General Discussion on Canadian Youth Teams

[scooterlawrence5]

Bigandy is correct.  

[Ansem]

We just witness how little senior players actually care about youth players (men and women)

It's like the whole boomers vs millennial generational rivalry all over again.

Disappointing and we can't be surprised that so many very promising dual players end up representing another country 

[Kadenge]

12 hours ago, Ansem said:

We just witness how little senior players actually care about youth players (men and women)

It's like the whole boomers vs millennial generational rivalry all over again.

Disappointing and we can't be surprised that so many very promising dual players end up representing another country 

Would this not also apply to other nations as well? Think it comes down to a lack of trust from the perspective of the Cdn players....that money "left on the table" would be spent appropriately, such as youth development vs going into the general slush fund, similar to  Federal EI premiums and  Ontario health taxes 

 

[InglewoodJack]

14 hours ago, Ansem said:

We just witness how little senior players actually care about youth players (men and women)

It's like the whole boomers vs millennial generational rivalry all over again.

Disappointing and we can't be surprised that so many very promising dual players end up representing another country 

These guys have careers with a finite amount of time to earn their money before it’s all over. Of course they don’t care about youth teams. My guess is it’s even worse in other countries. You think guys playing for France with a market value of €100M care about the U16s?

[Ansem]

I get that they might not really care but acting like they do can be triggering. Just like they talk about caring about the professional game in Canada to then publicly throw the league under the bus.

That's just my impression and of course I might be wrong.

[Bigandy]

22 hours ago, InglewoodJack said:

These guys have careers with a finite amount of time to earn their money before it’s all over. Of course they don’t care about youth teams. My guess is it’s even worse in other countries. You think guys playing for France with a market value of €100M care about the U16s?

I 100% understand what youre saying and alot of these bonuses make a huge difference for some of our players. However, its common for players to donate the money the make from the national team. The french players may not care about giving back to the u16's but they dont have to because money isnt a problem for the french federation. I did read that lots of french players were donating their salaries. 

Its interesting that if the men and women share the 10million, each player gets 192k PRE tax. But realistically they are asking for alot by wanting even 80% (153k). Now if the players accepted 50% they would essentially be giving up 50-60k pretax dollars. 50k is obviously alot of money for normal people but to put our federation at risk with strikes etc for 50k seems disproportional. 

I'd say that any player making under 500k a year can reasonably say that 50k will make a difference. Who is that on our WC roster. 
Fraser, waterman, cornelius, pantemis spoony, millar, Kone before his move, miller before his move?, vitoria?

So roughly 9/25 guys could be impacted by the bonus. Within the 9 guys, I would assume the 50k is anywhere from 10-50% of annual salary. Again to put the federation at risk for a 10% salary bonus seems quite extreme and only justifiable for the very very low end players who quite frankly are not important enough to the program to put it at risk. 

This tells me that the players were also heavily motivated to help canada soccer because the CSB deal is "so horrible". The strike is to get more money for themselves from the WC and for CSA from CSB. 

If the men didnt go on strike, would the women? I doubt it.

This basically means that rick westhead reporting has completely toppled our soccer federation.

[InglewoodJack]

1 hour ago, Bigandy said:

I 100% understand what youre saying and alot of these bonuses make a huge difference for some of our players. However, its common for players to donate the money the make from the national team. The french players may not care about giving back to the u16's but they dont have to because money isnt a problem for the french federation. I did read that lots of french players were donating their salaries. 

Its interesting that if the men and women share the 10million, each player gets 192k PRE tax. But realistically they are asking for alot by wanting even 80% (153k). Now if the players accepted 50% they would essentially be giving up 50-60k pretax dollars. 50k is obviously alot of money for normal people but to put our federation at risk with strikes etc for 50k seems disproportional. 

I'd say that any player making under 500k a year can reasonably say that 50k will make a difference. Who is that on our WC roster. 
Fraser, waterman, cornelius, pantemis spoony, millar, Kone before his move, miller before his move?, vitoria?

So roughly 9/25 guys could be impacted by the bonus. Within the 9 guys, I would assume the 50k is anywhere from 10-50% of annual salary. Again to put the federation at risk for a 10% salary bonus seems quite extreme and only justifiable for the very very low end players who quite frankly are not important enough to the program to put it at risk. 

This tells me that the players were also heavily motivated to help canada soccer because the CSB deal is "so horrible". The strike is to get more money for themselves from the WC and for CSA from CSB. 

