Somewhat to my surprise, upon getting up this morning I discovered that a minor imbroglio has broken out over Marc Dos Santos and the Montreal Impact’s flagrant time-wasting last night at Stade Saputo. Not merely “oh, that’s annoying” like you hear every time a Jose Mourinho team gets a 1-0 lead, but actual debate. Controversy, even. Nothing on the order of Trois-Rivieres Attak 1, Toronto FC 6, but all the same.

I’m not just referring to my esteemed Copper & Blue colleague Bruce’s comments in my tipsily-written recap from last night. At Bar 99 with a few of the Montreal Ultras last night, I heard a draw called “the worst possible result” since the Impact fans didn’t get the delight of a victory and the Whitecaps fans were knocked out of the tournament, but I really didn’t think any more of it. Yet this morning, the Voyageurs board and to a lesser extent the Southsiders forum are alive decrying, or at least considering, Montreal’s decision to waste time and go for a 1-1 draw. Even occasional Maple Leaf Forever contributor pRoke chimed in on my Facebook wall, saying “if I were the referee I would have given Djekanovic a 2nd yellow for time wasting”.

I haven’t really changed my position from last night. I think dos Santos was entitled to sit on a draw if he wanted to. There was no danger of his delegitimizing the championship as he did last year with the reserve fiasco. Montreal is a fiendishly talented team but Vancouver showed the better offense last night, even after the Impact parked the bus: perhaps dos Santos simply made a tactical assessment that if he opened up, his chances of getting burned for a Vancouver goal were too great. That is a coach’s job, after all, and had he gambled and lost the excoriation in the Montreal and Toronto soccer presses would have been considerable.

What’s most important is the dignity of our championship and the worthiness of its winner. The best contribution Montreal could make, once eliminated, would be to play their last match like it meant something. If it had been a league game, would dos Santos have bunkered like that in such a context? Maybe, but he certainly wouldn’t have blown open the barn doors looking for a goal.

Oh, how I wish dos Santos had thrown caution to the wind, said “dammit, my fans paid to see us win,” and sent Byers, Sebrango, and Placentino thundering down the pitch like their hair was on fire. Because the Whitecaps might have snatched one on the break and we’d be talking about the game next Wednesday in terms other than “how many Academy players should Toronto start?” At the very least Montreal might have scored and the Ultras would have been charmingly insufferable instead of vaguely depressed. But as a manager, Marc dos Santos did his job, and as a Canadian he did right by his national tournament. The prick.

Gutted. Horrified. Infuriated. A whole bevy of emotions, each of them negative.

Should I be pleased that we deserved the result we got, that there’s no “you lucky skunks” 6-1 victory hanging over our head like the Sword of Damocles, that Toronto FC has won our national championship in unimpeachably, impeccably pure and correct fashion? Probably, from an intellectual perspective, but I genuinely don’t care right now. We came all this way just to draw. Just to draw.

Where was the urgency, the desperation, the drive? It showed up in spots, once in a while. Martin Nash had a chip on his shoulder. In spite of his lack of pace he can be omnipresent in midfield when he has a mind and he nearly achieved those rarified heights tonight, with the Impact having no answer to his effective distribution and his surprisingly strong positioning. There was a man who wanted to win. So, too, did Wes Knight, who flew up and down the right-hand channel and whose clean tackles saved the Whitecaps at least one goal against. Nowhere else, from the bench to the starting eleven, was there a player who left me consistently pleased with his effort. The headlines said that the Whitecaps would hold nothing back, but their effort showed a team that thought there were games yet to play.

I am so flabbergasted that I am beyond speech. The questions are bubbling in my head, overriding any effort at analysis. Why was Marcus Haber so utterly decrepit? Perhaps his transfer to West Brom convinced him he is better than he actually is, for Haber was full of athleticism. He thundered with that ball down the wings and no Impact defender could get that thing off of him for love of money, yet what on earth did he achieve with it? What did he even come close to accomplishing?

It has been one long season of struggle for Haber, once the USL-1 golden boy, whose only moment of glory this season has come courtesy a Voyageurs Cup penalty. But Teitur Thordarson’s faith in young Haber is unshakable. Teitur cannot be building for the future, as of course Haber’s loan spell ends soon and he will be returning to West Bromwich Albion. So why the continued selection? Cornelius Stewart, once again, left the older and larger Haber in his dust. Even debutant Doudou Toure was far Haber’s superior, and I’d have rather had Marlon James than Haber ten times out of ten.

Yet James, though healthy for once, sat on the bench for the duration. Why, Teitur? Why? Perplexing decisions were not limited to the players, after all.

One decision that did not perplex me was Montreal’s; to waste time and go for the draw. Last year, we criticized them for not caring enough about the Voyageurs Cup and not giving Vancouver a fair chance. Now, we criticize them for caring about Toronto’s rights too much and not opening themselves up to go for a victory they didn’t need. Time-wasting is despicable anti-football and Montreal was right to employ it.

The problem was that we made it so easy for them. Credit to Ansu Toure, whose goal was a lovely thing, the sort of scrappy blue-collar effort the Whitecaps have had the devil’s own time getting this season. His celebration was worth the price of admission on its own. But when Toure scored the Whitecaps grew complacent – in the stands, even I said to myself “here is what we’re good at, defending the lead”. Marc dos Santos was having none of it, bringing in his best striker Peter Byers for his worst midfielder Tyler Hemming and going with a 4-3-3. The Impact promptly proceeded to shove it down Vancouver’s throat.

