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A couple of articles with comments from Canadian U20 player Jonathan Lao, currently playing in Germany. Interesting take on the importance of playing abroad and the state of Canadian soccer. Plus, his take on the Honduras loss. Lets just say I hope his thought process is matched across the board for young Canadian players. http://lastwordonsports.com/2013/01/26/canadian-connections-jonathan-lao-on-the-importance-of-playing-abroad/ http://lastwordonsports.com/2013/01/27/hope-is-in-the-horizon-for-canadian-soccer/

Multiple sources in the CanPL and in Canadian soccer have confirmed that the Ottawa Fury will struggle to be sanctioned after 2019, if not sooner. “Who is going to sanction them,” one source said? “They may get a ‘pity’ sanction for 2019, but beyond that?” Another person working in the game suggested that the CSA will be reluctant to directly challenge the Fury, but that they are working behind closed doors to challenge the legitimacy of the club playing in the US-based USL. “They won’t say anything publicly, but they are hoping CONCACAF steps in.” The suggestion is that CONCACAF may ban teams outside the top flight from participating in leagues outside their country. This would be in reaction to not just the Canadian situation, but also in the Caribbean where several teams have attached themselves to US leagues now and in the past. There is a movement within CONCACAF to create a D1 pan-Caribbean league and having clubs play in the US makes that more challenging. This could offer an opportunity to stop the practice moving forward. It’s also difficult to justify the three Canadian MLS teams, if you ban teams from below the top flight. Especially if, as the CSA has suggested, the CanPL is launched as a Division 1 league. It would seem that at the very least you would need to acknowledge that CanPL is a D2 league, if you were to allow TFC, the Whitecaps and Impact to remain in the American league, while barring Ottawa entry into USL. Not everyone believes the CSA is ready to take the so-called “nuclear option” of denying sanctioning. There is a significant amount of people that are hoping that the Fury can be convinced to join the league, although everyone I spoke to today agrees that the likelihood of that happening for 2019 is close to zero. Regardless, it is clear that the idea that the CSA and CanPL are supportive of the Fury’s choice, as has been reported in Ottawa, is completely false. It is possible that the Fury will be allowed to play 2019 in USL, but it will not be with the blessing of the governing body. The best the Fury can hope for is the CSA’s silence. More tomorrow… View full record

What is the only country in the world to have hosted ever FIFA event in both the men's and women's game? It's just a trivia question, but one that the Canadian Soccer Association badly wants to be the answer to. As of right now that answer is no one. If the United Bid of 2026 wins the day, Canada will lay claim to winning a race that no one else realized they were running (if we conveniently consider the 2002 Women's u19 event the current FIFA Women's U17 World Cup that is, but let's not get bogged down in literal facts right now). The idea that this frozen land of ice hockey loving hosers that call the game soccer could possibly be the first to host every potential event is a compelling one and one that will get trotted out a lot in the build up to the bid vote and (hopefully for the CSA) over the eight year preparation for hosting. The dream of landing the big prize of the men's World Cup has been openly talked about in Canadian soccer circles for at least a decade and work on a bid has been ongoing for far longer than most people realize. However, it was only in recent years that the CSA was convinced to drop their solo bid and instead attach their hopes to the United States where they are very much a minor partner along with Mexico. It was really a path of least resistance for Canada. The US obviously has some incredible infrastructure advantages that neither Canada or Mexico can match, without building new stadiums themselves. Although Canada could build the stadiums -- We're rich. We could -- in today's political climate getting stadiums built with public funds is an exceptionally difficult thing to do. But, also in today's political climate the United States has elected a man who is...let's call him divisive. That shouldn't offend any of his supporters that might read this, as they value that divisiveness. That's their choice, but what matters here is that those who did not chose, or have a choice, to elect Donald Trump President do have a vote in the election to chose the 2026 World Cup host. And, many of those people do not appreciate Trump calling their country a shithole, as he was perceived to have done last month. There's no sense being coy about this. Trump is an obstacle to the bid winning. Canadian soccer has attached itself to the Trump Train, whether it wanted to or not. And the train could throw the bid straight off the tracks. When Morocco launched its bid to upset the United 2026 bid few gave it any chance. Now, however, many people are starting to do the math and are getting very nervous. As much as the ExCo voting structure was a mess that gave us Qatar and Russia, it was a little more predictable. The new one country, one vote system is a bit of a mystery. That said, some math: United Bid -- Nearly sure thing: CONCACAF 38 (Canada, USA, Mexico and Nicaragua) not eligible) votes, Western Europe 31, Oceania 14 + Japan and Australia = 84 votes Morocco -- Nearly sure thing: Africa 55 votes (Morocco not eligible), Middle East 12, Central Asia 6 votes + North Korea = 74 votes That leaves the rest of Asia (26 votes), South America (10 votes) and Eastern Europe (24 votes) as your decider. Can the United Bid find 20 votes from that 60? Probably? Probably isn't that reassuring, especially since much of Canada's rebuilding plan on the men's side is dependent on getting this bid. And it's increasing becoming harder to argue that a Canada only bid would have been any worse off than tying ourselves to the political anchor that is the current state of US politics. View full record

So a couple of episodes back(not the last one but the one before that I believe) on footysoldiers they were talking about naming the teams and more than that sort of the club "mission statement"/"Identity" that would be the basis for each club. They mentioned "farmer johns" in regina and the regina regiment as well as privateers in halifax and how that can influence a team from the top-down so that there is always a clear purpose for how the team is going to play. Another example was the 86ers and how when they came in they said they were going to play BC guys and they were going to go for it in terms of scoring goals. I'll start off - I was thinking about Sigma Sauga - how the city is commonly understood as sort of a techhub/fortune 500 company hub and how sigma is a math symbol - this combined with seeing a tweet from the club recently where they were showing their youth players a slide show on tactics got me thinking. They could be known as precise and calculated tactically - it would go along with the Sigma thing as well as the general feel for the city. their mission statement could be something along the lines of "Our goal is to create intelligent, tactically aware players, who are capable of adapting on the fly different formations both from the opposition and from their own club, to give them a tactical advantage over the opponent - with the ultimate goal of winning, whether by defence or offence - by outsmarting the opposition". Thoughts?