The blog is dead. Long live the blog.

Yes, it’s true, I am pulling the plug on The Maple Leaf Forever. I am disconnecting the life support system. I am dispatching this noble blog with a single shot to the back of the head and billing pRoke for the ammunition. Not only that, but I’m pulling the most pretentious of all blogger tricks and writing about why I’m doing it.

To be fair, I have a pretty good excuse.

You see, I’ve been given a lovely opportunity to do some soccer blogging with the SB Nation network, writing about the Vancouver Whitecaps, the Canadian national team, and soccer in Western Canada in general. I’ve already had the great pleasure to work with SB Nation on an Edmonton Oilers blog, the Copper & Blue, so naturally when the same organization offered me a chance to write about what I love in front of a bigger audience with a great big monolith of media power behind me, I said “yes”.

The new name of the game is Eighty Six Forever, as in Vancouver 86ers, yes. Please do follow me over to the new locale. If you’ve never commented or read an SB Nation blog before, you will find it a pleasant change from the tooth-grinding soullessness of WordPress. If you have, then you don’t need me to sell you on it. And be sure to check out the rest of the soccer network while you’re there: they cover a few MLS and EPL teams as well as soccer in general. Yes, the manager’s a Sounders fan, but don’t hold that against him. They’re taking soccer seriously: in just the last two days they’ve added a Houston Dynamo blog, a Chelsea blog, and me.

The address is http://www.eightysixforever.com. Please update your links, your bookmarks, and your hearts.

Yes, I have now seen two FC Edmonton games this exhibition season. No, I didn’t have to board a plane to get to this one. Edmonton had announced months ago that they would be playing the Victoria Highlanders at Foote Field in Edmonton but it was only recently announced there would be a game in Victoria as well, at the still-ironically-named City Centre Park in Langford.

First, I will repeat my most frequently-voiced criticism about FC Edmonton. Three weeks ago, I paid $34 for a general admission ticket to Commonwealth Stadium when I watched Edmonton take on Portsmouth. Today, I paid $13 for an assigned seat to watch Edmonton take on Victoria. It’s true that FC Edmonton isn’t quite as expensive a booking as Pompey, but general admission for the return engagement against Victoria will start at $20 before taxes and fees. It will probably come to twice the price to watch the same matchup in Edmonton as opposed to watching it in Victoria.

In spite of the bargain price and a spectacular night in Langford, attendance in Victoria was disappointing. Though not announced, it couldn’t have been much more than one thousand. The normally-strong Lake Side Buoys supporters’ section was literally down to one guy, who rode the traditional supporters’ bus in alone and blamed the bad supporters’ turnout on a combination of the weather forecast (as late as yesterday afternoon the prediction for today was rain) and the simple fact that August is a big vacation month in Victoria.

Even before kickoff there was a surprise, as it was announced that striker Riley O’Neill, late of SV Wilhelmshaven in the German Regionalliga Nord, would be starting up front for Victoria. My astonishment at a five-time goalscorer in the German fourth division moving to a post-season trial with a USL PDL club was such that I couldn’t believe it was the same Riley O’Neill: I wound up asking around the stands and on Twitter and eventually got confirmation that yes, it’s the same guy.

Next to the ex-professional O’Neill, the biggest name in Victoria’s lineup was Jordie Hughes. I’ve seem Hughes play in person a number of times and each time I’ve come away impressed. Hughes is a 5′10″ midfielder who plays bigger, runs like the wind, is the best amateur ballhander I’ve seen, was a star in the American college ranks before a leg injury, and bluntly deserves better than the USL PDL. He averages better than a goal every two games for Victoria from midfield and could certainly be a contributing player for most NASL or USL-1 teams. He’s 26 years old and not getting any younger, but his exile from the professional ranks is a mystery.

The first half was primarily an even affair. Victoria had the advantage of mostly playing an entire season together, with only a couple reserve players and newbie O’Neill rounding out a good first eleven. They were more-or-less equal with Edmonton athletically, and the dynamism of Hughes and O’Neill was effectively countered by Edmonton’s Shaun Saiko at defensive midfield and Paul Hamilton at fullback. Saiko was a former Middlesborough youth player, was predicted to be one of the team’s stars, and is living up to it, but Hamilton has to me been the surprise star of Edmonton’s lineup. Twice now, against Portsmouth and Victoria, I’ve been flabbergasted by Hamilton’s poise and off-the-ball effectiveness. Of all the Alberta metro players in Edmonton’s lineup, Hamilton is the one I’d predict to survive in the NASL.