Everything went wrong. Greg Janicki, who until that moment I was convinced had super powers from his omnipresent cranial bandage, was beaten cleanly; torn between dropping back and challenging the ball he did neither and was shredded for his trouble. The ball instead found its way at the top of the box to defender Philippe Billy. I don’t really know much about Philippe Billy beyond what I hear from the Montreal Ultras, and what I hear is that he’s a fat tub of lard not worth the all-too-considerable salary the Impact are paying him. So imagine my horror when that round mound made a nifty side-step and pounded the ball past a helpless Jay Nolly to level affairs.

Such a lovely goal from such a fat man. And the astonishing thing was that as the game wore on and Billy went to the sidelines for water during stoppages and was so drenched in sweat it looked like he had come out of a wet t-shirt contest he just kept going, virtually toying with the Whitecaps, and only Zourab Tsiskaridze came anywhere near being able to cope with Billy.

As the game wore on, the Whitecaps started to realize their dire straits, but they reacted in entirely the wrong fashion. Rather than build up and generate attack they sprayed the ball wildly, wasted corners and free kick opportunities, and generally acted like they had ten seconds left rather than twenty minutes. Doudou Toure made his first appearance as a Whitecap, was fast as hell, and in my opinion drew a foul in the area during stoppage time, but lacked the skill to put the Whitecaps over the top. Marcus Haber was terrible. Cornelius Stewart, bless him, was too exhausted to make a difference. The midfield and the defense hoofed the ball up, and as the game wore on only Takashi Hirano (of all people, he of the utter awfulness against Toronto last week) showed any touch or patience whatsoever.

There was nothing. None of the competence or confidence we saw as recently as Saturday. There was merely offensive impotence, midfield idiocy, and defensive ineptitude. There was nothing we could hang our hat on. Even Doudou Toure’s missed would-be penalty felt like a cheat – we didn’t deserve to win on a ninetieth-minute penalty anyway.

There was no question about who deserved the Voyageurs Cup this year, and when I gird myself to cheer for Toronto FC in the CONCACAF Champions League I will at least have the comfort of knowing that our best representative is taking part. Their supporters must be thrilled. But I hope you’ll excuse me if I take some more time to wallow in misery and the humiliating defeat of a team that is, technically, undefeated in the tournament.

What more revolting phrase is there than “playing for pride”? The mere use of it carries a host of implications more fit for the nineteenth century. “Oh, there’s nothing on the line in this game, really, except pride! Bragging rights! That ephemeral athletic chivalry which compels a sportsman to play his blood out for any stakes!” Yet ultimately every match, from a Sunday afternoon for your rec team to the Champions League final, is for pride. Those titles and trophies only hold meaning insofar as players take pride in the achievement and fans take pride in their champions. If a team will not take pride in a game against a professional opponent just because there’s no shiny trophy at the end, they have far greater problems than merely one game.

So yeah, the Montreal Impact have nothing but pride to play for tomorrow, but that should be enough. The Impact have been precious short on pride the last couple of years, what with 6-1 and Roberto “Duran” Brown and actually giving ruffian Adam Braz a professional paycheque. Impact supporters can point with some justification to their USL Division One title in 2009 and their ownership of the Whitecaps in USSF D2 league play. But none of that was on national television against (it galls me to say) the largest, best-supported club in the country. It is a hard truth that pride in obscurity cannot scrub the stain of humiliation before millions.

For the sake of all Canadian soccer fans, the Impact had better play as close to their first team Wednesday as they can get. For their own fans, for the neutrals watching across the country, and even for the innocent Vancouver supporters who already hear the bleating of the more deranged TFC types before the game has even begun (I will not dignify such filth with a link), whinging about a capitulation they view as inevitable.

I’m quite serious. As a Southsider who’ll be at Stade Saputo tomorrow, I want to see Montreal’s best. The Whitecaps winning the Voyageurs Cup right now would take an upset that would make 6-1 look like a game of Parcheesi and I wouldn’t want a Toronto-sized asterisk if by some miracle we did pull off those two wins in two games. Yes, it would balance accounts for last year’s debacle, but some accounts are better not balanced. The last thing our national championship needs is another credibility-sapping capitulation.

Would Marc dos Santos dare to run out the scrubs anyway? Remember, the Impact boss took a bath in the press for his tactics last time out and Joey Saputo actually apologized to the Whitecaps on his team’s behalf. Not even the Ultras, who could be expected to best understand the strategic logic, forgave too easily. Would he really imperil his reputation with a repeat performance? I doubt it. He may dress like a model but Marc’s no Derek Zoolander. We probably won’t see his best eleven but the lineup could be comparable to what Toronto ran out last week at Swangard Stadium, at least.

If he does that, the Impact should be able to do what is required of them. Vancouver’s strung together a couple inspirational performances in a row but even with the goalless drought over Vancouver’s offensive offense is a 72-point question mark. Montreal’s looked the better side so far in the league and has a defense more than equal to Vancouver’s anemic attack. A draw decides the Cup, and in their own building the Impact should get at least one point.

That would, of course, leave next week’s Toronto – Vancouver game as just two teams playing for pride. But I don’t see that being a problem.

The Whitecaps grabbed a lucky point against the Impact last night, and I was totally good with that.

Oh, Vancouver wasn’t being completely pushed around. It wasn’t that sort of lucky point, that Wigan-against-Arsenal lucky point. The Whitecaps were certainly the classier force for the first twenty-five minutes or so, but then they got lazy, or complacent, or in some way let their game slip and the Impact pinned the Whitecaps deep in their own end, including snaring a rather lovely goal courtesy the erratic but talented Antiguan Peter Byers. Couldn’t say the Impact didn’t deserve their lead; they were converting their chances while Vancouver wasn’t, and they kept their foot down through the beginning of the second half. But it was a close affair.

