Commonwealth Stadium in Edmonton is an excellent place to host a soccer game when it is full. Unfortunately, full for Commonwealth Stadium is 60,081 souls. The fewer people in Commonwealth, the closer you get to an average MLS or, worse, an average NASL team’s attendance, and the more the cavernous emptiness of the place starts to stand out. Chants absorbed by a battalion of empty seats. Seven-eighths of the sections in the stadium closed off and what remains still looking altogether too modest.

Last night, FC Edmonton drew 8,762 fans to watch the new local boys take on the famous foreigners, Portsmouth, for something called the “Edmonton Cup”.

What did those 8,762 fans get? Well, they paid not less than $34, after TicketMaster fees, for an adult ticket (the lowest price for general admission which wasn’t even available online). They got an absolutely spectacular evening to watch soccer. They got an opponent with a famous name but nothing else famous about them. With FC Edmonton sporting their home blues Portsmouth was even forced out of their iconic blue strip and into their white and red away kit, detracting just a little from the air of fame surrounding the opponents.

The team selection was even less inspiring. Nary a name in the lineup would have been familiar to even the most ardent observer of the English leagues. Midfielder Michael Brown was the most famous one to turn out, going all ninety minutes. Striker David Nugent also played ninety minutes. But the rest of the team from top to bottom was reserve players, truly dedicated League bench warmers like Nadir Ciftci, and the dregs of Portsmouth’s already rather poor organization.Five of Pompey’s starting eleven had never played so much as a league game. Anybody who paid their minimum of $34 expecting a display of classic football from European professionals went home horrified.

The game itself was a dreary affair. Even with their watered-down lineup Pompey was clearly more skilled and athletic than FC Edmonton, but the Edmontonians played far better as a team. They kept their shape more readily and read each other better, misplaying far fewer balls and getting some nice opportunities out of well-conceived passing plays. Edmonton actually opened the scoring seven minutes in courtesy former Canadian U-2o and current Canadian beach soccer striker Chris Lemire, converting on one of those lovely Edmonton buildups and forcing the ball (and himself) through keeper Jon Stewart. Stewart was badly injured on Lemire’s goal and left the game with suspicions of a broken leg, being replaced by Liam O’Brien.

O’Brien fumbled with the ball early in his relief appearance but eventually grew more and more steady. More importantly, as the game wore on Portsmouth’s superior athleticism and skill began to tell. The Edmonton players seemed to wear down in spite of the cool evening. Their aerial ability was nil, and Portsmouth started to take more advantage of it. Meanwhile, as Edmonton grew tired their first touch let them down more and more, and balls that once found players began to float into touch.

Portsmouth was due to equalize and did through a nice bit of corner play from Nadir Ciftci, alertly poking in David Ritchie’s curving ball. The teams were level both on the scoreboard and on the pitch, and the decisive match for the Edmonton Cup went to penalties (after some five minutes of confusion where the players seemed uncertain what was going to happen). Portsmouth prevailed, 5-4, and lifted a giant trophy it looked like someone had bought off the shelf of a sporting goods store.

The game was underwhelming, the players often incompetent. It was not of the calibre I’ve grown to expect from the North American second division. But the result was fair and Edmonton fans can say, with pride, that they held the FA Cup finalists to a 1-1 draw.

The 8,000-person crowd will raise a few concerned eyebrows. But it was a ferociously expensive mid-week game against a team that serious football fans can’t really take seriously except as a butt for bankruptcy jokes. There was a surprisingly strong Portsmouth traveling contingent of about thirty souls, mostly middle-aged and very courteous Englishmen who could not, physically, have been less impressed with Edmonton. The recently relegated Blue Army turned out more fans for an utterly pedestrian friendly across the ocean against an obscure club that hasn’t even played in the league yet than Canada gets for the Gold Cup! They were very nice men and women, all, and there for a good time, although when I left them it was after escorting them to a rather loud and quite obnoxious Budweiser “party tent” that I admit to leaving trails of fire running away from.

It was also encouraging to see the development of Edmonton’s supporters culture. The FC Edmonton supporters brigade is both small and nameless, but it seems to be growing and a few fans got caught up in the fun from time to time. The chant repertory consists mostly of old favourites with new words sung unconvincingly, but it improved palpably even as the game wore on (for chanting is the kind of thing that develops only with practice). After Jon Stewart was replaced none of us had any idea who the substitute goalkeeper was, but tall and dressed in pink he made an easy target, so we settled for calling him “Billy” in our heckles until @coxon was nice enough to Tweet me his real name. I dunno. “Billy” was funnier.

It was also my first look at the much-reviled FieldTurf installed at Commonwealth this year. At the time it went in, I opined that for all the guff FieldTurf gets from the peanut gallery it will probably be better than the terrible grass pitch Commonwealth was once cursed by. Now I’ve seen it and it’s definitely better. The ball was not afflicted by the random bumps and skips that were once the bane of soccer players in Edmonton. It stood up well to Edmonton’s mostly ground-based attack and there was never any hint that it was playing anything but perfectly. A skeptic may say that Pompey suffered an inordinate number of injuries in the match, but Edmonton was perfectly healthy and the Portsmouth injuries were generally on account of Edmonton players running into them, not the turf.