Saiko, however, was clearly the star. Although lining up at defensive midfield he had a roving commission, playing the “destroyer” role best exemplified in the Canadian ranks by the young Julian De Guzman (and wearing Jules’s #6 into the bargain). No Victoria player could match Saiko’s pace and he mixed that with tremendous ball control, an extremely intelligent style, and a shouting, commanding presence in midfield unusual in a twenty year old. I was not struck by his tackling but then it occurred to me that Saiko was simply playing smart and athletically enough that he didn’t particularly have to tackle: he simply ran the opposing players out of options. He made the centre of the pitch a no-go zone for the Victoria attack, caused Riley O’Neill to die on the vine for want of service, started most of Edmonton’s best opportunities, and in the 38th minute scored the first and best goal of the game with a screaming effort from distance that rippled the top of the goal.

So impressed was I by Saiko’s first-half performance that, in spite of the uninspiring calibre of opposition, I was growing quite excited. Saiko had also been excellent against Portsmouth and got rave reviews for the game against Colo-Colo: maybe we really have something here. Only once did he falter, around the 27th minute, when Jordie Hughes began a run down the right flank and Saiko did not take the threat seriously enough. Saiko stuck back a bit and Hughes suddenly cut to the middle in front of him, splitting the Edmonton central defense and releasing a low shot that kissed just wide. This was the closest Hughes would come to troubling the scorekeeper, but he still had a dangerous all-round game.

Edmonton held their 1-0 lead into the half and almost immediately upon resuming play added to affairs. It wasn’t a dignified goal but it counted: Matt Lam had come on for first-half captain Chris Kody and promptly poked home a ball on a scramble in front of goal, giving Edmonton a 2-0 lead in the 48th minute.

Unfortunately, complacency began to set in. They got a few chances off the feet of Michael Cox and Milan Timotijevic but Victoria goalkeeper Brandon Watson put on a show, making more than his share of fingertip saves. Conversely, Jas Gill in goal for Edmonton (starting in lieu of Eredivisie veteran Rein Baart) inspired no confidence. He was a combination of nerves, mistimed aggression, and poor handling all night. In the second half, these problems began to come home. Jordie Hughes started a nice counter after an Edmonton chance and as Romaie Martin bore down on goal Gill came out much too far. Martin easily bypassed Gill and with the keeper out of the play had all the goal in the world at his feet. But he flubbed his shot, striking it through the box. Had Gill kept his head he would have intercepted the ball and all would have been well, but as it was he was out of position and Chris Arnett converted the accidental cross to cut Edmonton’s lead.

From that point on, play was even and tempers started to flare. Victoria right back Kevan Brown, a tall ginger drink of water, infuriated FC Edmonton all night long. He provoked Thiago Silva into a shoving match and a warning from the official as well as goading Timotijevic into a yellow card for unsportsmanlike conduct when the Serbian import petulantly threw the ball away on a throw-in. Brown was also conspicuously effective defensively and made Edmonton work for opportunities on the right: normally a reserve player for Victoria, Brown was regardless the most impressive of the players I’d never heard of.

The truculence came from other venues as well. After a Victoria chance was thwarted by a hard tackle from Paul Hamilton, Riley O’Neill took exception and got into a vicious if short scrap with Hamilton behind the touch line. The two exchanged words, shoves, and a little more before the referee charged in to restore order, assessing both O’Neill and Hamilton yellow cards.

Riley O’Neill was physically dominant but struggled to assert himself. Had he played for Edmonton matters might have been different, for the Edmontonians were being badly let down by their strike force. But aside from Jordie Hughes the Victoria midfield was unable to get traction against Edmonton, and Hughes is not the sort of distributing midfielder that gets his strikers chances in bunches. O’Neill was constantly active but almost entirely lacked service. There may have been rust on him, but in any event with his midfielders not providing O’Neill was unable to make his own plays. His best chance came around the eighty-second minute when a Victoria midfielder finally got a ball to O’Neill on the run. O’Neill outpaced the Edmonton defender easily and came up against Jas Gill, whose aggression for once served him in good stead. Gill charged out to meet O’Neill while the striker was still rounding his defender, and no sooner had he seen off one challenge than O’Neill was facing another. Gill more-or-less shoulder-checked O’Neill; not much of a play but he was able to outmuscle the German veteran and O’Neill scuffed the resulting shot wide. Immediately following this miss, O’Neill was substituted out.