It was lucky in the sense that Montreal once again let their tempers get the best of them, that the Impact took their name a little too literally. Eighty-first minute, Marlon James dives like a fish to draw an undeserved foul. The referee misses the call, because this is real life and humans are imperfect, and awards Vancouver a kick. Adam Braz decides that he has had enough of this shit and, already riding a yellow, pops a Whitecap from behind as the Vancouverites mill through the confusion trying to get the ball set down. Matt Jordan’s egregious taunting of Marcus Haber has no effect, the West Brom boy slots home the penalty, ballgame.

So yeah, the foul that got the whole affair started was actually a tremendous dive from James, proof that Phillips Bakery isn’t the only place to get a big roll in St. Vincent. I’d feel a lot worse about that if not for Montreal’s particularly egregious timewasting that began ere the second half was old, particularly courtesy Matt Jordan and Rocco Placentino. I’d feel a lot worse about it if half the reason James got the benefit of the doubt wasn’t “well, they are the Montreal Impact and they do commit fouls like that”.

Besides, the Whitecaps very nearly seized the opportunity in even more spectacular fashion. Braz hadn’t been integral to the solid Impact defending last night but his absence seemed to stun Montreal and put life in Whitecap legs. From that moment on, almost without exception, the Whitecaps pinned the Impact back and put on a passing clinic which Montreal was powerless to stop. Marlon James very nearly snatched victory from the jaws of defeat with a stoppage time shot that eked barely wide. Far more than Toronto did last week, Vancouver controlled the play against ten-man Montreal, and though the situations were of course completely different and we didn’t get the win we craved, it was enough to put hope in our hearts once again.

You have to believe the Impact are out of it. Two matches, one goal, one point, and three red cards. Over a quarter of the starting lineup for their first game will be ineligible for the third. But, throughout their history, Montreal has had a nasty habit of turning up alive. While they have a chance they will try to seize it, and if they achieve that long-awaited first victory against Toronto FC at home all of a sudden this Cup will take on a new, terrifying character. Toronto is the favourite now; they won their first game and if Vancouver plays like they did last night they’ll win their first two. But they haven’t got enough of an element of control to take anything for granted and the FC is at its worst when they go into cruise control.

As for the Whitecaps? Well, I’ve got hope. Hope is something.

Everybody loves a preview article. It tells you nothing you didn’t already know, takes up valuable minutes of your life you could spend learning a new language or spending time with your family, and at the end of it you’ll disagree with whatever I wrote anyway. I don’t know why writers, aside from the singularly lazy, bother with them.

Luckily, I am singularly lazy.

So I’m going to break down each position and important non-positional factor, team by team. Then I’m going to tell you who’s best. Then you’re going to comment and tell me what an idiot I am. I think it’s a great system for everybody, and with each team having played its last game before Montreal and Toronto kick off on Wednesday, the time is right.

Without further ado: the Maple Leaf Forever 2010 Voyageurs Cup Preview Article, broken down position by position for your reading and arguing convenience.

Goalkeepers: best Vancouver, second-best Toronto, third-best Montreal.

This is a competitive category, as all three teams run out quite skilled goaltenders. Placing Montreal third should be no slight on Matt Jordan, who was the main reason the Impact won the 2008 Voyageurs Cup and would be a big factor if they hypothetically won the 2010 edition. But Stefan Frei beats out Jordan on sheer athleticism, even if he lacks Jordan’s poise, experience, and ability to control his area. Certainly, on any given Wednesday, these rankings could be flipped right around.

Perhaps it’s just my bias from watching the Whitecaps too much, but he Jay Nolly is the best of the lot. An elite second division goalkeeper, would look quite good in MLS, and has stymied both Toronto and Montreal in the past. He does not suffer from Frei’s occasional brain cramps, but his superior physical ability compared to Jordan makes him the best in the tournament.

Defenders: best Vancouver, second-best Montreal, third-best Toronto

Mouloud Alkoul, who was the pundits’ choice to be Vancouver’s best defender this season if he could ever get on the pitch, is out with injury after playing less than half an hour of Whitecaps football. The other highly-touted acquisition, former FC Dallas starter Blake Wagner, has not been heard from so far this season. But the defense has still been good enough to get Jay Nolly three pretty easy clean sheets to start the season, with Nelson Akwari, Chris Williams, Greg Janicki, Zourab Tsiskaridze, and Wes Knight putting in stalwart and largely error-free service early in the season. As the relatively new roster plays more and the Cup progresses, the defense could be on even better form when Vancouver plays its two key road matches to close out the Cup.

Montreal’s back line is less spectacular but it is also absolutely legitimate. It is a more veteran group than the Vancouver gang, headlined by Adam Braz, Stefano Pesoli, and captain Nevio Pizzolitto. With other highly effective players such as Cedric Jonquivel, Hicham Aâboubou, and Simon Gatti, the Impact can run a sterling defensive line that may get into foul trouble now and again but will also terrorize unprepared Vancouver or Toronto strikers.

Toronto FC also has defenders on its roster. Some of them are oft-injured eastern Europeans with mysterious, worrisome chronic knee problems. Some of them are just useless. Some of them are Nick Garcia. I like Nana Attakora as much as anybody but he’s one man and won’t make up the difference.

Midfielders: best Toronto, second-best Montreal, third-best Vancouver

When I say “best Toronto”, imagine a nice, long pause before I say “second-best Montreal”. Go make a cup of tea, that’s how long a pause we’re talking about here.

Oh, Montreal’s midfield is fine. I’m as big a Tyler Hemming fan as is left on the planet and it would take a braver man than I to condemn David Testo, Rocco Placentino, and Stephen deRoux to the dustbin of history. They’re good players. They’ll do some damage. But Toronto’s strength at this position is unrivaled. Dwayne De Rosario, Julian De Guzman, Sam Cronin, and that’s enough. Their depth does not impress (I’m not exactly feeling a chill down my spine at the thought of Nick LaBrocca bearing down on Jay Nolly), but their top end is plenty strong.

