rkomar

It seems that most of the complaints miss their mark when considering the top two teams. Sure, TFC played Montreal and Vancouver a lot, but their only losses so far came to those two teams. The Strength of Schedule metrics also put TFC and Philadelphia as having the hardest schedules in the league. If either of those two teams win the shield, it won't be because they had it easier than the rest of the competition. Add to that the Canadian teams are playing away from home for the last big chunk of the schedule. If the schedule is unbalanced, it has been tilted against TFC, so hats off to them if they end up top of the league.

I think stressing over TFC getting jobbed out of the CCL spot is counting your chickens before they hatch. There are still plenty of games left in the season to blow the lead, and TFC have been winning by the narrowest margins lately. I'm going to wait for them to finish first before I feel like MLS should have worded things more carefully.

I think everything changed when Tim Leiweke was put in charge of MLSE. He changed the culture in the front office to the pursuit of wins and hardware as the top priority. Everything else followed from that. As a TFC fan, I am eternally grateful to Leiweke for turning the team from a laughing stock to something to be proud of. Unfortunately, that culture is probably costing the inexperienced Canadian players. If they don't give the team the best chance of winning right now, they won't see the field much. I wouldn't blame Vanney too much for that, it seems to be more of an institutional bias.

I so wanted to hear him croon Peschisoliiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiido!!!!! again. It's great to reminisce about Soccer Saturday and Graham Leggat. Perfect. Only perfect.

It makes sense from the point of view that if you are on a long losing streak, then you are probably doing a lot of things wrong, and if you are on a long winning streak, then you are doing a lot of things right. Changing one or two things may not break the streak, but you can't assume that they have no effect. The next change may flip the streak the other way. The turnaround is not as sudden as the record makes it appear.

I don't see Akinola as a direct replacement for Altidore yet. Akinola can score like Altidore, but I haven't noticed him holding up the ball and setting up others to score much. Akinola needs more development that way.

Don Cherry used to say that there is a kind of inertia with winning or losing. When you're losing, you keep losing even when you start to play better, and you can't let the losses distract you from your efforts. Likewise, when you're winning, you keep winning even when you start to play poorer, and you shouldn't let the wins distract you from the improvements you need to make. I get the feeling that TFC is in the latter position recently. They've been eking out wins, but they haven't always played well. I'm hoping they don't get the wrong picture from their lack of losses.

Refs don't see everything, they make mistakes, so I wouldn't be so hard on them. However, VAR is supposed to help correct bad calls in serious cases. If it doesn't work for such an obviously wrong call, then there is no hope for it. That's the real scandal here.

There seems to be a mass exodus of top talent from the NWSL to the English WSL. That has to be disconcerting for the NWSL execs. Is it money, level of competition, training, respect,...? It has to be something serious to convince so many players to move across the ocean.

I still think Bradley is better at his position than anyone else on TFC's roster. Altidore is starting to worry me, and I'm a huge fan. Passes to him have to be pinpoint accurate or the defender beats him to the ball. He doesn't seem to win many 50-50 balls anymore. Is he past it or just out of shape? Hopefully it's the latter.

Maybe not miles, but better for sure. If only they could defend as well as the teams they are putting under pressure. But I guess the games would be boring then.

I think that TFC are usually too methodical and slow in their attack, allowing well prepared teams to thwart their weak probes. Laryea is like the joker in the pack, springing surprises on the defence and causing them to freeze in indecision. TFC needs to come up with other ways of achieving that; they can't just rely on Laryea to open up their opponents. They have quality finishers, they need to give them more looks.

The CBC also bumped pretty much all of their programming to show the Olympics round the clock. But those are huge money-makers for the broadcaster, with many millions of viewers. I don't see half a dozen CPL games per week spread over a few months with <100,00k viewers per game as being in the same class. It fits more with show jumping, curling, track and field, rugby sevens,... that is, they get the sports slots on the weekends. Again, I don't work there and I'm not in the know. I'm just describing how I see the CBC do its sports business.

I finally figured out I could watch the games on Twitch (I mistakenly thought I would have to get a paid subscription). The league is looking a lot younger nowadays. I guess a lot of the big name players have opted out or left for greener pastures. Anyway, Houston is looking pretty good, with their four Canadians on the roster. I didn't see Allysha Chapman on the roster for last night's game, so I hope whatever is keeping her out isn't too serious. Go Dash!

I don't work for CBC, but I've seen in the past where they got lambasted for committing to broadcasting large events (CFL season, curling bonspiels, soccer tournaments,...) and not showing all of the games. Most of the time, they were dropped by the organizations. Nowadays, they generally partner with some of the other broadcasters to spread large events over many channels rather than try to show it all themselves. For that reason, I don't see them taking on all of the CPL games themselves. The CBC is not a sports network. They have to cover news and culture, among other things. They have some slots for sports, but not enough to add a complete CPL season while still showing their other programs (including other sports). I'm sure they want to show some CPL games, just not all of them.