By this point, Victoria had also removed Jordie Hughes, depriving them of the best part of their firepower. And they were soon down to ten men thanks to a careless challenge from reserve Davis Stupich. Meeting Paul Matthijs at midfield for a fifty-fifty ball, Stupich went in wildly with his leg up and caught Matthijs on the leg with his spikes. Matthijs went down in a heap and was immediately substituted, being helped off the field without putting any weight on his right leg. Stupich was given a straight red card.

Victoria kept up the pressure, to their credit. In stoppage time, Romaie Martin bore down the centre. Martin was up against Paul Hamilton for the ball and played Hamilton physically: so physically, in fact, that Martin actually wrestled Hamilton to the ground. I was not twenty feet away when it happened: Martin got his arms around Hamilton, who tried to ineffectively grapple back, and pretty much flipped the Edmonton defender over. But the referee kept his whistle in his pocket, only to pull it out when Martin was fouled by the Edmonton defender rushing back to Hamilton’s relief. A clear foul in the box, but what on earth was the referee doing even letting play get that far?

With no time left, defender Tyler Hughes stepped up to take the penalty. Jas Gill guessed the right direction but missed the ball: the game was tied at two. Edmonton actually mustered a half-decent chance in the dying seconds but for nothing: it was a 2-2 final.

It was clear that FC Edmonton had taken their foot off the gas when Matt Lam scored. All the same, Edmonton deserved a win: had Rein Baart been in goal instead of Jas Gill it would have been 2-1 at worst. The most egregious dip came from Shaun Saiko, who with the score 2-0 ceased his destructive attacking charges and let up defensively as well. He played too many poor balls to Victoria’s feet (one actually led to Martin’s chance and the ensuing penalty) and the sublime dominance he showed in the first half was almost canceled out by his mediocrity in the second. Most of Edmonton’s defense and midfield went in with less intensity and played the ball with less thought, letting Victoria sustain scoring opportunities. Although Brandon Watson was tremendous in goal for the Highlanders Edmonton had chances they ought to have scored on anyway and failed to put away.

There was more to be happy than upset about for Edmonton supporters. This is a young team, and many of its players won’t be around when the games start counting. Of the core parts, most acquitted themselves well. They coped with Jordie Hughes and Riley O’Neill, the sorts of players that are dangerous in the NASL, well. And let’s not forget that although they let Victoria back into the game, once it was tied they showed some surprising pluck in charging the Highlanders goal for a last-ditch winner. Given the skill level of these players, it’s a credible result.

But it could have been a win, should have been a win, and if Dwight Lodeweges isn’t letting them know that he isn’t doing his job.

Been a heck of a week for Canadian soccer. The Whitecaps finally – finally! – forgot to concede a late equalizer against the Montreal Impact in spite of their best efforts and actually beat the turds. The Toronto FC finally – finally! – outplayed and outscored a Central American team in the CONCACAF Champions League. Simeon Jackson’s big transfer was made official. Dwayne De Rosario scored against Manchester United, which hasn’t got the same ring as “Gabe Gala scored against Real Madrid” but ought not to be ignored.

So I’m going to talk about the Kansas City Wizards for a bit.

You’ve probably heard that the Wizards are considering rebranding their team. “Kansas City Wizards” has always been a bit of a silly soccer-mom name (better than the old Kansas City Wiz, but oh wooow), and the magical men from Missouri may be seeking a new name to go along with their new stadium. Given MLS’s well-known boner for faux-European names, I immediately trotted out old standards “Inter Kansas City” and “Borussia Monchenkansascity“, although Sam Bazzarelli wins the title with his suggestion of Kansas City City playing out of City of Kansas City Stadium. But even a bogus European-derived name (Atlético Kansas City? Nah, St. Louis will want that one.) would have to be better than the little-tykes-merchandise-peddling moniker like the Kansas City Wizards, right? Right?

You know what? No.

It’s long been a pet peeve of mine that North American soccer culture is too derivative of European football culture. This reflects itself in many MLS fans’ pants-crapping worship of the first-class European leagues. It’s shown off flagrantly every time someone insists it’s called football or that the players put on their kits and run onto the pitch for the match that will be a nil-nil clean sheet draw. You can hear it whenever a crowd in Canada demands to know “who ate all the pies?” when you’d need some sort of satellite network to find a soccer stadium in this country that actually sells them. Every time the goalkeeper is a bastard and the referee’s a wanker and the opposing supporters are tossers. Every time.