Vancouver has some bright spots on their midfield but so far this season it has been, on balance, a position of weakness. Martin Nash is old and slow, even if his service and ball control is as remarkable as ever. Ansu Toure and Nisar Khalfan are fair enough players, and Luca Bellisomo has been surprisingly strong so far as a central midfielder. But there’s not much talent there.

Forwards: best Montreal, second-best Vancouver, third-best Toronto

This is a much tighter race, possibly the closest of all. None of these three teams have overwhelming strike forces. I give Montreal the benefit of the doubt because, even if their best players are getting older, we know they can score. Roberto Brown is my pick for the tournament’s Golden Boot. Eduardo Sebrango isn’t what he used to be but he will poach one here and there off the bench. Peter Byers is more of a question mark but at least he has promise.

I agonized over the order of Vancouver and Toronto. Vancouver’s best striker, Marlon James, is too often injured to rely upon. Toronto’s best striker is a midfielder, Dwayne De Rosario, and from there it is a chorus of futility headlined by the infamous Chad Barrett. But they are futile against superior MLS defenses and history has shown that the jump from second division to first in North America is greatest for strikers. Neither one has enough depth to impress. Randy Edwini-Bonsu and Dever Orgill have potential but they can’t score yet. O’Brian White, for Toronto, is closer to rounding into the goal-poaching so-and-so they hope he will become but Fuad Ibrahim is still some way off.

I finally give Vancouver the advantage based on returning loanee Marcus Haber: I’m not that high on the kid but if James stays healthy he can take some of the pressure off the St. Vincentian, and if James gets hurt he still provides us with some scoring depth Toronto hasn’t got.

Bench: best Vancouver, second-best Montreal, third-best Toronto

Vancouver has at least one and usually two legitimate tactical or injury substitutions available at every position. If Jay Nolly (he of the playing every single minute in 2009) gets hurt, Simon Thomas isn’t a star but he’s perfectly adequate and Dan Pelc is considered a hot prospect by CSL fans. There are enough midfielders with sufficiently varied skill sets that Teitur Thordarson can throw any sort of lineup he wants together even if a player or two goes down. Dever Orgill, Randy Edwini-Bonsu, and Alex Semenets are borderline interchangeable up front with Ricardo Sanchez providing a veteran, no-nonsense tactical curveball.

The Montreal Impact, too, benefit from a surfeit of interchangeable players. With six defenders and eight midfielders who could start for most USSF D2 teams, they can field a lineup as strong in the ninetieth minute as it was in the first. They fall behind Vancouver in the individual calibre of each of their substitutes as well as the tactical variation they can throw out with their substitutions, but they are still top-notch from the bench.

Toronto FC only recently acquired enough players to have a bench, and most of them you won’t have heard of or won’t care about if you have. Their depth has been a point of contention for their supporters throughout the season so far, and with Preki viewing the Voyageurs Cup as a second-rate tournament it may become a critical obstacle.

The verdict: I have Vancouver winning the 2010 Voyageurs Cup, although Montreal could easily give them a run for their money and Toronto, of course, is hardly out of it. Just because the Whitecaps are the favourites doesn’t mean they’re sure things. It ought to be a close competition, or at least closer than last year: if you’re a neutral, isn’t that what matters?

Me, I’m just waiting for Vancouver.

It is an axiom that a higher-division team is always the favourite against a lower-division team in a fair tournament. Always. Never mind that the higher-division team is probably the worst team in its league and the two lower-division teams in question are defending finalists. Never mind that the aforementioned higher-division team’s record in competitive matches is 4-3-3, that they lost the first one of these tournaments, and that they won the second only due to a shocking episode of capitulation from the Montreal Impact and their reserve team.

In case you haven’t guessed, I don’t much care for axioms.

Look at Toronto’s roster. You thought the Nick Garcia Experience last year was bad then, boy, you ain’t seen nothing yet. In direct defiance of one of my articles from last year, Julian De Guzman looks talented as hell but useless in the FC’s setup and Toronto could not physically be missing Carl Robinson more than they are. The strike force is almost unbelievably bad. Both the midfield and defense have some talented individuals – Nana Attakora and Dwayne De Rosario are firmly in “call up to the national team until their legs fall off” territory and Sam Cronin is good enough that we need to invent a time machine just so we can give him a Canadian grandparent – but as units the defense is bad and the midfield isn’t good enough to make up for it. Stefan Frei has all the brain cramps of Fabien Barthez without an iota of Barthez’s talent. Depth is a problem. So is the coach, who has bluntly stated that he doesn’t give a toss about our national championship compared to the league. Whether you think that’s right or wrong is beside the point.

Let’s compare that to the two defending USL-1 finalists the FC will be up against, Vancouver and Montreal. Vancouver is slightly weaker in some departments, with the departure of Charles Gbeke, Marcus Haber, and 2009 hero Ansu Touré among others. On the other hand, our old nemesis of defense had been addressed with the addition of MLS journeyman Greg Janicki, former Charleston Battery stalwarts Chris Williams and Nelson Akwari, and of course Zourab “Georgian Guy” Tsiskaridze, who wears #77 but don’t hold that against him.

(Sidenote: apparently Georgian Guy played for Miami FC last year. I saw Miami FC in person twice last year and more often on webcasts. You think I’d have remembered a speedy 6′0″ Georgian skinhead with “TSISKARIDZE” on his back.)