All in all, it was a dreary game but a lovely evening. The sun was shining, the fans were cheering, and a professional soccer team in Edmonton was playing before my very eyes for the first time in my adult life. They could have lost 7-0 and I would have enjoyed it anyway.

This is Simeon Jackson, hero of Gillingham and seemingly the latest member of newly-promoted Norwich City in what I will have to get used to calling the Npower Championship.

As strikers go, Jackson is little, and unlike most small men he’s not actually all that fast. He is, however, an assassin in front of goal and that allowed him to record a credible fifteen goals in League One last season in spite of ending the year on a five-game scoreless drought while fighting through an injury. He is a legitimate professional talent, even if his strike rate for Canada of one goal in ten appearances is Rob Friend territory and he’s never played a second of his life higher than the English third division.

There’s some enthusiasm about Jackson joining Norwich, which in spite of being recently promoted is expected to hang around the Championship and avoid relegation without difficulty. There’s also some cynicism, but most of it is along the lines of “well, now he’s hurt his chances of playing in the Premier League“. He is only twenty-three, after all. At age twenty-three, Tomasz Radzinski was playing for a bad Belgian team. Rob Friend was just coming out of Moss FK in the Norwegian second division. Twenty-three is young. Barring injury there’s no doubt Jackson has untapped potential and one hopes Norwich will help him realize it.

But it is just potential. An Englishman by the name of Billy Sharp is another 5′9″ striker in his early twenties and he was actually the leading scorer in all of League One two seasons running, yet he has completely failed to accomplish anything at a higher level. League One proves nothing, and in limited experience against better opposition Jackson has one poacher’s goal against Cyprus, one glorious moment against Aston Villa, and over a dozen games of nothing much. Nobody, least of all me, is writing Jackson off, but let’s be realistic. If Jackson can win a starting spot with Norwich that will be a tremendous victory for a young player. If he actually shows Premier League quality, then he’ll get his chance but that’s more than an outside shot. But the excitement over Jackson is disproportionate to his actual accomplishments. If one were to list Canada’s best players under twenty-five, would Jackson break the top five? Adam Straith, Nana Attakora, Will Johnson, Dejan Jakovic, André Hainault, and that was easy.

Hell, Marcus Haber got on a Championship roster last year. Ask him how much good that’s done so far.

Meanwhile, a striker who has actually accomplished something in his career has also found a new team and he’s just coming in for mockery. Ali Gerba signed with the Montreal Impact yesterday, and while the North American Soccer League isn’t exactly the Npower Championship it has got a better name and at least Canadians might be able to start in it.

Shall we get the jokes out of the way? Very well. O ho ho ho Ali Gerba is so fat he doesn’t run around defenders, he runs around defenders. There. Also, he’s in the prime of his career and if he retired tomorrow he’d have the best strike rate of anybody in the history of the Canadian men’s national team among players with over ten caps. He’s had competitive strike rates in the then-Coca-Cola Championship, in Germany, all over North America, in fact just about everywhere except Toronto FC where he saw spot duty and was cut by a manager who said “no, I’d rather have Fuad Ibrahim, thanks.” But Toronto is very nearby, and its soccer media is very loud these days, and so Ali is the fat over the hill guy who can score like mad against banana republics but never against Mexico except for that one time when he did, and Simeon Jackson is the bright young pup who hasn’t actually proven anything against international-quality players yet but is neither fat nor prone to giving The Score personalities embarrassing interviews about how awful the Toronto FC dressing room is.

Of course, at age twenty-three Ali Gerba was named “Ngon” and was playing in something called the “A-League”. One never knows.

Simeon Jackson is developing well, if not brilliantly. But Ali Gerba is there, now, and is clearly our only capable scoring striker. One is the butt of jokes, the other is the subject of hagiography. It’s entirely possible that come the 2011 Gold Cup or even the 2014 World Cup qualifying run, the fat man will score more goals than the prodigy. In fact, if Gerba sticks with a club for the next couple seasons I’d be willing to bet on it. Potential is lovely but never wager against actual, genuine, and proven ability.

Arsenal striker Eduardo: dives, not carded by the official, suspended two games after the fact.

Sheffield United defender Chris Morgan: nearly murders Iain Hume in cold blood with a ruthless, deliberate elbow to the head, not carded by the official, FA utterly dismisses the possibility of post-match sanction.

Yeah, that’s about right.

It’s a shame that the Maple Leaf Forever has been so quiet lately. After all, there’s been quite a bit going on with Canadian players around the world. David Hoilett made his debut with Blackburn, Asmir Begovic is getting first team time with Portsmouth, and of course there are the Jonathan De Guzman transfer rumours…

Okay, none of them are exactly Canadian. Regardless, not a few Canadians have been shuffling about the football world. If you ever want up-to-date information on the tribulations of every Canadian outside Canada, the Voyageurs should be your one-stop shop, particularly the aptly-named Mother of all Canadians Abroad thread, from which I mercilessly lifted much of this news. I did, however, try to add my own insight and research to it, so hopefully even the hardest-core Voyageur will find something in this summary they didn’t already know,

In a sad bit of news, alumnus of the Canadian national team and former Toronto Blizzard standout Fernando Aguiar had retired from football at the age of 37, returning to Canada. Mixed in with sorrow at a great warrior from a bygone era finally hanging up his boots, the most natural response to this is “Jesus Christ, Fernando Aguiar was still playing?”

