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.

My attitude towards diving is shared by many of you. I hate it, except when my team does it.

Well, perhaps I should refine that statement a bit. My team doesn’t dive, you see. Each flop, each plunge into the grass, was clearly entirely the fault of that blatant foul by the opposition and not at all by our enthusiastic player gunning for a whistle in a vulnerable area. What would appear to the untrained eye to be shameless embellishment is simply an elite athlete being thrown off his balance by a less talented ruffian who’s probably trying to end his career with unprovoked dirty play.

So I guess I can understand the reaction of Italian supporters to this morning’s World Cup fixture, when Daniele De Rossi had his shirt tugged by kiwi Tommy Smith to pull him backwards and reacted by hurdling forwards as if a mine had gone off in a bad war film. “Well, by the letter of the law, the shirt tug was a foul,” they say. By the letter of the law De Rossi should have received a yellow card for embellishment so incompetent he couldn’t even fall in the right direction, but that’s a distraction from the real issue. A rational person would say that whatever harm little shirt tugs cause to the game, it is nothing compared to the harm of awarding a dozen penalties and two dozen free kicks in a World Cup match because you decided to call “the letter of the law”. But if referee Carlos Batres wanted to call the Laws of the Game for ninety minutes then, well, good luck to him!

Except, of course, that Carlos Batres didn’t call the Laws of the Game for ninety minutes. He called one little tug and ignored the rest from both sides. Not a single card for simulation (and not even the most biased observer could deny there was diving a-plenty in that match). After sustaining a knock, he sent New Zealand centre back and captain Ryan Nelsen off for treatment then immediately issued him a yellow card for timewasting, which… was a new one on me. One can hardly blame the Italians for embellishing every little thing, since the referee was so clearly overwhelmed by the occasion. Were I in that position, I can’t deny wanting Canada to flop like eleven red fish. But what an infuriating game to watch! New Zealand robbed of what ought to have been a 1-0 win by something that has no place in this game, celebrating a famous draw against the defending world champions and yet an even greater triumph has been stolen from them by perfidious officiating..

New Zealand still has a chance to advance to the knock-out stages and immortality. On form, Slovakia could beat Italy and New Zealand could draw Paraguay. Neither is likely but both are possible. Even if they go down without further ado, they’ll have made their statement. Nobody is laughing at Oceania now, but they could have been gaping in awe. The sooner we can replace referees, the happier we all shall be.

Perhaps you heard. Switzerland beat Spain, 1-0. Oh, of course you heard. The Swiss did exactly what you’d expect a team considered part of the tournament’s dregs to do against a team considered a major favourite, and played defense as if their lives depended on it. There was flair and competence in the Swiss transition game, particularly courtesy the consummately underrated Tranquillo Barnetta, and Seattle’s Blaise Nkufo did Switzerland, MLS, and for that matter his home country of Zaire proud with a sterling display of Ali Gerba-esque holding play and athletic attacking football. The defense was, of course, the centre of affairs, limiting the Spaniards to a large number of relatively tame outside chances and cutting out the cross almost every time. When a ball did get through, Spain’s strikers lacked the alacrity to put the opportunity home, perhaps worn down from running and their rough treatment from the Swiss defense.

It was a clinic from Switzerland on how to play against an inferior opponent. Hold back, limit their real opportunities, and when the counter comes snatch it. In spite of their defensive posture the Swiss generated chances of their own and wore out the Spaniards by forcing them to track back even when desperate for a goal, simply because their midfield was making the right pass and moving the play quickly rather than getting fancy.

Yet that wasn’t what the buzz was about. “Boring”. “Lucky”. Even I gave in to a moment of weakness and said that if Jose Mourinho was watching this Swiss team they’d be all right by him. It wasn’t that much of an insult coming from me, since I loved watching Mourinho’s Inter team. Particularly when they were playing Barcelona or another team that should rightfully kick the shit out of them: now that’s how you play as a team. I actually enjoyed the UEFA Champions League this year for the first time in I don’t know how long, and this from a guy who usually hates high-level European football.

How can that be boring? Certainly, incompetent defensive play is boring. Playing ten men behind the ball, getting possession, and promptly hoofing it up the pitch? I could not possibly have less time for that. Luckily, there’s a natural limit on that sort of play and that is a team playing that style usually loses. If you give up possession freely and panic when you get it back you will not win. It doesn’t matter if the other team has the ball 60% of the time so long as you make something with your 40%. Even in this morning’s game, around the eightieth minute when Swiss legs were getting tired and the Spanish attack was coming in waves and Switzerland was letting their excitement get the best of their intellect, we saw the Spanish grow significantly more dangerous. The weary Swiss were abandoning the transition game that had served them so well and started flailing and kicking it as hard as they could, and the Spanish were beginning to pick them up. But for a few botched finishes by Villa and Torres, it would have been a 1-1 draw. At least a 1-1 draw. All because the Swiss lost what had made them effective in the first place.