Unless the Residency kids come along or Marlon James stays healthy, the Whitecaps are going to have trouble scoring goals this year, but probably less trouble in their league than Toronto would have in theirs. Man for man, James, Edwini-Bonsu, Orgill and Semenets are awfully close to Barrett, White, and Ibrahim.

Montreal, meanwhile, can score with the best of them. Roberto Brown is arguably the best striker in Canada right now until the Ali Gerba situation resolves itself, and the depth is unremarkable but decent with Peter Byers, elder statesman Eduardo Sebrango, and a bevy of kids from Trois-Rivieres. Matt Jordan can steal games. Braz, Pizzolitto, Joqueviel, and Pesoli can help Jordan do that. While the defense has no stars with the loss of Joey Gjertsen, there are an awful lot of really good journeymen like Di Lorenzo, Hemming, Testo, and Placentino. Provided the Impact duck their crises from last season, they have to be a ranking contender for the Voyageurs Cup title.

Where does this leave Toronto? On the outside looking in, barring either a change of heart from Preki or a balls-to-the-wall performance from the FC’s lesser lights. This isn’t a “USSF Division Two is a better league than MLS!” argument. This is “if two good USSF-2 teams that care about the tournament go up against a bad MLS team that doesn’t, the USSF-2 teams will probably win.”

Which goes against every axiom in the book. But like I said, I don’t much care for axioms.

(If you’d like to put somebody else’s money where your mouth is, the esteemed Out of Touch Guy is running a Voyageurs Cup pool. You should enter. I will enjoy crushing you with my blatant Whitecaps homer predictions.)

Make no mistake. USL-1 is going to compromise or it is going to die.

The healthy franchises in USL-1 last season were, in roughly this order, Montreal, Portland, Vancouver, Rochester, and Puerto Rico. Montreal and Vancouver are being kicked out, Portland (who is part of the rebel alliance themselves) may soon follow and are already in MLS for 2011. Rochester has gone downhill both on and off the pitch over the last two years and have just lost their greatest rival in the Impact. Puerto Rico is constantly teetering on the edge of madness, trying to make a go of things on their little island in the middle of nowhere, and if you’re relying on the Puerto Rico Islanders to keep your league up that league is already dead and you’re just waiting for it to stop moving.

The new owners of USL-1 have fired a shot across the bow of any potential investor: you exist to serve us. You get no say in league operations or we will try to crush you. Have you heard Jeff Hunt’s old excited noises about a USL-1 expansion team ever since Nu-Rock took over? Of course not, because Jeff Hunt is a businessman and he’s not in the habit of lightning a couple million dollars on fire to keep some penny-ante company happy.

So USL-1 as we know it is going to die – maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, but within the next couple years. Which may be what Nu-Rock was hoping for all along: the profitable parts of the United Soccer Leagues empire are the U-18 and Premier Development Leagues where the players are amateurs and the travel costs reasonable. As Canadian fans, though, this wanton self-destruction should worry us at least a little, for the USL-1 was also our best hope for B-grade markets getting high level professional football.

Yet there is an opportunity here. Sam of the Stretford End was, to my knowledge, the first to leap onto the bandwagon of a new Canadian soccer league (not to be confused – never to be confused – with the Canadian Soccer League).  But there’s a risk in being too ambitious here. Richard Whittall, a guru on the history of the Canadian game, observes that a Canadian soccer league doesn’t necessarily need to be large so long as it’s sustainable.

My goal is six teams. One division. Ideally all in the east, except for Vancouver in the short term. If a West division ends up being sustainable, fantastic. But the main objective here is to bring in successful organizations, people with money, and stadia with seats and get a league that can compete at a near USL-1 level by the summer of 2010.

My six teams would be:

• Vancouver Whitecaps, obviously. They would also be my sole western team, for a couple reasons: first off, the Whitecaps brand and reputation would be important to lend credibility to any new league, and second because the cost and difficulty of getting a league started increases massively as travel distance does. Vancouver has the motivation, the history, and the financial wherewithal to endure flying to and from Ontario for one summer.
• Montreal Impact, even more obviously. They can be an anchor of the league for at least two years and quite likely longer. They have an established fanbase and garbage bags full of money. They’re a lead pipe cinch to be attendance leaders and, like the Whitecaps, their reputation means that the league would instantly be credible to the soccer media. Both the Whitecaps and the Impact would be encouraged to bring in their current rosters for the same credibility reasons, even though, as will be seen, that would basically guarantee one of them the championship for at least three years.
• Jeff Hunt’s Ottawa team. Another guy with money and a building. No history or reputation here, but Hunt was planning to spend at a USL-1 level before so he’d likely be willing to spend at an approximately-USL-1 level now. I’ve got a lot of respect for Jeff Hunt as a businessman, and certainly he has the wherewithal to see an Ottawa franchise through the growing pains. This is by far preferable to elevating the PDL Fury, who can’t draw flies and whose ownership is questionable at best.
• Toronto FC B. This might be a tricky one. Unless they can get BMO Field, stadia might be a problem. I’m not sure Maple Leaf Sports and Entertainment would finance a high-level team unlikely to break even, and MLS would certainly put the kibosh on any formal reserve team deal. A proper reserve team, moreover, would not be competitive with Vancouver or Montreal. But if Toronto’s looking for a way to spend money to improve their team without nudging the salary cap, sending a team of top prospects and not-quite-MLS-calibre veterans to BMO Field for high-level competition on a B team is a good way to do it. The team could be legally distinct from the MLS entity and contracts could be signed with TFC B or MLSE itself instead of TFC proper, avoiding hassles from Don Garber and company.
• Forest City London, our first USL PDL elevation. London played their first PDL campaign in 2009 and were a resounding success off the field. They’re a well-run organization with good ownership and a lovely 8,000-seat stadium at the University of Western Ontario, which means they’re arguably better off for facilities than Toronto FC B or the Whitecaps. The two problems are that they’d have to build their roster from scratch, maybe maintaining a couple exceptional talents such as Anthony Di Biase, and their pockets aren’t too deep, meaning that the larger teams might need to pay a fairly heavy subsidy. It would be nothing, however, compared to the hit the Whitecaps and the Impact take to maintain the likes of Miami FC in USL-1.
• Pick ‘em: somebody who’s probably going to fold, anyway. From here we’re out of the strong immediate candidates and into the realm of risky picks. The PDL Thunder Bay Chill would be attractive because of their history and organizational depth if not for their three-digit attendance. An attractively bold option would be elevating a better CSL team like the Serbian White Eagles, but this would obviously run into perils with ownership, stadia, team quality, and alienating the CSA. Finally, there’d be good ol’ expansion; Quebec City has a larger soccer community than you probably think and would probably have USL-1 already if not for the Impact’s territorial rights. Going further afield to Halifax or Winnipeg would also be possibilities that might not break the bank.