Indeed he was. Aguiar was actually at a surprisingly high level, playing for S.C. Gondomar of the Portugese Liga Vitalis (their second division). Aguiar was once known for speaking before he thought, famously running off his mouth after not being selected for a friendly on the Voyageurs board. But in recent years he has kept his head down while quietly accumulating the best resume of any Canadian outfield player in his age group. The last true casualty of the Yallop-Watson dark age, Aguiar will be remembered fondly.

Andrew Ornoch recently joined the many Canadians plying their trade in the Netherlands, joining up (as reported in superior detail by the Out of Touch guys and by Ben Rycroft) with Heracles Almelo of the Eredivisie. The 24-year-old plays both midfield and striker and enjoys a positive reputation both in Canada and in Europe, where he is called a positive influence as well as a talented player. Ornoch signed on a free transfer after impressing the Dutch in his trial, and the manager has indicated (Dutch) he’ll get a shot in the starting eleven.

Born in Warsaw, Ornoch is (until they change the rules again) a signed, sealed, and delivered Canadian: he appeared in Dale Mitchell’s last match, the famous 3-0 curbstomping in Jamaica which also saw a forgotten Bosnian named Asmir Begovic spend the entire match on the bench. Ornoch has also appeared against Hungary in 2006 and Cyprus earlier this year.

While Ornoch enters the Netherlands, could-be Canadian Jonathan De Guzman is on his way out, being linked to many of the powers of Europe from his current side Feyenoord. Chelsea, Stuttgart, Everton, and Valencia have been linked to the starlet of ambiguous nationality, with the transfer fee rumoured to be in the £4 million range. The Chelsea rumour is getting the most buzz, but that’s probably just because they’re Chelsea: they are reportedly looking to send De Guzman out on loan and the younger De Guzman is not at all happy with that idea.

Jonathan is obviously catching the eye of the European press after an injury-plagued 2008 campaign, which is great for him but a shame for us Canadians as we’d hoped he’d slip under the radar long enough to commit to the maple leaf. For what it’s worth, though, there is still no Dutch national buzz around De Guzman and they seem content to let World Cup Qualifying pass without tying him down. Perhaps the Dutch have no doubts about his loyalties, or perhaps they have no interest. We outsiders can only guess.

The much bigger news for Canada fans came on a much smaller scale, and promising defender Adam Straith, formerly of the Vancouver Whitecaps academy and fresh off of a year on loan in Germany, will stick around in Europe as the Whitecaps agreed on his transfer to 2.Bundesliga Energie Cottbus for an undisclosed fee.

Cottbus have made a habit of acquiring Canadians lately. In addition to Straith and the other half-dozen Whitecaps loanees up and down the Cottbus youth setup, the newly-relegated side also rescued Lars Hirschfeld from obscurity by signing him on a free transfer from CFR Cluj earlier this summer. The Canadians have not yet gotten any first-team experience, with Hirschfeld consigned to the bench until Cottbus manages to transfer out the overqualified Gerhard Tremmel, but both Straith and Hirschfeld were acquired with the expectation that they’ll be starting sooner or later.

Straith, 19, is entirely a product of the British Columbian soccer system, having played with Victoria United of the PCSL, the Whitecaps Residency team, and the usual panoply of elite youth teams. He made five appearances with Cottbus II in his loan spell and acquitted himself very well, and while the Germans will of course train him up to full European standards he and his kinsmen are the much-belated realization of the long-held dream that Canada could develop its own players domestically.

Last but not least, a Canadian goalkeeper has signed in the Scottish second division. There’s not much glory in the Scottish second tier but since I did an entire post on our goalkeeper signing for a soon-to-be-relegated Scottish Premier side, the least I can do is give this guy a paragraph. Cameron McKay agreed to terms earlier this week with Cowdenbeath F.C., joining a promising squad. It’s certainly a leap for McKay, who was previously playing in the Ontario provincial league with the other part-time warriors that dot Canada’s obscure soccer landscape.

According to perpetual newsbreaker of obscure Canadians Dino Rossi, Abney is twenty-four years old, and nobody will be shocked to hear that he has no international resume. I don’t follow the Ontario provincial leagues (surprise surprise) and so I don’t know a damned thing about this kid except what I got out of the Voyageurs thread: most interestingly, he has a blog with six posts but a pretty engaging writing style. He may be even less prolific than I am but he’s also getting paid to play football while I sit in an office staring at the clock all day, so he’s ahead of me there.

One of my pet peeves about the sports media in this country is that they have no idea what a Canadian football fan is like.

Seriously. Open up the pages of a major daily and even a respected reporter like Stephen Brunt will burst into generalization and errors of fact when Canadian fans come up. Generalizing Canadian supporters from Toronto FC or Vancouver Whitecaps fans or the guys at the pub in Liverpool jerseys are like assuming all NHL fans are basically Toronto Maple Leafs diehards with different laundry. But football’s heritage in this country is far weaker than hockey’s, and the media hacks flower into cliche because they simply don’t know better.

Never fear, mediocre sports scribes of our glorious dominion. I, Lord Bob, despite never having been further east than Montreal, have taken it upon myself to do the generalizing for you. Merely refer to the 2,000 largely inane words below, and you will understand what it is to be a Canadian football fan.