Above all, above everything else, we see this ravenous inferiority complex in the names of North American soccer teams. Not just Real Salt Lake, but Toronto FC? This is Canada, and Toronto’s football club is the Argonauts. Same to you, Vancouver Whitecaps FC, which seems determined to mesh both naming paradigms into a wholly unsatisfying mélange (thank god “Whitecaps” has stuck). D.C. United? FC Dallas? Do we have none of our own traditions whatsoever? Thank goodness for brave souls like the New England Revolution and the Philadelphia Union and yes, even those jokey, comic-book Wizards.

In this country, we waste valuable ink and breath wondering why so many of our native sons go to play for the national teams of England or the Czech Republic or Bosnia or the Netherlands (well, maybe not the Netherlands). Has it occurred to us that the reason Canadians seem to think in droves that European teams and traditions are better than ours is that a significant portion of North American soccer culture is predicated on exactly that? That if a Voyageur in the stands with five or six buddies sang something other than warmed-over EPL chants with “Canada” awkwardly spliced in, that if we were enthusiastic about how English we weren’t, and above all if we stopped getting worked up every time a soccer team was given the same sort of nickname as every other sporting club in this country, it might contribute to that elusive “national pride” we’re too often seen lacking?

But, sure, you bunch of traditionalists, forget about it. Name your team “Sporting Kansas City” and bellow whatever invective would seem at home in the cheapest, dingiest Liverpool pubs. We were a British colony once, right? Nothing stopping us from being one again, leaping on whatever shards of European culture drift over the ocean, and embracing our role as Europe’s farm team.

We Canadian soccer fans, east and west, have an annoying habit of blowing things up to proportions they don’t rightly deserve.

Tonight, Toronto FC will take on C.F. Motagua in what the Toronto faithful are really hoping won’t be a repeat of last year’s debacle against the USL Division One Puerto Rico Islanders. The U-Sector board is abuzz with hope and excitement but also concern – more concern than one usually sees for, say, FC Dallas. The Voyageurs, never your best bet for sober second thought but always a good dipstick for the country’s emotional oil, are burning with enthusiasm even absent the usual partisan napalm. On Twitter, Stretty Sam out-and-out calls it “a big match for Canadian soccer“.

Listen, when you’re relying on Duane Rollins to downplay the importance of a Toronto FC game, things are out of hand.

Of course, as a Canadian soccer supporter, it’s in my interests that Toronto beat Motagua tonight. It’s also in my interests that Toronto beat Real Salt Lake or the New York Red Bulls or pretty much any side that isn’t another Canadian team (I’d probably take the Reds over the CSL’s Serbian White Eagles, too). I’d quite like to see Julian de Guzman superkick Amado Guevara through the north stands into where the beer garden used to be, but that’s pleasure rather than business. My usual Whitecaps fan schadenfreude at seeing Toronto lose to a team from a country with a GDP smaller than my shoe size would be dulled ever-so-slightly by the whole Honduras factor, but intellectually I should want Toronto to emerge with a credible win in the CONCACAF Champions League regardless of the opposition.

(You may have noticed that soccer partisanship is not the most intellectual of activities. I know, I know. Bear with me.)

Now, as we know Toronto has a bad history with this tournament. They got over 20,000 fans out to their first ever continental match, more than twice the next-best attendance total that round, and lost 1-0 in what I can safely call the worst game of soccer ever played. The loss to the Puerto Rico Islanders, a team in the same North American pyramid as Toronto FC and therefore mathematically certain to be inferior, devastated the Toronto and Canadian sports scenes to such an extent that over 20,000 fans are expected tonight for a game against a team that sounds like a discount tequila label.

I feel a little dirty praising Toronto FC fans for their support, but the joy is that Canadian soccer fandom has moved beyond the point where a single game can break us. Indeed, if we survived the Montreal Impact’s Thích Quảng Đức job against Santos Laguna, and Toronto’s two years missing the playoffs, and Benito Archundia, and Benito Archundia again, and pretty much everything about Canada’s last World Cup qualification campaign, we’ve probably been past that point for some time. Toronto could lose by a converted touchdown and it wouldn’t mar the Canadian soccer landscape that badly. Moreover, if Toronto wins, they’ll be doing their job and who will be impressed? It would take an awfully long run and maybe a few flares in the Skydome for the Champions League to weigh down the bandwagon with new support.

If you’re a Toronto fan, your team may have a very specific stain to scrub off its honour and godspeed to you in that. For the rest of us, don’t try and tell me that cheering on the FC is a matter of national priority. We’re not infants anymore. We can survive a little fall down the stairs.