In the short term, this league would work. Except for Ottawa and our hypothetical sixth team, the infrastructure is in place for this league to start playing right now. Ottawa could get going immediately with a temporary home at Frank Clair Stadium playing around the renovations. Our sixth team would be flung into the fire a bit but if the rest of the league is in it to win it this would work. Even if Toronto and the sixth team don’t pan out, that’s four very reasonable organizations and leagues have been built with less.

Not enough for you? Well, there are a couple other bold possibilities.

• Rochester Rhinos. Think about it. They’ve always had plenty of success but they went bankrupt in 2008 and their new owner isn’t exactly a multi-millionaire. Attendance has fluctuated wildly in recent seasons, and now they’re being asked to play in a league where their biggest rivals and best meal ticket, the Montreal Impact, have left? Not to mention another strong franchise in Vancouver and likely a few lesser lights as well? They’re near enough to the Canadian border for our purposes, and their ownership has no sentimental attachments to the United Soccer Leagues.
• Portland Timbers. Another short-term solution but another tempting one. Portland isn’t as gung-ho towards rebellion as the Whitecaps or Impact but they’re part of the rebel ownership group making Nu-Rock’s life such a misery. With the Whitecaps gone the Timbers are left with no rivals west of the Great Lakes and they’re heading up to MLS in 2011 anyway. They may as well get the best value for their one remaining season, and another year of Cascadia Cup derbies in a competitive league might well appeal to the Timbers instead of trying to thump whatever shambles of a USL-2 organization gets dragged upward.

In the medium to long term, we’d face the problem of elevating the Whitecaps and probably the Impact to MLS. They could pull a Toronto FC and send “B” teams down, but that’s not a long-term solution to anyone and would erode the quality of play. Ideally, when Vancouver goes up they’d be replaced by another eastern team, and if the Impact moved up we’d start to creep west. The league could make do with four teams but to me six is the critical mass: few enough to breed rivalries but not so few that familiarity breeds contempt.

Over a decade or so, the league could creep west to other promising markets – Calgary, Edmonton, Winnipeg, to name a few. The best part of this scheme is that it doesn’t require anything we already have, and once a stable core has been built it’ll be no problem adding onto that foundation.

Yes, I’m crazily optimistic. That’s because I’m a Canadian soccer fan.

Saturday was a bit of a rough day for me. I had to work the next morning, so my strategy of “getting right liquored up” was a pretty poor one in hindsight. I effed with my elderly Palm on various unsecured WiFi spots as I staggered through downtown Vancouver, writing my half-recap on this very site and sending various inappropriate Twitter messages. I even implied that Duane Rollins was an alcoholic while staggering drunkenly through Vancouver at 2:30 in the afternoon, which takes a certain sort of chutzpah.

(For the record: I made the “is it too early to switch to hard liquor?” joke at the Lions Pub immediately after the Impact scored to go up 2-0. When they later built on that lead, it was no longer a joke.)

I played some blackjack, which is probably the best drunk activity ever invented. I spend $5 on something called a smoked salmon wrap. I spent the rest of the ferry ride home regretting that expenditure and wound up sauntering through Esquimalt with a bottle of Southern Comfort clutched furtively in my hand singing an Irish lament for Randy Edwini-Bonsu.

What is wrong with me, anyway? I became an official Whitecaps Fan on June 18, 2009, a date you should recognize if only because of the Je me souviens banner waving in the Southside two Saturdays ago. When we somehow scraped and clawed our way into the playoffs and then though the playoffs, even defeating the hated Portland Timbers in one of the best two-leg matches you ever will see, I was happy, but I sure didn’t get thunderingly hammered and send ecstatic Palm-based Twitter messages saying “wooooooooo! the Timbers Army sucks cocks in hell!” Plus I am a Canada fan first and foremost. I wonder if I just like losing.

Actually, no, I don’t wonder, because that game was horseshit and Dave Gantar, the referee, is up for induction into the Benito Archundia Hall of Fame. There was an old joke back in the Aviators days about how the Montreal Impact bought their players and they bought their referees. Like all jokes that strike a little too close to home, it was never really funny so much as painful.

I’m not seriously alleging corruption; that with the Whitecaps heading to MLS in 2011 and the Impact softening their stance towards the new league ownership the league office might want to throw Saputo some love. Stade Saputo is an intimidating place to referee by USL-1 standings, and when 12,000 screaming Hondurans Montrealers are rewarding every dive with a demand for a red card, it can be easy for a non-professional referee to be influenced by it.