The Casual

Quote: “Who’s that Canadian on Manchester United again?”

Knowledge Level: Wouldn’t recognize Mike Klukowski if he saw him on the street.

Tell-Tale Symptoms: Owns at least one of an Arsenal, Manchester United, Chelsea, or Liverpool kit. Could tell you how many goals Wayne Rooney scored last year but thinks the New York/New Jersey Metrostars still exist.

By far the most common football fan in Canada, the casual is exactly what he sounds like. He’ll tend to support one of the English Big Four, and perhaps he’ll go to a Major League Soccer game before leaving in the seventy-fifth minute to beat the traffic. This is the sort of guy who’s dragged into a supporter’s section by his buddy, will listen to the singing and chanting and say “this is cool” but not ever, ever join in.

The casuals are perfectly respectable, reasonable people. Many of them are thoroughly decent men and women with rewarding jobs, loving families, and many hobbies besides football. Though they have decided not to arrange their lives around a game, if anything they deserve more of our respect for keeping their priorities so keenly in order.

Real supporters avoid these guys like the plague.

The Apprentice

Quote: That tuneless yelling you get when you don’t quite know a chant yet.

Knowledge Level: Would recognize Mike Klukowski on the street.

Tell-Tale Symptoms: Renews his passport early “just in case”. Buys a Canada kit in the wrong colour because the red ones were out of stock, then feels guilty and spends twice as much to get a red one as well. In the latter stages, becomes genuinely alarmed at how much time and money he’s spending on a losing team that plays in Canada once every two years. Liable to become The Voyageur without swift psychiatric help.

If anybody deserves our pity, it is the apprentice. Lacking the cynicism borne from years of failure, the apprentice is often the most gung-ho member in any supporter’s section. Those casuals who enjoy the supporter’s section a bit too much become the apprentice. When you’re at a sparsely attended match, a person wanders into the supporter’s section, has a beer, has a laugh, and winds up cheering and roaring and chanting and standing on the rail hurling epithets at the referee’s country of origin, you just witnessed the birth of the apprentice.

These guys are prone to lapses, both major and minor. Whether it’s thinking Canada has a midfielder named Maxime Bernier or thinking the movie Green Street was a documentary and trying to start a fight with the opposing supporters, no apprentice gets through his first year as a supporter without doing something unbelievably embarrassing. Usually, though, he’ll be the only one who wasn’t embarrassed by it.

The Voyageur

Quote: “Marc Bircham was all right, but he was no Carl Valentine.”

Knowledge Level: Would recognize Mike Klukowski’s extended family on the street.

Tell-Tale Symptoms: Passport has more stamps than a hyperactive kid’s scrapbook. Can recommend cheap hotels in Honduras. Knows where Phillips Bakery is.

Every country has its bloc of guys who care just a little bit too much. In Canada, these guys are the Voyageurs. For those not up on their Canadian history, back in our colonial days voyageurs were Canadian fur traders renowned for hiking vast distances through unknown country filled with hostile natives while carrying two-hundred-pound packs and portaging canoes before plunging through white-water rapids, killing some beavers, and then doing the same thing in the other direction. They were few in number but highly respected and more than a little crazy.

Replace “carrying huge packs and canoes” with “drinking buckets full of beer” and “killing some beavers” with “cheering on Canada and occasionally fighting Hondurans and Costa Ricans” and that’s basically a modern Voyageur in a nutshell.

Most Voyageurs are very normal people in their non-soccer lives, except that once or twice a year they take time off to travel across the continent to stand in a half-empty stadium and cheer for whichever mediocre eleven-man lineup deigned to show up at the match without defecting. They’re the sort of people who’ll stand in Commonwealth Stadium, in Edmonton, at the end of autumn until ten at night and then say “do you know what we need? More beer.” They also know every player in every league in the world with so much as a Canadian grandparent, except for Dominic Imhof.

Normal people avoid these guys like the plague.

The European

Quote: “You guys don’t understand football like we do in the old country.”

Knowledge Level: Irrationally resents Mike Klukowski for something Poland did in the war.

Tell-Tale Symptoms: Looks at North American supporters groups like a particularly cute puppy who just piddled on the rug. Drinks more than anybody else at the pre-game gathering. Sings words that match no known chant but sings them with so much gusto everyone else has to join in. Knows more than two players for the Serbian White Eagles.

Not to be confused with the faux European (see below), the European is from some country where they play football in ninety-year-old stadia with rivalries determined by genocide instead of a Voyageurs Cup match and who is deadlier with half a beer bottle than most people are with handguns. Though they always view the Canadian game as a pale imitation of what they’re used to, these guys are universally popular because they have the best stories out of anyone, they’ll drink so much that their doctors buy a new Mercedes after every World Cup, and even if they say that the Canadian game is small-time and parochial they’ll throw themselves into it with such unreserved determination that even a Voyageur has to take half a step backwards.

If you’re ever at a pre-match gathering and you want to hear things you’d never heard before, find the oldest guy with the weirdest accent and just start buying him drinks.

The Toronto FC Diehard

Quote: “JIMMY BRENNAN!!!!!!!!!!!!!”

Knowledge Level: Thinks Mike Klukowski would already be playing in Toronto if BMO Field had grass.

