the better way to go to be off the radar screen. Another four months and we will be into the realm of reality rather than aspiration, and it will finally be possible to make direct comparisons on that.

Again, just you and a few USL/Fury hardcores will be nitpicking about that, the rest of us will enjoy CPL for what it is

[Kent]

On 12/22/2018 at 9:10 AM, Ottawafan74 said:

The USL probably wouldn’t allow it. They would be losing out on the expansion fee of $7M. Charge them a relocation fee?  Then the new owner is spending more money when they could have just paid the expansion fee of $7M. 

So then it sounds like the actual value of the franchise is probably the expansion fee minus the relocation fee. Especially since they don’t own the stadium and don’t seem to be profitable just yet. Anyways, I still am not sure what the point of all this is.

[Ottawafan74]

46 minutes ago, Ansem said:

I think that they want Ottawa in CPL, not necessarily the Fury

Except a few hardcores and Ottawa fans, no one cares about the Fury and USL. That constant reminder won't register with the overwhelming majority. You seriously need to stop exaggerating on that point.

Again, just you and a few USL/Fury hardcores will be nitpicking about that, the rest of us will enjoy CPL for what it is

I think everyone wants the CPL to succeed. Even Ottawa fans who would rather not have their team forced into it. 

[Ottawafan74]

2 minutes ago, Kent said:

So then it sounds like the actual value of the franchise is probably the expansion fee minus the relocation fee. Especially since they don’t own the stadium and don’t seem to be profitable just yet. Anyways, I still am not sure what the point of all this is.

Is a CPL franchise worth $8M American?  I don’t know what a CPL team would be valued at. 

[rob.notenboom]

https://www.soctakes.com/2018/04/18/too-small-to-succeed-the-perils-of-owning-a-lower-division-pro-soccer-team/

https://www.soctakes.com/2018/07/30/usl-franchise-fees-shepard-tone-or-progress/

 

These two articles are several months old now but well worth reading regarding USL and its struggles. They are especially good considering the sources of the majority of information are USL team owners and officials. 

So the league itself is quite profitable being supported by skyrocketing expansion fees. But for those expansion fees, an owner secures the exclusive right to continue to lose millions. Instead of providing financial relief to its teams where it can, USL enters into deals like the ESPN+ deal that offload the costs onto teams. 

Let’s thank our lucky stars that CanPL did not decide to partner up with USL (or NASL for that matter). Anyone advocating for a partnership venture with USL is essentially advocating for Canadian soccer to make itself subservient to a confidence scheme. 

Obviously CanPL still has everything to prove. Interestingly I think there’s an analogy to be drawn between the league’s current situation and CanMNT’s current situation ... lots of excitement and some very positive indicators, but yet to definitively prove anything. But in an odd twist of circumstance, CanPL might actually be less risky than USL ... CanPL has yet to prove that it will be financially unprofitable while USL has. 

And while we are at it, a couple other narratives that it is well worth realizing are false. 

The salary cap and league expectations have not been suddenly or even incrementally reduced. I’ve been hearing the same salary cap numbers since the beginning of 2018 before memberships were on sale. And in a conversation with a potential (at that time) owner TWO YEARS AGO I was told that the initial target for attendance, and a target that would mean sustainability for involved teams, was around 6000 fans per game. So the idea that the league has reduced its expectations based on membership sales or any other factors is completely false and simply incorrect speculation based on no real information. Additionally, and on the contrary, the teams seem so far to be taking the right approaches to meeting that 6000ish target (obviously more difficult in a stadium that only holds 5100).  One disclaimer on that though ... teams currently have converted their members at a high rate but those are for the most part are people that are very early adopters. The fact that there is so many of them is very encouraging. But supplementing those early adopters with others is going to be a much more difficult sales and marketing challenge. Having 2500-3000 season seat holders is one hell of a beachhead. But the next 2500-3000 will be much more difficult and the next 2500-3000 even more difficult. 

Apologies for the long-winded and off-topic post. As per usual, I find it difficult to sit quietly while terrible narratives are being spun that I know are false but that also don’t stand up to the smallest bit of scrutiny. 

As for the Ottawa situation, I’d rather not comment that much except to say that them being sanctioned for 2019 for USL is likely for the best for all involved. But if CanPL attendances are higher, if CanPL ends up with a better broadcast deal, and if CanPL manages to secure any major corporate sponsorship (all of these are huge ‘ifs’ of course), then it may end up that this was a poor decision on Ottawa’s part. We won’t really know until 10 months or so has passed. 

Edited December 23, 2018 by rob.notenboom

[Ansem]

1 hour ago, Ottawafan74 said:

I think everyone wants the CPL to succeed. Even Ottawa fans who would rather not have their team forced into it. 

Most of us have moved on. We're focused on having a CPL team in Ottawa, Fury or not.

Most of us are past the Fury victimization about being forced out or into a league. Whatever happens to them is on them from now on.

1 hour ago, Ottawafan74 said:

Is a CPL franchise worth $8M American?  I don’t know what a CPL team would be valued at. 

Who cares? Valuation is subjective 

[shamrock]

38 minutes ago, rob.notenboom said:

As for the Ottawa situation, I’d rather not comment that much except to say that them being sanctioned for 2019 for USL is likely for the best for all involved. But if CanPL attendances are higher, if CanPL ends up with a better broadcast deal, and if CanPL manages to secure any major corporate sponsorship (all of these are huge ‘ifs’ of course), then it may end up that this was a poor decision on Ottawa’s part. We won’t really know until 10 months or so has passed. 

Yes it's for the best for 2019 but after that they'd better join the program or just quit. It was a bad decision for them however you look at it cause what's this final year in USL going to prove? The only way that this pans out to be a good decision is if the league folds after year 1 (for which there aren't any clues as of yet). 

[BringBackTheBlizzard]

1 minute ago, shamrock said:

... (for which there aren't any clues as of yet). 

For every FC Cincinnatti there tends to be a San Francisco Deltas. What makes CanPL inherently precarious at this point is having only 7 teams when 6 is the absolute bare minimum possible to be taken seriously and 8 is the bare minimum desirable number of franchises (hence why the Fury are as popular as a rattlesnake in a lucky dip at the moment). I'd be very surprised if the league is one and done as they are getting a lot of things right on and off the field of play by the sound of things, but stranger things have happened. The franchises I'm a bit dubious about are York, Calgary and Pacific.

[Ottawafan74]

38 minutes ago, Ansem said:

 

Who cares? Valuation is subjective 

My guess is it cares to OSEG. 

[Ansem]

26 minutes ago, Ottawafan74 said:

My guess is it cares to OSEG. 

But we don't 

[Ansem]

31 minutes ago, BringBackTheBlizzard said:

For every FC Cincinnatti there tends to be a San Francisco Deltas. What makes CanPL inherently precarious at this point is having only 7 teams when 6 is the absolute bare minimum possible to be taken seriously and 8 is the bare minimum desirable number of franchises (hence why the Fury are as popular as a rattlesnake in a lucky dip at the moment). I'd be very surprised if the league is one and done as they are getting a lot of things right on and off the field of play by the sound of things, but stranger things have happened. The franchises I'm a bit dubious about are York, Calgary and Pacific.

We dont care