I was a hard-nosed, physical defender back in the days when I could sprint the length of a football pitch without collapsing, so I have my opinions on Shaun Pejic’s slide tackle to win the ball after Jay Nolly had been beaten. The defender has as much right to the ball as the attacker does. A striker does not receive magical protection simply by virtue of having temporary possession. Pejic’s slide clipped the ball neatly, sending it out of harm’s way, and only Roberto Brown’s overrunning made him hit Pejic’s legs at all. When he went down (a bit too easily, in my opinion), that was just football. Pejic had played the ball and not the man and he had hit his challenge perfectly. Gantar’s call was either ludicrous over-protectionism or swayed by the Montreal support, packed on the eastern end of the stadium: the fans were up in arms as fans will be on every seemingly borderline play.

(Having stood in those very stands, there’s no way you can see a foul in that close to the goal. Forget it. Brown just fell over and that was good enough for them.)

Was the referee just concerned about protecting strikers from physical play? Hardly. Fast forward to later in the match. The Whitecaps are down and out. Randy Edwini-Bonsu is hauling ass on the ball again. He has speed to burn but not enough moves and he’s reluctant to lay the ball off: this was one of his worse matches because he seemed determined to do it all by himself. But this time it works, and he simply outruns the Impact defenders. The last man back for the Impact takes a few steps forward to meet Edwini-Bonsu about twelve yards from the goal as Edwini-Bonsu is preparing for his shot, and drives Edwini-Bonsu to the ground. The ball did not so much as alter its path. It was a simple shoulder charge, a penalty in any rule book except, apparently, the one Dave Gantar was calling from.

This is without even getting into Shaun Pejic’s red card, which only the most blinded Montreal Ultras are even trying to defend. Or the fact that Roberto Brown was offside on Vancouver’s second goal. Or the missed throw-in calls and various hard Montreal tackles that were overlooked and blatant Montreal dives that were rewarded. Dave Gantar had a horrible, horrible game, and it went entirely in the Impact’s favour. Perhaps he was simply swayed by the crowd, although it is amazingly appropriate that the picture for his Facebook profile is a Whitecaps player protesting as Gantar sends him off.

Gantar was also responsible for the debacle of a game between the Whitecaps and the Carolina Railhawks at Swangard Stadium in August, when he called a vital game decidedly in favour of the Railhawks, including denying an obvious goal for Marlon James. These are not his only incidents. He is just not a good referee and not fit to be officiating the final of North America’s second division.

The first, often unspoken question after a football match is always “did the better team win?” What Impact fans, as well as Whitecaps fans, should be upset about is that Gantar made sure we could not know.

Where’s your father,
where’s your father,
where’s your father, referee?
You don’t have one,
you’re a bastard,
you’re a bastard, referee.

Perfectly above board!

Where’s your girlfriend,
where’s your girlfriend,
where’s your girlfriend, referee?
You don’t have one,
you’re a wanker,
you’re a wanker, referee.

So far, so good!

Where’s your penis,
where’s your penis…

WHOA! Stop right there!

Canadian football fandom can be remarkably schizophrenic sometimes, and a minor sideplot is doing a good job illustrating it. In a week that’s seen Toronto FC playing for its playoff lives against Antonio Ribeiro and Frank Yallop, Asmir Begovic becoming Fredo Corleone, and Montreal taking on Vancouver for all the marbles, the incomparable Two Canadian Guys and Ben Knight Talking About Soccer and the stalwart Andrew Bates of the 24th Minute have both spent time on Impact – Whitecaps referee Carol Anne Chenard, her lack of a ‘Y’ chromosome, and how much that really totally doesn’t matter at all seriously so why are we even talking about it.

I don’t often notice referees, but I tended to notice Chenard in USL-1 and Voyageurs Cup matches because (let’s face it) she has boobies. And I think she’s a fine referee; the Voyageurs Cup was dying for good refereeing and most of the good calls came courtesy Chenard. Saturday night was not her best, though; the red card against Martin Nash was well-earned and it transpired that Peter Byers’s goal was legitimate, but she seemed to struggle calling fouls consistently. This wasn’t an awfully officiated match, but it wasn’t perfect and a few tough-if-accurate calls went against the home team, which is always going to draw interest.  Bates and Knight were concerned that Chenard would be getting more sledging than usual because of her gender – Bates, a card-carrying Southsider, provides an anecdote of a few Southsiders on Saturday trying to start a chant impugning Chenard for her gender and expresses gratitude that it failed.

Now, I’m going to state the obvious so bear with me. Of course Chenard being a woman has no bearing on her competence as a referee. I think we’ve moved past the nineteenth century. No more than ten, maybe twenty percent of sports doctors still think that a woman will lapse into feminine hysterics when confronted with a tough foul in the box (forgive the expression). Knight was correct to say that on the Canadian Guys podcast, and he was also correct when he added that no sensible fan would pick their referees based on race, either. That sort of thing is reprehensible and if somebody in a league office kicks Chenard off a refereeing crew because she’s a woman, that guy should be buried under the north goal at BMO Field when they put the grass in.

What we’ve seen regarding Chenard over the last few days is once again revealing an odd contradiction in football society. Many supporters pride themselves on being anti-authoritarian and working class. When the Whitecaps and the City of Burnaby asked the Southsiders to pretty please not set flares or smoke at Swangard Stadium, the reaction on the Southsiders forum could be summed up as “you’re not the boss of me.” Half the fun of being a supporter is, to quote a shopworn line of Mr. Knight’s, “ten thousand people chanting the F word” – to say things en masse that would get you punched in the testicles if you said them to somebody’s face. So it’s always seemed peculiar to me that football and supporter’s culture draws this neat little dividing line between what is good offensive and what is bad offensive.