Tell-Tale Symptoms: Thinks that Canada’s best players are, in order, Brennan, De Rosario, and Serioux. Is irate whenever one of those players is actually called up to Canada. Evaluates all national team members by considering if they’d make a good designated player.

Say what you will about the Toronto FC diehards, but they’re real fans. Most of them became real fans very very quickly, going from “the Toronto Lynx? Aren’t they a women’s lacrosse team” to “THIS IS OUR HOUSE!” in ten seconds flat. But if they needed the hype and attention of MLS to get drawn in, at least they got drawn in eventually.

I like the Toronto FC crowd. They packed BMO Field to the gills when the national team last played there, which was a pleasant surprise and made the Montrealers look really stupid a month later. That wouldn’t have happened without Toronto FC, because when those fans got into the game, they didn’t do it half-assed. Seeing a pro-Canadian crowd, even if it was just on television, hearing chants for our boys… that’s not something I’ll forget any time soon.

But let’s be honest, guys. They do get the blinkers on a bit. The recent Julian de Guzman excitement was a case in point, where these newly-minted hardcore fans mumbled vague wonderings about where Canada’s best player would go, sat straight upright when it looked like he might go to Toronto, pounding talk radio and blog comments with more material than they see in a month, then mumbling some more when the furore passed. They do their research enough to know what a guy like Julian de Guzman means, but not enough to care when he’s not at BMO Field.

Plus they cheer for Amado Guevara, which gets them a reserved table at the sports bar in Hell on its own.

The Faux European

Quote: “Oh, I don’t watch the Major League, I’m a Serie A fan.” (insert pretentious smirk here)

Knowledge Level: Thinks Mike Klukowski played right back for Juventus back in the mid-nineties. Is wrong, of course, but doesn’t expect you to catch him.

Tell-Tale Symptoms: Non-ironically referred to the Toronto – Real Madrid friendly as “the match of the season”. Thinks two of Canada’s professional teams are the Montreal Impacts and the Toronto Effcees. Has never actually been to Swangard, BMO, or Stade Saputo. Will ramble on about how the dogfight between Barcelona and Real Madrid in La Liga will turn out. Will always specify that Barcelona and Real Madrid are in La Liga as if he thought you wouldn’t know that. Knows much, much less about football than he lets on.

The faux European is one of the only truly loathsome parts of the Canadian footballing world. They are plastic supporters for countries they’ve never even been to. They cheer for some major European powerhouse and always have some bullshit reason like “oh, my dad was born in London so of course I cheer for Chelsea” (he was probably born under the shadow of a League One team’s stadium but that doesn’t matter to these glory-hunting fuckfaces) while trying to defuse criticism by saying they have a favourite “lower-league team”, usually considering “lower-league” to mean Serie B or perhaps the bottom-middle half of the English Premiership.

People like this are the reason why, whenever somebody says “my family is from Manchester”, you can assume they’re a United fan and can’t give a shit about City (and don’t even get me started on FC United of Manchester). They’ll refuse to watch any North American league because it’s “beneath them” – obviously football isn’t  interesting when it’s not Cristiano Ronaldo flopping across the pitch like his hamstrings were pieces of Silly Putty.

And the worst part is, for all these assholes talk about Wayne Rooney and Marco van Basten and Francisco Totti, none of these guys actually know shit about football.

Seriously. They’ll talk your ear off about how Didier Drogba is fat and slow and whatever else the colour commentator helpfully told them, but take them to a match and probe them a glimmer of original thought and they’ll freeze up like Chad Barrett with an open header. The thing is, none of them are football fans. They’re fakes, simulacrums of what they think the cool European is, pale imitations of an archetype that never really existed.

If you go to the Kop at Anfield, yank out a diehard, drop him into a Conference North stadium and tell him to watch a match, he’ll still have a ball because the only thing he loves more than Liverpool is football in general. He has nothing to prove. He doesn’t have to shit on the rest of the world for you to know he’s a Liverpool fan. But his Canadian brethren don’t give a damn about the game. They just want you to think they do, and so they put on their ridiculous facade and prance about like they’re not living a lie.

Close your eyes for a moment and think back to 2004 or so, and all the idiots you met at your local football pub who went to school near Newcastle and pretty much had to become a Magpies fan. Now think about the number of Newcastle fans you haven’t met this year. That’ll tell you all you need to know.

The Scottish Premier League is bad, and Falkirk is worse.

Scotland’s footballing landscape these days is an all-too-familiar one. Celtic and Rangers are Celtic and Rangers. Some clubs are staying afloat, and the rest are acting exactly like I would if I owned a football club, trying to get new signings with the change in the couch cushions and refusing to answer the phone because you know it’s just a bill collector threatening to cut off your Internet access.

But it’s still the third-best league in the British Isles. It’s still a step above Romania or Greece or any of the other recent haunts of Canada’s lost generation of goalkeepers. And playing Celtic and Rangers is a step above playing Port Vale and Huddersfield, which is why I was so pumped up when Josh Wagenaar signed with Falkirk last week.

Pumped up and blown away. Wagenaar split his starts last year at Yeovil with the enigmatic Asmir Begovic before Begovic was recalled to Pompey and did not get rave reviews. Yeovil offered Wagenaar a contract to remain on but at no point did he look like he deserved to be anywhere other than where he was. Yet he refused to sign the contract because he wanted to play at a higher level, and now, improbably, he is.