Until last night, the Whitecaps had not lost in their last ten matches and not lost at home for the entire 2010 season. It’s easy to forget with their completely horrifying scoring totals but the Whitecaps aren’t a bad team. One of the three or four best in the USSF D2, certainly, and a side that ought to make some noise come playoff time.

But Portland? God, it had to be Portland.

It all started out so well. We had history in our corner, with Portland going winless at Swangard Stadium since May of 2004. The team was playing well whereas the Timbers were no longer the lead pipe cinch as “best team in the second division”. Oh, sure, they have Ryan Pore, who is so far and away the league’s most valuable player they’re probably saving time and engraving his name on the trophy right now. But that’s one man against the best defense in the division. I was quietly confident as I sat down to watch the webcast on my dinky little laptop.

(Okay, that’s a lie. I was terrified. I’m always terrified when we play the Timbers, particularly of late, because they’re better than we are. It’s not the same as playing the Impact or Toronto FC, but the Timbers were for years the whipping boys of the Cascadia Cup and to see them incarnate as a USSF D2 powerhouse makes me quiver in fear.)

Teitur Thordarson was continuing his odd “we don’t need no stinking strikers” experiment and, with Randy Edwini-Bonsu on the limp due to a minor leg injury, took it even further than usual. Cornelius “All Smoke No Fire” Stewart was the only true striker in the lineup, getting the start up front with converted midfielder Nizar Khalfan. The bench was equally offense-deficient with not a single striker at Thordarson’s disposal. Don’t get me wrong, it was nice to see Ethan Gage recalled from exile, and Alex Semenets is a fine Residency midfielder with some finishing chops, but Teitur had apparently decided to win this one 0 – -1.

For the first fifty minutes, Vancouver and Portland just traded body blows. Even on a little laptop screen in Edmonton it was something to watch. It’s an axiom that the players never take a rivalry as seriously as the fans, but I can’t remember ever seeing Vancouver and Portland face each other and play any way other than their best. Portland, as you’d expect, had more possession but did less with it than Vancouver, which was able to penetrate the Timbers defense slightly more easily.

Although why I criticized Teitur’s selection I don’t know, because Khalfan was a dynamo. He brings pace and power, if nothing else, and that’s a pretty formidable conversation. Philippe Davies was playing on the right wing and had another of his increasing number of terrific games, but his most important play was rather a limp one. He tried a cross, probably to Stewart, but misplayed it and it skipped rather weakly to Khalfan. No problem, though. Nizar buried it. 1-0 Whitecaps, and one more goal for Vancouver than I thought they were going to get.

In the end, it was a feat of individual talent which swung things. Ryan Pore, that devilish son of a bitch, caught a nice through ball and went for a run. Greg Janicki has been one of Vancouver’s most reliable defenders all season but he was caught flat-footed on this one and was well behind Pore as he streaked in on a breakaway. Desperate, Janicki dove out and tripped Pore from behind, leaving the Timbers star to fall ass over teakettle and leaving referee Michael Edmunds no option but to call for a penalty and send Janicki off.

The only thing worse than a red card offense is a clear red card offense. Dammit, Greg, you couldn’t have given us some controversy? But no. Pore took the penalty, of course, and scored, of course, and it was 1-1.

Down to ten men, the Whitecaps kept their spirits up. Once again the game started to ebb and flow between the two goals, with the Timbers trying to press their advantage and Vancouver giving them everything they could handle. Vancouver played a slightly more chippy style, with Davies picking up a yellow card and very nearly grabbing another soon after (an astute Thordarson replacing the young Canadian midfielder with another young Canadian midfielder Alex Elliott), and conceded more free kicks than any of us would like to see. Ryan Pore took one of them in the seventy-first minute, lobbing a little ball into the area, easy enough for the defenders to deal with, and no! Jay Nolly! Get back in your goal! What are you doooooiiiiiiiiing? and it was 1-2.

Seeing Jay Nolly screw up, and screw up so egregiously, was a shock to the senses. Pore’s ball was uncharacteristically tame, from him, but Nolly had come thundering off his line to try and grab it. He never came close, never could have come close, and the ball kicked off a Whitecaps defender towards Portland centre back Mamadou “Futty” Danso. With some surprising power and precision for a player at his position Danso slammed it into the Whitecaps goal with Nolly out of the picture, and the Timbers had it won.

