CanSuffer

On paper looks like the same ole attendance numbers. But, at least the stands felt a bit fuller today than the usual "2000" with too many no-shows.

Forecast is hot and sunny

Finally some good breaks for the York9 club : Big game, great weather, great attendance, exciting atmosphere and exciting match. Hoping that it will translate into more viewers, more ticket and merchandise sales and more season ticket holders.

This is a step backwards for CONCACAF and FIFA too

Thanks for this very useful link

Just to be clear it is impractical to have all 41 teams play each other. But I totally agree you could and should double (at least) the Hex.

The obvious : in a tournament (eg World Cup and World Cup qualifying) you play head-to-head games between teams to determine who is better. Ideally, everybody plays everybody and there is no argument whatsoever. eg. CONEMBOL. Most of the time this is impractical. So you do your best to design the tournament so that using seedings based on rankings/past performance is used as little as possible and so that each team has the same path to victory as much as possible. This format violates these principles more than any other tournament I can think of. Although this year's Canadian Championship comes to mind! I've liked what Vic Montagliani has done at CONCACAF up til now. But this seems so bush. I can see that he probably has the laudable goal of trying to give the lesser CONCACAF nations more meaningful games and I suppose that it does. But at the cost of being so unfair? It's a travesty. It's interesting to note a phenomenon that occurs in the chess world. Chess players' ratings are an important part of what tournaments they will get invited to (bigger or smaller prize money) including the Candidates tournament which determines who will challenge the current World Champion. The top 8-10 rated players in the world tend to play a majority of their games against each other and few games against lower-rated players. This tends to keep their ratings higher and at the same time makes it hard for lower rated players to improve their rating. Now we're gonna have the same rating BS in soccer. Not to mention how poor the rating system is to begin with.

He was asked if there were Cavalry players that could make the roster and he said yes (1) but wouldn't name names (2). I don't find either statement surprising nor interpret it as a plan.

Playing in the same competition is not an example of working closesly together. Nor really is one or two players on loan either.

I believe Shopsy's is actually closed for the summer! If you didn't know York Lions Stadium is on York U campus. So Shopsy's too is on campus. Last game I walked by there and I was surprised to see a sign on the door saying closed for summer. Makes sense since not too many students are there during the summer months.

Is anyone from the GTA thinking of making the trip to Hamilton for this one?

Forge FC having won the "Canada 2" spot in the CONCACAF League preliminary round, by virtue of winning the table-within-the-table contest between CPL "founding" clubs Forge FC, FC Edmonton, and Valour FC, take on Guatemalan club Antigua GFC in a 2-legged tie. The first game will be played at Tim Horton's field in Hamilton on Friday, August 1st at 6pm ET.

Looks like I could get a TSN Direct day pass for $5. That would be worth it, for sure. Maybe even do a month pass to watch the whole Gold Cup. But, I prefer to go to the viewing parties for the MNT games whenever possible...

Being a cheapskate I'm looking for free. I had TSNDirect for the world cup. Might have to sign up again... Just checked CONCACAF GO. They won't let me re-watch the Can-Cuba game because "it's not available in your country". Seems like they probably won't let me see it either. In any case, thanks for the suggestions guys!

Q. Does anyone now how to watch a replay of this game (Can-Haiti on Sat) once it has been played? Unfortunately, due to a family event I won't be able to watch it live. But, I'm going to put myself on news blackout and try to watch it later. I don't have any TSN accounts. Will CSA keep a stream somewhere?