Falkirk is not the best environment for Wagenaar to surface in, though. Last year the Bairns escaped relegation by the narrowest of margins by beating Inverness no the last day of the season, while mounting a surprise Cinderella run in the Scottish Cup. But the manager of that remarkable season, “Yogi” Hughes, has left for greener pastures, as did quite a few of the players. New boss Eddie May is getting his first taste of management after coming through the ranks as a player and a youth coach. He’s brought in seven new players and the order of the day is “saving money”, which explains the former mid-table League One goalkeeper.

The good news for Canadian fans is that Wagenaar will compete with incumbent Robert Olejnik for the starting spot, a 22-year-old Austrian best known for some junior international caps and being an Aston Villa youth player once. Olejnik got the start for Falkirk’s season debut, but Wagenaar’s been getting all the press and the Falkirk media seems excited about repeating the words “Canadian international” as often as possible (just to clarify for any Scots reading: two caps, both friendlies, not impressive, rode the pine at the Gold Cup to Greg Sutton’s worst goaltending performance since the early nineties).

Can Wagenaar take the starting job? That depends on Olejnik, but the management seems to be open to the possibility and pleased with Wagenaar so far. It’ll be a big step for Wagenaar if he manages it, but he’d have to be a hero for Falkirk to survive the drop this season.

If he pulls it off, though, I think Lars Hirschfeld might have a backup.

It’s a quiet time of year for Canadian football. Toronto is falling into their usual non-playoff obscurity, Montreal is a shambles, Vancouver is struggling, the national team is inactive and its prospective players are searching their family trees for grandfathers in other countries. The men’s team isn’t going to play a competitive match until 2011 (and, knowing the CSA, going to have one friendly against Moldova until then). Makes it hard for a blog focused on the Canadian national program to find material.

So I’m copping out. I’m looking overseas. 2009-10 is going to be a good season for Canadians in the English Football League, and like seemingly everyone else in the world I’m going to have a look at those lucky few. Canadians will be playing in every level of the Football League from the Premiership to League Two, and here’s a brief glimpse at the ones who matter.

Yes, it’s a cheap gimmick. Yes, it ignores the Canadians playing at a high level in countries that aren’t England. Don’t worry, unless Jacob Lensky retires again or another Andrea Lombardo who isn’t actually our Andrea Lombardo signs with the Mongolian ninth-division champions, I’ll probably get to them.

David Edgar (DF, Burnley [EPL]): A former U-20 player with zero senior caps! His father is English, making Edgar eligible for the country he plays in! Declined a callup to the Gold Cup which would have captied him! Aaaaaaah! Aaaaaaaaaah! Aaaaaaaaaaaah! Fit that man for Owen Hargreaves’s old jersey already, it’s over!

Mortal panic about his nationality aside, Edgar had the best preseason of any Canadian anywhere in the world. Signing with Burnley on a free transfer was the perfect move for Edgar, who will be getting first team minutes on a Premiership side that has a chance of avoiding relegation. Unlike Newcastle, he won’t be playing in a bankrupt cesspool of resentment but for a promising club on the rise. His reviews were generally positive in preseason play, although he was unremarkable: pretty much David Edgar’s life story to this point.

Edgar is twenty-two, and if he’s for real this is his best chance to show it. Edgar played nineteen first-team matches with Newcastle over the years and didn’t particularly impress the Magpies faithful. Newcastle (as our resident Newcastle fan pRoke could tell you if he ever wrote a post) was not the best team for a youngster to prove himself on, but at some point if Edgar’s going to make a career in the Premier League, he’d better look like he belongs sooner rather than later.

Asmir Begovic (GK, Portsmouth [EPL]): Only arguably Canadian, but if he is he’s our second-most important player. Before the season began there was an expectation that Begovic would be Pompey’s backup behind the seemingly invulnerable David James (the British Pat Onstad), with 28-year-old incumbent backup Jamie Ashdown out of favour at Fratton Park. Unfortunately for Begovic, Pompey recently signed Finnish veteran Antti Niemi, who I thought played for the Chicago Blackhawks but turns out to have a rich English league history, recently starting at both Southampton and Fulham before prematurely retiring with a wrist injury.

As a result, Begovic’s role in 2009-10 seems to be the same as his role in 2008-09, with predominantly reserve duty, maybe a short loan spell to a desperate Championship or an optimistic League One side, and perhaps one or two games with the first team when their pensioner goalkeepers need a night off. This isn’t the development any of us were hoping for from Begovic, and the acquisition of Niemi indicates that, for whatever reason, Paul Hart doesn’t think the twenty-two year old can carry the mail yet. Possibly he’s afraid Begovic will turn up playing for Plymouth all of a sudden.

David Hoilett (FW, Blackburn [EPL]): He’s on this list for completeness’s sake, but the smart money is that Hoilett will be playing for neither Canada nor Blackburn in the coming year. His national loyalties, though ambiguous, seem to lean towards Jamaica. On the club end of things, in spite of a landmark court case to get a work permit this year Hoilett seems most likely to enjoy either another loan stint or a season spent on the bench and with the reserves.