If the men didnt go on strike, would the women? I doubt it.

This basically means that rick westhead reporting has completely toppled our soccer federation.

I don't know if all the french team donated their salaries- I know Mbappe donated his 2018 earnings, but Davies also donated his 2022 earnings. Not sure who our next highest paid players are- Jonathan David earns around 1,7M EUR gross, Larin around 800K, don't think anyone else out earns them. You have to remember that players take home a fraction of their wages. There's probably like 50% taxes, 5% to the agent, another 10% or so to escrow, a few points to your lawyer, your trainer, your publicist, union fees, and really, you're likely cashing in around 35-40% of that cheque. If you take JD's salary, from that 1.7M, he's realistically seeing around 600-700k EUR in his bank account, which yes, is still around $1M CAD, and he does get sponsorship dollars (Again, subject to fees), but even for a player like him, the NT earnings you're talking about are like 10% of his salary. If my boss was threatening to take 10% of my paycheck by revoking my bonus, yes I would want to strike. I would want to shut down the entire office, because that's my money.

[Bigandy]

20 minutes ago, InglewoodJack said:

I don't know if all the french team donated their salaries- I know Mbappe donated his 2018 earnings, but Davies also donated his 2022 earnings. Not sure who our next highest paid players are- Jonathan David earns around 1,7M EUR gross, Larin around 800K, don't think anyone else out earns them. You have to remember that players take home a fraction of their wages. There's probably like 50% taxes, 5% to the agent, another 10% or so to escrow, a few points to your lawyer, your trainer, your publicist, union fees, and really, you're likely cashing in around 35-40% of that cheque. If you take JD's salary, from that 1.7M, he's realistically seeing around 600-700k EUR in his bank account, which yes, is still around $1M CAD, and he does get sponsorship dollars (Again, subject to fees), but even for a player like him, the NT earnings you're talking about are like 10% of his salary. If my boss was threatening to take 10% of my paycheck by revoking my bonus, yes I would want to strike. I would want to shut down the entire office, because that's my money.

Your math isnt apples to apples. 

So lets say that he pulls in 1 Million a year post tax from his club salary only. 

The CSA is basically arguing over a 50k difference. This is pretax. With your math, he only gets 35-40% But at minimum he gets a 50% tax. we can call it 17.5- 25k. That is 1.7%- 2.5%. 

Another way of looking at it, is that your boss offers you a 1.7%-2.5% bonus but you were hoping for 3.4-5%. Are you going to go on strike for a disagreement over 1.7-2.5% of a bonus. Now lets further that... This isnt the main job of the players. Its an honor to represent your country. Youre inspiring kids and a nation. Its a not for profit organization. Its so much bigger than a job. Are you really going to negatively impact that because you expected a slightly bigger bonus than the bonus you got.  

[InglewoodJack]

25 minutes ago, Bigandy said:

Your math isnt apples to apples. 

So lets say that he pulls in 1 Million a year post tax from his club salary only. 

The CSA is basically arguing over a 50k difference. This is pretax. With your math, he only gets 35-40% But at minimum he gets a 50% tax. we can call it 17.5- 25k. That is 1.7%- 2.5%. 

Another way of looking at it, is that your boss offers you a 1.7%-2.5% bonus but you were hoping for 3.4-5%. Are you going to go on strike for a disagreement over 1.7-2.5% of a bonus. Now lets further that... This isnt the main job of the players. It’s an honor to represent your country. Youre inspiring kids and a nation. It’s a not for profit organization. It’s so much bigger than a job. Are you really going to negatively impact that because you expected a slightly bigger bonus than the bonus you got.  

If my boss chopped my bonus in half, I’d brush up my CV, get a competing offer, and force my employer to match or lose me. National team players don’t have this leverage, so they strike. 
 

We can look at playing for the national team as some honour and players should do this out of a sense of patriotism and to be a role model for the youths etc., but since none of us were born yesterday, we know this isn’t the case. We know your international career is directly tied to your club career. We know players sacrifice their vacation, long travel hours, etc., to make international games. It isn’t “much” but these are the players who have for all intents and purposes made the national team what it is today. Canada needs Jonathan David and Alphonso Davies and so on more than they need the national team. 
 

A player is a business. It’s bad business to leave money on the table, especially when the other party was effectively made by your efforts. We can pretend that these superstars play for their national team out of a sense of patriotic pride, but we know that isn’t the case.

