On my Palm and drunk, so must be brief.

1) Worst. referee. ever.
2) Fuck you, Roberto Brown.
3) Eleven on eleven, the Caps were the better team.
4) Between this, Honduras, and the Voyageurs Cup, I want to burn Stade Saputo down and salt the ashes.

Asmir, you’re nothing to me now. You’re not a countryman, you’re not a friend. I don’t want to know you or what you do. I don’t want to see you at the stadia, I don’t want you near my soccer teams. When you visit our country, I want to know a day in advance so I won’t be there.

You understand?

Being an observant reader, you’re probably asking yourself “why Lord Bob, why are you updating your blog when, theoretically, you’re at Florida International University Stadium watching Canada take on Costa Rica?

I’ll tell you why. Miami is the worst city in the universe.

Google Maps says the distance from my hotel to the stadium is about seven kilometers, almost straight as an arrow down two streets. It is, in short, walking distance, and I chose this stadium for that reason. So I checked Google Maps and made sure I was going the right way. I drew a brief sketch on the back of my print-at-home ticket and made sure to ask the helpful concierge if I was going the right way.

“Why, no!” the helpful concierge said. “You don’t go left then right! You go right then left!”

Yeah, that was pretty much completely untrue.

I got lost, and it was made worse by the fact that Miami is the worst city in the universe. When I realized I was lost, I knew I had to get to the highway, which was marked on my map as US Highway 41/8th Street. I was on 6th Street, and I knew 7th Street was a block to the north since I had just come that way. So I said “I am clever. I will go two blocks north and still make the game.”

Yeah, it was a different 8th Street. It was so close to the 8th Street I was looking for that I could have spit the distance if I’d known it, but I didn’t.

Miami also hates pedestrians. Some cities don’t put sidewalks on the both sides of some streets. Miami builds sidewalks that end in random places, or sidewalks that don’t go anywhere, or sidewalks with chainlink fences at the end, or just chainlink fences that keep you from getting where you want to go, or sidewalks that lead to intersections with no pedestrian signals and rampant traffic, as if Miami pedestrians usually just turn into helicopters.

Also, no gas station in this god-forsaken city seems to sell road maps.

After walking for two hours through brutal heat, trying to make logical guesses as to where I wanted to go and getting lost each time because of the completely random street layout, I wound up at a Wal-Mart where nobody spoke English and couldn’t understand that I wanted a map despite the fact that, as far as I can tell, the Spanish word for map is “map”. I was able to find one myself, realised that if I tried to get to the stadium I’d arrive just in time to watch the winner do a victory lap, went back to my hotel, and am currently trying to tie my bedsheets into a crude noose.

If Canada gets to the World Cup final and the match is held in Miami, I still won’t come back to Miami. This is the worst city in the universe.

Sitting in Port Columbus Airport, with free wifi, and my flight doesn’t leave for almost two hours. What else am I going to do?

The miniscule fraction of a doubt that Canada wouldn’t go through to the quarterfinals was eliminated late yesterday, when in spite of typical CONCACAF refereeing and Javier Aguirre’s karate-kick action, Panama held on to a 1-1 draw with Mexico and ensured Canada no worse than eighth position in the round robin. And to even finish that badly, Haiti will have to beat the United States in Boston tomorrow, among other improbable results.

My friends, we are sitting pretty.

Of course, we can’t take our foot off the gas. A win over Costa Rica is worth in the ballpark of one trillion points in the FIFA rankings and, if we win by a couple, could well send the Ticos to their grave. Costa Rica, meanwhile, has everything to play for, and a Costa Rican win combined with El Salvador not beating Jamaica sends them through.

Don’t be fooled by Costa Rica’s record and the fact that they’re in the hex. The Ticos are taking the Gold Cup seriously and have sent what I’ve called a B+ team – pretty close to what Canada has sent, actually. Florida International University Stadium holds 20,000 people and I expect 19,998 of them to be Costa Rica partisans. We have no players used to playing on plastic, while in Costa Rica league matches artificial turf is common. The weather forecast is straight out of San José. I’m sure glad we don’t need this match or I’d be worried.