Hey, no complaints! Jesus, the kid’s nineteen! He’s scored a brace in the friendlies and he’s impressing everybody after his preposterously promising loan last year to FC St. Pauli. If he does go to Canada, a strike force of Jackson and Hoilett in five years time would be positively frightening (yes, they’re both short, but when was the last time Canada scored off a header anyway?). Despite missing the end of the 2.Bundesliga season with a broken foot, fitness does not seem to be an issue. If I were Blackburn, I might loan him out to the Championship and let him get first-team experience against men, but at some point this season I expect Hoilett to be the first Canadian striker to run onto a Premier League pitch since Tomasz Radzinski.

Jaime Peters (DF/MF, Ipswich [CC]): Ah, Jaime Peters. The Patron Saint of Lost Footballing Causes, the man who has been just around the corner from stardom since Frank Yallop was manager. When Roy Keane took over in Ipswich, every Voyageur knew immediately: that was it. It was over for the dynamic but sometimes flakey Peters in England. No way… no way… would Keane give Peters minutes at any position other than towel boy. We might as well fit him for his Charleston Battery jersey right now.

Then, late last year, an injury crisis forced Peters to come off the reserves and play at full back, where he did pretty well, actually. Then he showed up in training and busted his ass, got called to the Gold Cup, and last weekend made a start at central midfield for Ipswich where he was, according to witness reports, terrific.

Yes, yet again us Canadian supporters have been drawn into the endless game of holding out hope for Jaime Peters. Whatever corner he had left to turn, he has by all accounts turned it. Keane believes in him enough to put him in a central starting role to open the season, and one match in Peters has repaid that trust. It’s like a dream. Jaime Peters is finally putting it all together? This could end very, very well.

Or he could revert to his typical form and wind up on the reserve team. But I believe in him (again).

Iain Hume (MF/FW, Barnsley [CC]): Chris Morgan is a cunt.

It’s saying something for Humey that he’s even on this list after getting his head split by one of the dirtiest men in football last year. In preseason friendlies, he looked like how you’d expect somebody who was out of shape on account of his near-fatal skull injury to look and the Barnsley management has said that Hume won’t feature in the team straight away until he gets his match fitness back. But, hell, it’s just lovely to see him again.

We won’t know until he plays a little whether he’s the same Iain Hume we all know and love, though. We can hope so, but our hopes aren’t the issue.

Simeon Jackson (FW, Gillingham [L1]): The Great Canadian Hope! Heir apparent to Dale Mitchell as a pacey short guy who somehow manages to score a garbagebag full of goals no matter who he’s playing against! This is a guy who was born to be a Vancouver Whitecap and score nine billion goals over a six hundred year MLS tenure before retiring as a hugely popular and inexplicably productive old man with a potbelly and moving into an ultimately catastrophic management career.

Yeah, he only has one international goal, but in fairness his international career started this past spring. And after a hat trick in an out-of-a-bad-novel 5-0 Gillingham win, he’s scoring three goals per League One game in his career and should be the league’s all-time leading scorer by March or so.

I love Simeon Jackson. Love love love Simeon Jackson. This kid came onto the scene in the Conference National with Rushden and Diamonds and scored a lot, then people said “ah, but let’s see if he can do it in the Football League”. Then he moved to Gillingham and scored a lot, but people said “that’s just League Two, let’s see what he can do in League One!” So far, so good.

Jackson has a history of burying the tough chances. His pace matches up with any striker in England. With his skill set, given time to adjust there’s no reason he can’t thrive in League One or even beyond that. If Gillingham wants to stay up they’ll need a lot of production from Jackson, and if he’s healthy they’ll get it.

Paul Peschisolido (Manager, Burton Albion [L2]): Oh, Pesch. You’re basically English in spirit. Can’t blame you, you’ve lived there a while. But whenever some hack writes an article about you in an English paper, it’ll be emblazoned in type for the world to see: “Canadian-born manager Paul Peschisolido.”

The first Canadian manager in Football League history, Peschisolido’s only previous backroom experience was four months as assistant to Jeff Kenna at Ireland’s St. Patrick Athletic. It’s pretty sparse experience but Burton Albion is a pretty lousy team: freshly promoted from the Conference National, and the jump between Conference and League is as great as any in England. Burton Albion is everyone’s favourite for the drop and if Peschisolido manages to save them that will be an awfully big feather in his already crowded cap.

Terry Dunfield (MF, Shrewsbury Town [L2]): Terry Dunfield is a vision of what David Edgar’s future might be. A talented prospect in the Manchester City system, Dunfield started out with rave reviews but never lived up to them, and his career gradually slumped down, down, down. He scored a goal per game (really) for the Canadian U-20s but never got a sniff at the senior team. Now he’s with a respectable League Two side and didn’t even get into the game to start their season.

Nothing against Dunfield. He’s a respectable Canadian, by most accounts a decent human being, and not a half-bad footballer. He and Shrewsbury Town would have made it to League One last season but for the intervention of Simeon Jackson popping Josh Wright’s corner into the goal at Wembley Stadium. But it hasn’t been going his way the last few years, and if he’s going to be a bench player in Shrewsbury that’s just another disappointment for the twenty-seven year old in a career full of them.

Last week, it was made official. Sporting a fancy new beard, Jacob Lensky had signed with FC Utrecht (Dutch).