Oh, there were some last formalities, of course. The Whitecaps seemed to have had a bucket of cold water dumped on their heads and played their balls out looking for an equalizer. Nizar Khalfan (again) had the best chance, forcing a remarkable save out of Steve Cronin on a hard-struck low-driven ball. But here is where Teitur’s defense-heavy bench burned him. When Stewart was flagging, as he always does late in matches, there was no possible way to get more offense on. Thordarson ended up bringing in guys like Justin Moose and Takashi Hirano, players with some knowledge of how to move the ball up but none whatsoever on how to finish it off. It wasn’t enough.

So the Timbers won, again. They retain the Cascadia Cup, which they won last year under similarly heart-breaking circumstances. It’ll almost be a relief to get to MLS next season and have Seattle re-join the competition, because that way if Portland whips us again we might be able to blame a third club for the standings turning out badly, Montreal Impact-style. Because there’s no silver lining here. We lost because we do stupid things sometimes, and the mortal enemy got to keep his silverware in his last appearance on our home grass.

Soccer sucks.

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.

The World is a Ball
John Doyle
Doubleday, 2010
416 pages

If you’re reading this site, this book probably isn’t for you.

To be clear, I feel that if you went through the time and effort to track down a blog that slightly over-obsesses about Canadian soccer and were interested enough in aforementioned blog to actually go through the articles and find a book review written by an overenthusiastic amateur about a book by a far superior writer, odds are you’re a bit of a soccer wonk. And The World is a Ball is not a book for soccer wonks. It is two parts memoir, one part travellogue, with the beautiful game serving merely as the unifying motif creating what is a well-written, if not precisely relevant, piece of work.

The World is a Ball, by Globe and Mail television writer John Doyle, is no more or less than a writer’s memories traveling the world for the game he loves. He attends international games on four continents. The matches themselves are described in sparing detail and the bulk of Doyle’s attention is turned on the poetry surrounding the sport; the pageantry of the supporters, the bizarre orgies of joy and excess that surround human celebration at the highest level with tens of thousands of like-minded compatriots. It is a good book but know what it is when you buy it: a work of prose poetry, not incisive sportswriting.

If you are as much of a wonk as I think you are you’re not going to learn anything from this book, and the explanations John Doyle gives of people, places, and events may strike you in spots as a bit facile. I approach European soccer without enthusiasm compared to my addiction to the North American game but even I don’t need somebody explaining to me that in Euro 2008 Andrei Arshavin was really good, or that in the first half of the previous decade Zinedine Zidane was like God only moreso.

Approached on its own terms, the book isn’t bad. Doyle can spin a yarn as well as anybody and I envy rather than begrudge him his documentary. I gaped at the errors of fact (one example: he refers to Canada gaining a win against Mexico in 2010 World Cup qualifying, and though the draw we actually got in Edmonton felt almost as good the standings would disagree) and shook my head at the errors of form (hey, did you know the Red Patch Boys are the only Toronto FC supporters’ club worthy of mention? No wonder Boris Aguiar has such a glowing blurb on the dust jacket). He in spots opens old wounds particular to the obsessive Canadian soccer fan in his obviously sincere love for his native Irish national team and seeming ambivalence towards the Canadian, but when I disengaged my soccer brain I had an enjoyable ride

The cover of the book boasts a “World Cup 2010 Preview”. The analysis is pretty much what you’d expect for a preview tacked on to the book as an afterthought and, of course, now has no value except as a curiousity (although Doyle gives the Dutch more credit than most of the world and comes off looking smarter than many professionals I could name). That’s actually part of the reason I held off reviewing this book, clearly released to coincide with World Cup mania, until after the World Cup: to try and divorce it from the emotion and excitement of the game’s biggest pageant. In hindsight, it’s a good book, but not a spectacular one. It is purple rather than insightful. It is interesting, but not on an intellectual level. Like a gourmet meal, it tastes good but does not fill you up in the least.

Uruguay – Ghana was brilliant, wasn’t it?

For a team criticized for playing such a comatose style against the United States last week, Ghana actually showed some pep and verve. Uruguay, probably the pleasant surprise of this World Cup now that Argentina has keeled face-first into a pile of blow, kept up their successful and surprisingly entertaining strategy of “Diego Forlan, Luis Suarez, and why would we need any other players?” There were thrills, spills, and even a couple of goals to keep the Americans happy. Extra time, in particular, was a tribute to everything that was beautiful about soccer. Alan Partridge once famously referred to “liquid football!” some sixteen years ago; a phrase that was utterly meaningless in context and yet somehow perfectly describes extra time of Ghana and Uruguay. Shit! That was liquid football! Shut up, it was.