So yeah, I’m predicting a Canadian loss. But why worry? I’m just too relieved that we don’t really need the match.

Indeed, if I were Stephen Hart, I’d take the opportunity to play it safe. Three Canadian players – Julian De Guzman, Mike Klukowski, and Paul Stalteri – are riding a yellow card and there’s no reason to risk a suspension for any of them. Give De Guzman a half, because he’s usually fairly disciplined, but Klukowski and Stalteri should sit unless needed.

I’d like to see Jaime Peters get a go at fullback, as Peters spent the successful latter half of his Ipswich season playing the position and seems to have taken to it. The other side could be taken by Marcel De Jong or, if Hart was feeling adventurous, Andre Hainault.

Why stop there, either? The 4-5-1 cum 4-3-3 that Hart has been running has been somewhat marred by a lack of offensive spirit from his wingers, so why not throw Simeon Jackson in the spot Josh Simpson started at against El Salvador and see what happens? And if ever there was a moment for Josh Wagenaar, just to see what he can do against talented opposition, this is it.

Don’t get me wrong. I want us to win the match. But for the first time we’re playing a competitive match that we can truly afford to lose.

Of course, if Hart storms out with the big guns and we win 2-1, well, I can live with that.

You’ve all heard about the new rule instituted by FIFA where players over twenty-one, once considered cap tied, were now international free agents. Whereas once a player would be considered safe after his twenty-first birthday, he is now fair game once more, and those of us who thought we had a young star sewn up must once again live in fear.

However, there’s a lot of confusion regarding the new rule, not to mention a lot of speculation. So, as a public service to the Canadian footballing world, I will field seven hypothetical questions to remove all doubt on the relevant issues.

Also, I hadn’t written a post in, like, a week, and this was 1,400 cheap words.

1) So what, exactly, was the old rule?

Back in the days of yore, a player could be cap tied in two manners. First, he could play a senior match at a FIFA-sanctioned tournament: the World Cup, the Confederations Cup, a continental championship, or qualifying for the same. Second, he could make his final decision on his twenty-first birthday. Once he turned twenty-one, that decision was carved in stone except in unusual cases like a country ceasing to exist.

2) What’s changed?

Your twenty-first birthday no longer has any significance. Until you play a senior match at a FIFA-sanctioned tournament, you are completely fair game. You can play a billion U-20 matches, live in Canada your whole life, eat poutine and drink Rickard’s Red, have a Danish grandfather and go play for Denmark because you think the women are better looking. By making the world of international football even more mercenary and less about representing your homeland on the world stage, players will get more money and everybody will win except for idiot fans.

The punchline is that it’s all retroactive, so players who had formerly been tied to one country can now do what they feel like.

3) Why, how could this happen?

At the FIFA general meeting earlier this month, Algeria put forward a motion to abolish the 21-years-old restriction, and the motion was passed with a 58% vote in favour. This was portrayed as a “surprise” and almost as a spur-of-the-moment decision by the board, but if you believe that I have some northern Ontario swamp land to sell you.

4) Since you know CONCACAF’s going to get screwed somehow, how did Blatter manage to slide the knife between our ribs this time?

This isn’t an issue for the teams in the hex, but the rest of CONCACAF gets reamed in the short term by this rule. UEFA, to pick one example, is in the middle of the first stage of World Cup qualifying with all teams still participating. CONMEBOL is also in World Cup qualifying but they have their final matches in October. The Africans are in their third round, but their third round has twenty teams in it. But the small federations get reamed. Asia will have only one team playing in October (the winner of Bahrain – Saudi Arabia against New Zealand for the last World Cup spot) and CONCACAF will have the six teams in the hex. In Asia’s case, the teams that have already qualified for the World Cup could of course cap players there, but one suspects they won’t use the World Cup for too much experimentation.