The manager had a lot of encouraging things to say, considering the fact that Lensky has one career Eredivisie appearance and has been out of football for a year. The technical director was more realistic, calling Lensky a “long-term” project but sounding convinced of his physical and technical abilities. Lensky’s reportedly been getting a look at fullback rather than his native position, which was an attacking midfield role, which will be yet another hurdle for Lensky to overcome as he gets himself back into the professional game.

For those who aren’t familiar with Jacob’s story, the previous edition of the Jacob Lensky Saga is highly recommended reading: to summarise, Lensky was a brilliant prospect since he was old enough to kick a ball whose only question marks were his own desire and a family that may have desired a little too much. If Lensky has genuinely rediscovered his passion, all the luck in the world.

Lensky’s been predominantly getting action at fullback rather than his native midfield positon, and in a 3-1 friendly loss for Utrecht against Ankaraspor of Turkey he got bad reviews (Dutch) for his play in the first half. There’s been some very moderate anxiety over Lensky potentially jumping ship to the Czech Republic national team (his father, Boris, is of Czech descent) after Lensky badmouthed the Canadian programme in an interview back in the Netherlands. But Lensky’s been a good servant of the Canadian team for his entire life to date, including in the Olympic qualifiers and, more importantly, it seems doubtful that the Czechs would want him.

Frankly, for at least a couple years, it seems doubtful that the Canadians would want him.

The big question around Lensky is “is he doing this for the right reasons?” Is he simply another man in his early twenties facing the prospect of working for a living and realizing that kicking a ball around doesn’t seem so bad in comparison? Because if so, it might not be long before he remembers what drove him out of the professional game in the first place. Worst of all, is he succumbing pressure from people around him trying to live out their ambitions through Jacob?

Or maybe he’s someone who’s been flying around Europe since he was a boy, trialing here and getting a youth contract there, who broke into the freedom of adulthood, went to live a normal life for a year, and in so doing rediscovered everything he had loved about the game to begin with? If that’s the case, then the sky’s the limit. Maybe he won’t be the incredible attacking midfielder we’d all dreamed of, a worthy heir to Dwayne De Rosario, but he’ll be a Canadian playing professional football on his own terms. And that ain’t bad.

If you haven’t heard the latest report of Julian De Guzman’s potential free transfer to Toronto FC, you’re either a basketball fan who accidentally searched for Martin Nash instead of Steve Nash or living under a rock.

The Toronto fans who blamed Maple Leaf Sports and Entertainment for not spending money on Toronto FC never had much of an argument and now have even less of one, for the contract (De Guzman confirmed on It’s Called Football this morning that he had received an offer from Toronto) would, according to Ives, make Julian De Guzman the second-highest paid player in Major League Soccer. He’s probably not the second-best player in Major League Soccer – I’d place Donovan, Keller, probably Blanco, and frankly probably De Rosario ahead of him – but there’s no doubt he’d instantly make Toronto an MLS Cup contender, particularly if the cap hit only required them to jettison role player Carl Robinson.

So if I were a Toronto FC fan, I’d be gung-ho for this deal. But I’m not a Toronto FC fan. I’m a Canada fan and this is a Canada blog, and while I always want Toronto FC to do well in MLS the national team comes first.

And as a national team supporter, I’m leery.

We know that De Guzman has offers on the table from La Liga and the 1.Bundesliga, both high-end European leagues. MLS is a couple steps below the German first division, so right away one of Canada’s best players would be moving to a markedly inferior league for the sake of money and sentiment. This might be forgiven if it would conspicuously increase the profile of the game in Canada, but De Guzman, for all his success in Spain, isn’t the most high-profile Canadian footballer. Dwayne De Rosario, to pick one, has always been much better-known to casual North American fans, who embrace flashy offensive stars much more readily than steady defensive midfielders who play a continent away and have never achieved much with the national team.

De Guzman would, of course, be famous simply because of his being Toronto FC’s designated player, and the soccer-savvy world would be thrilled with the signing, but they’re not the ones who we have to convince in order to grow the game here.

Second, as we’ve seen Toronto’s commitment to the Canadian game is questionable at best. During World Cup qualifying, Toronto’s endless complaining about having to give up players to a national team like every other club in the world filled the sports pages. And during our continental championship, Toronto refused to give up a single key player, deigning to toss us the scraps of Kevin Harmse (who they were ten minutes from trading) and Ali Gerba (who had just signed and needed to play his way into shape).

Now, Toronto FC is a business. Maple Leaf Sports and Entertainment has a responsibility to its shareholders, not to Canadian football. Blaming a corporation for being selfish is overlooking every principle that makes our economy work, so I can’t fault Toronto FC for their antipathy towards the national team. But when I’m cheering for the Canadian national team, I pretty much have to hope every Canadian national player of consequence avoids Toronto like Chris Cummins was just diagnosed with swine flu.

So, Julian De Guzman, since I bet you’re reading this: signing with Toronto would be good for your pocketbook and it’s always great to be playing at home. But it would be bad for you as a player and it would be bad for your country. Come get your big payday when you’re old and grey and MLS is more your level, but for now, stick to Europe. I hear that La Liga paycheques aren’t too bad anyway, and I’d much rather meet women from Cadiz than Scarborough.