But I’m not here to write about beauty. I’m neither a poet nor Richard Whittall so that disqualifies me right there (I just seriously used an Alan Partridge quote, for one thing). I’m here to talk about controversy, and particularly controversy that shouldn’t be in the least controversial. If you saw it you’ll know what I’m talking about without further introduction. Late (and I do mean late) in extra time, the Uruguayans have given up a dubious free kick and are scrambling as Ghana has their sights set on a winner. The Ghanian sights are off and though they fire shots and crosses none of of them quite find their mark. But Uruguay has no clear defensive strategy, not an iota of cohesiveness. The ball kicks around and keeps finding its way back to Ghana. Another shot. Deflected, but Fernando Muslera was already moving to make the save and is now hopelessly out of position. Striker Dominic Adiyiah, who is only twenty years old but plays for A.C. Milan and knows something of scoring, gets a workmanlike head to the ball.

For all the mockery about soccer being a slow-moving game, at times it moves in slow motion. The very millisecond Adiyiah gets his head to the ball, Sebastian Abreu of Uruguay is standing with his leg in the air like a flamingo, having vainly tried to deflect the ball, with an expression of sublime agony on his face. The World Cup is over for Uruguay. Ghana has scored with no time left. They may as well pack up their bags. But Luis Suarez, guarding the goal line, with great coolness if no great form strikes the ball with his forearm straight into the relieved grasp of Muslera.

A blatant foul. As blatant a foul as you will ever see if you watch ten thousand matches. The Ghanians throw their arms in the air, the universal cry for “penalty, penalty!” They gesture to their arms, another movement that needs no translation. But their protests are unnecessary, as Portugal’s Olegário Benquerença is refereeing and is nobody’s fool. Suarez is duly sent off, as the Laws of the Game demand. Asamoah Gyan strides up to the spot for the easy penalty that will send Ghana to the World Cup semi-final. He takes his run up. He thinks about it a little too hard, he looks at the net rather than the ball, he thinks about how best to beat the talented Muslera rather than simply striking, and he blasts the ball over the crossbar.

The end.

In the ensuing penalty shootout Gyan shoots first and corrects his mistake – too late. His teammates produce limp efforts, with the aggrieved Adiyiah’s shot so feeble that Muslera very nearly over-dove it before getting a foot to the ball. Sebastian Abreu, not so long ago doing a flamingo impression and on the verge of collapsing in emotional pain, buries a highlight of the night chip past Richard Kingson and Uruguay, not Ghana, emerge victors.

And now there is controversy. How? Suarez cheated? Well, he certainly did! So does every footballer who dives with his cleats up, or handles a ball that’s gone a bit too far, or runs to take a throw that he knows belongs to the other team but he hopes the referee’s assistant has missed. Six yellow cards were handed out in that match, three to each team. Cheaters, every one! And unlike too many other occasions, the referee spotted the infraction (though he hardly could have missed it) and called the situation precisely correctly. It was not Benquerença’s fault, nor Suarez’s, that at the supreme moment any footballer can face Asamoah Gyan was weighed in the balances and found wanting.

On an intellectual level, Ghana’s defenders realize this. So they resort to other arguments. Suarez, they say, was on his honour not to cheat. Had it been the first minute rather than the last, nobody would have worried about an identical result. But because the situation was so dire, Suarez should have done more than break the rules and take his medicine. He should have restrained the instinct that drives any athlete at that level more than any other – that drives most athletes, in fact. Luis Suarez had less than half a second to decide how to react to the ball coming in his direction and he reacted as has been hard-wired into him: he tried to win. Had he kept his hands at his side and the ball had flitted past him into the goal, he would have at best been ignored, at worst been castigated, and certainly he would have been defeated either way. If he played goalkeeper, the odds were heavily against his side but they were not zero. So he played to win, and history has rewarded him for his cheek.

FIFA thought about suspending Suarez additionally for unsporting conduct and decided against it. Of course they did! FIFA gets very few decisions right but they got that one. Additionally punishing Suarez would be punishing him for cheating when it mattered instead of when it didn’t, and that seems an odd sort of thing for an official to decide. Not that it is stopping a few armchair pundits from playing moralist and saying that, for doing what every other footballer has done and thereby lifting a nation of 3.5 million people on his shoulders and carrying them into ecstasy, Luis Suarez is a bad person.

