The Real Marc

Those comments from the coach seem pretty standard, but I do agree that Bustos may judge it his best interest to forgo Canada and shoot for the dream

That’s nothing for Russia

Yes! you are right! It was Stoichkov, my mistake. Oh boy I’m getting old if I can’t remember random sports facts - was always my saving grace! On Berbatov at least anyone that played for Bulgaria got to play with him we have nothing of that caliber to rub shoulders with

Absolutely ... and with the expanded Euros that chance for re-finding old glory is even higher. Heck it’s the country of Berbatov and Hagi! This mirrors the vein of commentary when Begovic chose Bosnia. And whatdoyaknow he played in a World Cup. (As did de Guzman. As did Hargreaves.) I mean, are we for sure guaranteed a spot at our tri-hosted World Cup? If any host country is ever gonna get screwed out of a spot ... it’s us.

Agreed. I really struggle with it. On one hand, I can appreciate that the world is so globalized the old approaches don't make sense any longer. Of course, if you left Kosovo at age 5 and you've been called up for England/etc at 20 years old you're going to say yes. Should that commit you for life? Or I can appreciate Yankov - he hasn't lived in Canada for seven or eight years, his family is from Bulgaria, he's spent his teen years there, he shouldn't be tied down by some u15 caps for us ages ago. But on the other, it sorta eats away at the point of international competition, for me at le

doupelbpost

I'm assuming they're trying to avoid having big nations dazzle youngesters and cap-tie those kids for life. It's just working completely against us, sadly. Agree that they're changing it too many times, I didn't realize it was six games. That's a lot.

I want every dual national to choose us. But Canada is in a weird space - we're not so crappy as to be dismissed outright but not so good that we attract people with equivalent options. We're not so bad that an average dual national is a shoo-in to play each game but not so good that you're cavorting with world class teammates. Playing for us isn't exactly presitigous, isn't a clear path to the World Cup, requires personal sacrifice and carries higher professional risk, largely due to it being a logistical pain and time suck compared to many European nations. You're not goi

Yeah I think that still beats playing El Salvador and St Vincent, and provides much more exposure to European scouts, but we can agree to disagree.

He gets to play against big time countries. We play El Salvador.

That's a last edition Luca Gasparotto signature

I thought Farsi was headed overseas?

This has gotta be a record thread for reserve football

I don't want to tell other posters what they think or feel ... but I speculate that it's not that people like narduch, RS, etc. have a diminished desire for the team to play friendlies due to COVID. Everyone here wants to see the team play. It's that they value context differently than others. They recognize and assess the multitude of factors influencing decisions during this time period within the context of why many of these factors are more challenging in our situation than for other associations. This leads to an appreciation of why we're not playing friendlies right now that goes be

Which ones were called and accepted? Do we know under what conditions they accepted? Do we know how their clubs interpreted this acceptance? Ultimately, would you put your health and career on the line for a meaningless scrimmage? Has it been a complete repudiation of our program when players have previously turned down calls to camps or games or tournaments? Where was the anger and the lack of "accepting complacency" then? There are plenty of sticks to beat the CSA with. This situation sucks but as a CSA critique it is amongst the weakest I've seen in my decades following the tea