[Bigandy]

2 minutes ago, InglewoodJack said:

If my boss chopped my bonus in half, I’d brush up my CV, get a competing offer, and force my employer to match or lose me. National team players don’t have this leverage, so they strike. 
 

We can look at playing for the national team as some honour and players should do this out of a sense of patriotism and to be a role model for the youths etc., but since none of us were born yesterday, we know this isn’t the case. We know your international career is directly tied to your club career. We know players sacrifice their vacation, long travel hours, etc., to make international games. It isn’t “much” but these are the players who have for all intents and purposes made the national team what it is today. Canada needs Jonathan David and Alphonso Davies and so on more than they need the national team. 
 

A player is a business. It’s bad business to leave money on the table, especially when the other party was effectively made by your efforts. We can pretend that these superstars play for their national team out of a sense of patriotic pride, but we know that isn’t the case.

But that isnt what happened. Their boss didnt chop the bonus in half. The players want double the bonus offered. Thats a huge difference. How much do the players deserve of the 10million. Thats the whole debate. Its not like they were promised it all and then had it taken away. 

If you had an amazing paying job and then you also did paid volunteering on the side and your paid volunteer job gave you a 1% bonus, but you expected 2%, would you strike? 

I 100% disagree that playing for the national team is not an honour. Guys like david are not playing for canada for the money. David probably could make more if he opted for the USA. So he clearly chose less money to play for a country he cares about. Davies donating his canada salary shows hes playing for canada for non financial reasons. Like you say, canada needs them more than they need canada so why would they put themselves through all the negatives unless there is patriotism, honor, inspiring youth etc. 

[Boominbooty]

BC youth ID Camp this weekend in Port Coquitlam. I believe that this will then feed into a Canada U17 camp (and maybe games??) later in the summer. BC Soccer Provincial Program ID Weekend | BC Soccer Association

[nolando]

1 hour ago, Boominbooty said:

BC youth ID Camp this weekend in Port Coquitlam. I believe that this will then feed into a Canada U17 camp (and maybe games??) later in the summer. BC Soccer Provincial Program ID Weekend | BC Soccer Association

Great info. Thanks for sharing.

[VinceA]

And Canada is...um....yeah.

[jordan]

Herdman scoring 

 

[InglewoodJack]

This is the sort of performance that will get him on John Herdman’s radar. I hope he is aware of this kid. 

[yomurphy1]

1 hour ago, InglewoodJack said:

This is the sort of performance that will get him on John Herdman’s radar. I hope he is aware of this kid. 

Coaches kid plays for another country... I like Herdman but can't pretend this doesn't grate me.

[Kadenge]

29 minutes ago, yomurphy1 said:

Coaches kid plays for another country... I like Herdman but can't pretend this doesn't grate me.

iirc Jay was not selected by Canada for their youth team. I beleive he then accepted the call from NZ. 

[InglewoodJack]

6 hours ago, yomurphy1 said:

Coaches kid plays for another country... I like Herdman but can't pretend this doesn't grate me.

His father selects our roster. I am positive when he is good enough to play for us he will, provided Herdman the elder doesn’t have an unexpected acrimonious exit from the CANMNT 

[VinceA]

Stuff like this happens when you claim to be a super poor sporting body in a country of 34 million people.

[Sal333]

17 minutes ago, VinceA said:

Stuff like this happens when you claim to be a super poor sporting body in a country of 34 million people.

Actually we're almost 40 million

[CanadaFan123]

17 hours ago, yomurphy1 said:

Coaches kid plays for another country... I like Herdman but can't pretend this doesn't grate me.

How and why? He’d obviously jump to us at a second. Let him do what’s best for himself just like many other Canadians before him. 

[InglewoodJack]

Also, not to talk down on a player who could play for us down the line, but… he scored on Uzbekistan’s U20 team. They’re in the World Cup and we’re not, so it is what it is, but like… 

[Kent]

Let me make sure I have this straight. Mitrovic's and Flores' fathers interfere too much by influencing the choice their kids make, but Jay Herdman's father isn't interfering enough. Both are despicable, immoral acts.

[Dominic94]

Herdman was selected but the passport was the issue from what I read.

 

However @Footyeh is likely better positioned to explain.

[Kadenge]

Pleased for the Dominican Republic  in the U20 WC but it's another indictment  of Canada's U20 program. Our U17s have done a bit better at least. That's 2 WCs for Olivieri 🙃. Canada should really be qualifying on a consistent basis in Concacaf