If I were in Suarez’s shoes, I would have reacted precisely the same way, and I wouldn’t have lost a moment’s sleep over it. I feel bad for Ghana, but they were justly rewarded for Suarez’s foul and failed to win the game when they were given the most gilt-edged of opportunities. That, ultimately, is what matters.

Nigeria and corruption. Two great things that go better together. Who can forget president Olusegun Obasanjo crooked attempts to remove term limits for the country’s chief office, or the 2007 general election that proved to be a debacle of alleged fraud, certain violence, and enough chaos that if it broke out in downtown Toronto the OPP would bomb the entire city into the Stone Age just to be safe. Don’t get me wrong, Nigeria is no Zimbabwe, but they’re not exactly the straightest of straight arrows either.

Even worse, their soccer team sucks.

But unfortunately for the Nigerians, that failure has caused them to tangle with forces far more corrupt than they could ever dream of being. You see, in spite of that corruption Nigeria actually does have a president, Goodluck Jonathan, whose party was (probably) elected by the honest will of the people it attempts to represent. Like everybody else in the world Jonathan was watching the 2010 FIFA World Cup in which Nigeria slumped to a 1-0 loss to Argentina, a 2-1 loss to Greece after an undisciplined red card, and a credible 2-2 draw with fellow basement dwellers South Korea. Actually it wasn’t that bad but Jonathan was unsatisfied. Nigeria was once an African footballing power, after all, and those results aren’t exactly lofty. So Jonathan and his government announced that the Nigerian national team would suspend play for two years while it got its act together.

This has inevitably raised the ire of FIFA. FIFA also has a president, Sepp Blatter, but his democratic legitimacy is even worse than Goodluck Jonathan’s as he is elected by a bunch of board room autocrats who cast their votes based on which candidates best line their pockets. And if there’s one thing this president is afraid of, it’s people, the ignorant common masses, sinking their fingers into the business of the beloved cash cow he calls international soccer. So FIFA has laid out the law to Nigeria. If you leave, we will expel you and you can go dick around with the NF-Board “countries” for all we care. Remember, this is the same organization that has allowed the African federation to ban Togo from the African Cup of Nations just because they left a tournament early on account of a little thing like being ambushed by rebels and having team members assassinated. They’ve also bounced Iraq in and out of FIFA and threatened Brunei with expulsion just because they put national priorities like security and independence over obeying every little whim from Zurich.

In short, these guys are scumbags.

FIFA’s edicts against political interference are the least defensible part of a pretty indefensible organization. It is a ban against grass-roots reorganization, against sacking the CSA, against football fans actually trying to do something about this corrupt morass that is the ruling body of the game we love. Well, why wouldn’t FIFA enact such a rule? Who has more to gain from the current structure than the organization at the apex of it? It is natural that they would try to put their own greed ahead of such trifling things as “democracy” and “the rule of law”, because there aren’t many people out there with the stones to rule themselves out of international soccer potentially forever. Even I would look askance at us actually sacking the CSA only for FIFA to threaten us with spending the next thirty years playing Zanzibar.

Uruguay and Ghana are about to kick off. A terrific opportunity for the last African team in the World Cup to advance deep into the tournament after a tremendous upset by the Netherlands earlier this morning. So when you watch this, take a moment to remember Ghana’s African brothers Togo and Nigeria. Close your eyes and listen to, if you can hear it over the vuvuzelas, the sound of cash flying into the pockets of a host of untouchable kleptocrats at the top of international soccer. And remember that their contempt for you personally is so considerable that if you ever tried to change soccer in your probably-democratic soccer, FIFA would scorch your earth and try to ensure you had no soccer left to save.

Now, enjoy the game!

I am outrageously, preposterously jealous of you Americans right now.

I’ve been in a bar with a bunch of fellow revellers when Canada’s national soccer team scored a dramatic stoppage time goal to snatch a draw from a loss, and that was pretty good. But all evening long I’ve been watching videos like this and just staring, soullessly, my heart hardly daring a single beat lest the blood rush to my brain and turn me into a seething, sobbing mess of angry sorrow.

Yes, I’m cheering for the Americans in the World Cup. That’s out of principle, not out of affection. I could no more take pleasure in these sublime, primal outbursts of joy for a team that is not my own than I could feel love and awe towards somebody else’s newborn child. And I know that, even when I am at my most optimistic, when I am looking at cheering New Zealanders in South Africa and declaring in 2014 that’ll be us there’s essentially no chance I’ll be able to savour Canada’s getting to the round of sixteen in my lifetime.

I’m still cheering for the Americans, of course. But now I’m sort of depressed about it.