Why is October so significant? Because October is when the rule takes effect. Every team in UEFA and CONMEBOL as well as twenty African teams play World Cup qualifying matches in October, allowing them to cap tie players almost immediately. But only six teams from CONCACAF, one from the AFC, and one from the OFC get the same privilege. Bosnia could cap Asmir Begovic, if he was willing, on the fourteenth of October (they probably won’t because it’ll be a vital match against Spain, but they could). But if Jonathan De Guzman had second thoughts and wanted to play for Canada, we could put him in friendlies but not seal him up until the 2011 Gold Cup.

There would have been an incredibly easy fix to this. Have the rule come into effect on July 1 instead of October 1, and the problem almost disappears in CONCACAF, where a dozen nations could call new players to the 2009 Gold Cup rosters. Even Asia, which is almost done their qualification, would have one more team with an opportunity. But one suspects that screwing the smaller federations isn’t a bug to FIFA, it’s a feature.

5) Mother of pearl! Well, who do we stand to lose from this ruling?

There are a few players who could theoretically jump ship, but most of them wouldn’t be missed. The only name anyone is worried about is Asmir Begovic, who was born in Bosnia but lived in Canada from an early age and, after some tension, committed to us on his twenty-first birthday. Bosnia is known to be interested in Begovic and the extent to which Begovic returns the interest is unclear. We know that Hart wanted Begovic for the Gold Cup squad, but Begovic is currently expecting the birth of his first child and quite reasonably decided to stay home.

Theoretically, Simeon Jackson could pull a Tomasz Radzinski, stay home from the Gold Cup without telling anyone, then suit up with his native Jamaica. But I’m going to go ahead and not worry about that.

6) Well, okay, who can we get?

To my knowledge, there’s no registry of uncapped players with Canadian grandparents kicking around Europe, which is a shame because it would come in handy about now. O’Brian White is a possibility: a 23-year-old striker drafted last year by Toronto FC, White is Jamaican to the core but has a Canadian mother and lived in Scarborough starting when he was seventeen. Since White now plays professionally in Canada and was a part of Jamaica’s youth setup before he moved here, it’s possible he may have had a change of heart – certainly, Jamaica’s been in no rush to call him up (he’s not even on their Gold Cup roster).

Another name is 34-year-old San Jose Earthquakes goalkeeper Joe Cannon. Cannon is eligible for Canada through his father. He has capped twice for the United States but both appearances were in friendlies; he was on the American roster for the 2003 Confederations Cup but never appeared. He’s no spring chicken but he’s a capable goalkeeper and he could play with Hirschfeld and Begovic on my 2014 World Cup team.

7) Nobody cares about elderly MLS goalkeepers! Let’s get to the good stuff: do you think Jonathan De Guzman will come back to Canada?

Maybe.

Jonathan hasn’t exactly been setting the world on fire since he committed to the Netherlands. Injuries and poor play have dogged him, and he still hasn’t gotten a look from the full Dutch national team. There’s not even much buzz around him at the club level these days: it’s like he’s fallen off the face of the Earth. The Dutch grabbed him, now he can’t play for anyone else, if he gets good we’ll talk but for now forget about him. That sort of thing. It’s only gotten worse since Marco Van Basten left: he seemed to be Jonathan’s biggest backer other than Julian at times.

Now, the Dutch are not stupid. I’m willing to bet that De Guzman is getting at least a ninetieth-minute appearance in a World Cup qualifying match as soon as they can pay for the airfare. But Jonathan De Guzman isn’t stupid either. If he realizes that he’s an extra cog in the Dutch machine and they don’t so much want him as want to make sure that nobody else gets him, that could be a big factor. And Jonathan still has serious sentimental attachment to Canada. Sure, he picked the Netherlands because he wants to win trophies, but if he realizes the Dutch don’t care whether he lives or dies, he might give us a bit of a longer look.

And, of course, there’s always the chance that the Dutch rate Jonathan so lowly these days they won’t bother trying to cap him. It looks a lot more possible than it did last year.