rkomar

I think you have to follow the money. Pushing ahead and expecting the money to follow is a recipe for disaster. You are looking at crowds for national team games to get an idea of what attendance could be for league games. I am looking at crowds at current league games (typically 100 friends and family, maybe 200 on a very good day). I guess the attendance at national league games will be somewhere between the two, but where? Setting the pandemic aside, I don't think you can currently get enough people into the stands to cover your costs. CBC's Players Own Voice podcast recently interviewed Carmelina Moscato, and they lightly discussed this topic there. Her job is to figure out how to get to a national league from here, so she knows what she is talking about. She certainly doesn't believe it is just a matter of setting it up and letting it go. She doesn't go into details, but gives an idea of the roadblocks. I think it's worth listening to for anyone who's interested in this topic.

We can barely keep a men's league afloat here. How are we going to run a high-level league for women? They haven't even figured out how to do that for hockey, let alone soccer. If it's a Canada-wide league for women or nothing, then it will stay at nothing. Better to take a more pragmatic approach and get there in steps if necessary.

I hate the modern interpretation of the hand ball rule in the penalty area. Forwards ought to just boot the ball right into the defenders' arms from now on. The chance of getting a penalty shot and scoring from that is way higher than the chance of kicking it into the net during the run of play.

The ball hung up in the air for so long that I thought Crepeau had plenty of time to dash out and claim it before it was headed. It looked to me like the defender was hoping for that, as well. But to be fair, most goalkeepers seem to stay in the goal mouth more often these days compared to the past. Perhaps it's a new trend based on analytics.

It seems that all of the favourites going into this tournament have had a rough start. TFC, NYCFC, Atlanta, Seattle, LAFC, Galaxy,... The tournament is wide open, and I think more than one of the big hitters are going to find themselves out of the playoffs.

It may have some hitches, but calling it a farce is going too far. They are doing the tests, and responding accordingly to the results. Sweeping the results under the rug and continuing the games would be farcical. Cancelling the tournament on one positive result would also be farcical because there have been false positives in the tests. Postponing the match until it is known whether the virus is contained is responsible behaviour. This virus isn't going anywhere. It's still going to be around for seasons to come. There is no point waiting for the problem to disappear because it may never do so. Now is as good a time as any to try to learn how to run professional sports in an infected world.

I can't remember who the opponent was, but the game was on a lousy field in the Caribbean, and some woman was making cat-yowling sounds through most of the match. Good times!

The article seems to say that they tested positive upon arriving at the bubble. I didn't get the impression that they caught the virus while in the bubble. The bubble itself might be working well, but getting there healthy seems to be a big problem.

The Player's Own Voice podcast (Anastasia Bucsis and the CBC) has interviewed a lot of athletes, including five women who played on the CWNT. Stephanie Labbe, Diana Matheson (twice!), Desiree Scott, Christine Sinclair, and last but not least, Carmelina Moscato all participated in some interesting interviews. Carmelina's was especially interesting because a lot of it was devoted to her current position as commissioner at League1 Ontario. She talks about what the current problems are for young women looking to make a career of soccer, and what a roadmap for improving that might look like. It sounds like there are no quick fixes, but it's good to hear from someone who has given it a lot of thought and is tasked with getting the ball rolling. You can find the interviews at: cbc-podcast-site

When global warming burns up the planet and Baffin Island has the best pitches in the world.

When he first came on, there seemed to be a real competition during practice for playing time in matches. It gave the benchers hope and kept the starters on their toes. The players used to say good things about the fairness of the system. That seems to have gone away over time. Was it just Vanney who did away with it, or did the whole team lose interest? Inquiring minds want to know.

I had a strange feeling of deja vu about this, and sure enough, they announced the same thing on April 30 of this year. Why announce it again? Did it take two months for the league to approve the contract?

I listened to the podcast, and it sounded to me like they literally meant "bears". That is, it's hard to run a league where you have bears rampaging on the pitches and in the stands. I think it was a silly joke about our frontier way of life in Canada. England has no large predators left in it, so I think there is some grudging admiration of countries where such "dangers" still exist. I laughed at the joke, so I was fine with it.

Colombia hosted one of the women's U-xx tournaments a number of years ago (I can't remember which), and it looked like they did a good job of it. I vaguely recall that it was viewed as a test for eligibility for hosting the main tournament. So, I don't think you can count out Colombia as a likely selection. From a selfish standpoint, I wouldn't mind the tournament being held in a Western Hemisphere time zone. Edit: Ooops! It was Costa Rica, not Colombia, that hosted the U17 tournament in 2014. Nevermind then. 😳

I agree with most of what you say, but on the other hand, Sinclair herself had a lot less in the way of development and opportunity than today's players. If you could do it back then, you can do it today. Of course it's really tough, but you would think that more of those hundreds of thousands (okay, not millions) would rise to the challenge. We need more players like Kadeisha Buchanan, with her steely determination to succeed. Because God knows the economic, climatic and geographic challenges of running a top-level league in Canada are not going to be solved anytime soon. By the way, it's good to see you back here.