My problem is when fans are criticized for bellowing chants about a referee’s gender. We have no problem with stands criticizing the referee’s parentage or marital status. Giving the goalkeeper a “you fat bastard!” is practically de rigeur in Southsider culture. When you chant at somebody on the pitch for being overweight, you’re not submitting a thesis that fat people are drains on society who couldn’t call an offside correctly because they’d be distracted by the smell of hot dogs. To quote the Godfather trilogy for the second post consecutively, it’s nothing personal. It’s strictly business.

I’d never see Carol Anne Chenard at a coffee shop and say “your refereeing is as bad as your parallel parking”, but, then, I’d never grab Bill Gaudette one-on-one and say “you fat bastard, Brett shagged your wife.” The problem with sexism (or racism or any other form of discrimination) in football isn’t yelling things from the stands that might hurt somebody’s feelings, it’s the guy on the 24th Minute post linked above who said that his teammates wouldn’t respect a female referee because of her gender. It’s not a guy who’s had a few beers yelling that the Algerian player is a terrorist while he’s trying to take a goal kick, it’s the guy who’s perfectly sober saying that he doesn’t want one of “them” on his team. The issue isn’t somebody saying “you like it in the ass!” to an opposing striker. The issue is a manager saying that if somebody who actually likes it in the ass is in his dressing room it’ll upset chemistry, and the ignorant players who make it true.

Carol Anne Chenard is a professional referee and a good one. That’s what matters. If she fucks up and I’m in the stands, I will yell everything I can think of at her. That’s not. If you honestly have a problem with that but are totally fine with all the other invective hurled from the stands, you should really re-evaluate things.

I’ve been holding off on writing about the USL Division One playoffs so far. At first, it was because I was lazy and busy. My real job has been pretty packed, and I recently got a fake job writing about hockey for SBNation.com, which pays very poorly but infinitely better than this blog does. Hockey may be my second-favourite sport but it, in strictly relative terms, sells.

Then the Whitecaps beat Charleston and I said “why write about it? they’re going to lose the away leg anyway.” Then they didn’t (Jay Nolly is magic), and I started to get superstitious. By the time the Whitecaps clung to their fingernails to a 3-3 draw in Portland, a game I watched with a heart-pounding combination of delight and mortal terror, not writing about the games had become a full-blown obsession. It was working so far! What if I write about the Whitecaps and Impact and they both lose? Considering my first post to this site was a screed about Santos Laguna stomping on the Impact like the Mexicans were Columbus cops,  it seemed better to avoid the subject altogether.

But now, fuck it. My Whitecaps may lose but Canada is certain to win. Vancouver vs. Montreal, west vs. east, Anglos vs. Frenchies. If we could get an argument on the merits of Toronto FC vs. the USL-1 two, we could work in a we-all-hate-Toronto angle and cover every granule of the Canadian soccer psyche. Wait! Thanks, the Voyageurs!

What am I going to do, provide cogent analysis? Jay Nolly is utterly fantastic. Matt Jordan is pretty fantastic himself. Marcus Haber, Charles Gbeke, Marlon James, and Randy Edwini-Bonsu are the best strike force in USL-1. What a shame about the midfield and defense, which is where Montreal ought to exploit Vancouver like a Downtown Eastside junkie desperate for a fix. But you knew all that already, unless you’re an MLS-only sort of “fan” in which case why have you even read this far?

Really, I owe the Impact something. They’re the reason I realized I was a Whitecaps fan in the first place, when they blew the last match of the Voyageurs Cup so shamefully and I swore using words I didn’t even realize I knew. That’s the sort of debt that can never be repaid. On the other hand, Montreal was also the home of my least favourite experience as a Canadian football fan, standing in the stands of Stade Saputo having beer tossed at me and walking back to my hotel down Rue Ste-Catherine seeing a bunch of cars with Quebec license plates flying Honduran flags while honking their horns triumphantly. Je me souviens my ass.

Playoffs in football are said to be sacrilege. Every great league in the world settles its champions by the standings, not by a contrived cup contest. Not even a Chelsea fan would argue they were champions of England last year by virtue of their FA Cup win.

But here’s what I know. Portland were USL-1 regular season champions this year by a walk. Without the playoffs, I’d be sitting at home wondering if there was some Argentinian league action to watch. Instead, seven teams still had a chance at ultimate glory. Rather than putting away their title with a win and two losses or three draws or whatever they might prefer, they were tested in a must-win situation against a blood rival and found wanting. Montreal, who were left for dead not so long ago, would never have had the chance to scrape and claw and fight their way into a final opportunity that they never deserved until those last weeks where they earned it completely.

Let us suppose that the purpose of football is not to be absolutely fair. Nobody truly loves sports because they want to see the best team win. What we want is excitement, the chance to never say “die”, the agony of losing the title you deserved making it all the sweeter when you win the title you didn’t. What we love is standing in the stands with our supporters knowing that, while Portland should win, there’s just enough doubt in those six little letters to fill our hearts with hope. Knowing that, even if we were worse on the road than Diego Maradona on a Monday morning, we still had a shot.

Look at it this way. You can’t tell me, if the Columbus Crew win the MLS Supporters Shield and face a playoff with, to pick a team that could conceivably be the last playoff seed, Toronto FC, that both sets of fans wouldn’t treat that match as the most important battle since Stalingrad.

They say Don Garber is in Europe imparting his wisdom to the European football czars. Mostly he’s supposed to be talking about sustainable wages and cost certainty and other important parts of the game. But he should take along a tape of the Timbers Army and the Southside waging a verbal war at PGE Park in a match that never could have happened anywhere in Europe, and say how is this not better?

Tradition? Tradition is what you call a ritual when there’s no good reason to keep it.

(By the way, Vancouver 2 – 1 Montreal, Montreal 2 – 0 Vancouver. The Impact are just too deep.)