I love watching that sort of game and I’m surprised more people don’t agree with me. You can’t become a soccer fan if the only thing you like is scoring and Kaka dancing around guys, because none of that happens real often. Most soccer fans are not only conscious but appreciative of the finer nuances of the game, because if you couldn’t appreciate that sort of thing you wouldn’t get into soccer in the first place. And Switzerland, or at least Switzerland’s first seventy-odd minutes, was a testament to those finer nuances. Jamming the obvious crossing lanes so that when Xavi unleashed one of his patented crosses at speed there was a Swiss head right there to meet it. Making the strikers fight to even get into the box, wearing them down and reducing their enthusiasm to make those increasingly futile runs for crosses that seemed never to arrive. Taking their time when they could and as soon as Spain overcommitted bam, there was the counter, and it was just two Swiss players running forward but they seemed to have all the space and time in the world and they made the more talented Spaniards work like dogs to get that ball back.

That is soccer. You won’t see it in a shoe commercial, in one of those artificial fantasy lands where famous midfielders run through explosions and do karate moves on the ball, but the last thing those commercials sell is “soccer”. You’ll see it on every pitch around the world where two competent teams clash. We shouldn’t complain about a well-played game just because that magnificent play doesn’t bulge the onion bag as often.

Australia and Canada have a lot in common. Mid-sized, mature former British colonies, once culturally isolated but now tied more and more into the world village. They share an ambivalent attitude towards their past and many of their traditions. They share many ambitions, including a disproportionate desire to punch above their weight in international sports. Australia’s been rather more successful in most summer sports and Canada rather better in most winter sports, which is pretty much what you’d expect if you based your expectations on climate and culture. But their soccer teams have a common thread as well, and that is a recent humiliation on the international soccer stage.

Canada’s came in May, in Buenos Aires for the Victoria Day Massacre. 5-0 we went down to Argentina and it was every bit as ugly as the scoreline would suggest. One of the first Canadian friendlies in many years to be nationally telecast, it advertised to the entire country just how far we had to go before we could compete with the elite soccer nations. There was some promise there, a few young players who looked poised, a few old players who looked dreadful but are mercifully on their way out. There were no excuses, though. We saw what happened and we took our medicine. Many of us even expected such a debacle.

Australia’s came this very day in South Africa. They went down 4-0 to Germany and oh, it could have been worse than that if Germany had cashed some of the five-bell chances that went wanting. This time it was on display for the entire world to see, in front of one of the largest audiences Australian soccer would have ever known. Their record defeat of 8-0 actually came against South Africa (fifty years ago) so it is fitting that it would be the site of their greatest, if not most numerically significant, loss.

But Australia has an asterisk. Mexican referee Marco Antonio Rodríguez lost the plot in the second half, missing what seemed to be an obvious penalty on an accidental German hand ball and then minutes later having star Tim Cahill sent off with a straight red for a foul that appeared to be a reckless yellow at best. Rodríguez also booked midfielder Carl Valeri for seemingly nothing at all, although he let Valeri get away with a yellow-card tackle later as though to even accounts. This isn’t news from a CONCACAF referee, who are nowhere near the standards of UEFA or CONMEBOL and never have been. It would take both a cynic and a fool to think that the fix was in, as Germany was already leading 2-0 when the calls became sketchy and Australia seemed to have no chance of fighting back.

Yes, Australia looked very nearly as bad against Germany as Canada is said to have looked against Argentina. There was a brief flash from the Socceroos in the first ten minutes but from there on it was one-way German traffic. On Lukas Podolski’s opening goal the Australian defense was caught running to the ball like a team of thirteen-year-olds rather than picking up their men and at all times the passes from what is not a particularly talented German team sliced the Australians to pieces. Australia stuck to formation far too rigidly and played with the energy, enthusiasm, and incompetence of amateurs against professionals. In no sense did Australia pick up even an iota of credit for this game when they had all eleven men on the pitch, and as soon as Cahill was sent off what coherence and ability there was dissolved into a melange of frantic, futile individualism.

The discussion will inevitably surround Rodríguez’s decisions, because that’s what discussion does. Without Cahill and with humiliation burning in their minds, it would take a brave man to predict an Australian point against a surprisingly strong-looking Ghana side. And the great peril for Australian soccer is that the controversy will overshadow just how poorly they played.

Every so often, the lesser powers such as Australia need a reminder of how far they have to come. Canada got their wakeup call against Argentina and may well emerge better for it. Indeed, since that resounding defeat we’ve heard that Junior Hoilett is more enthusiastic about representing Canada and the “B” team played a strong, unusually coherent game against Venezuela. It’s early yet but so far in spite of the lopsided result Canada is coming out of Argentina better than they went in. And everybody in the Canadian soccer world, from Dr. Dominic Maestracci to the lowliest fan, knows how much improvement we require and can dispel any illusions about “misused talent” that may have lingered from the Dale Mitchell era.

Will Australia be so fortunate? Will they concentrate on refereeing robbing them of a penalty and their best player instead of the dreadful play that put them in a position to need that penalty and that game against Ghana so desperately? Early indications are that the referee is the talking point. Let’s hope for the sake of our kinsmen down under that sober second thought produces more productive reflection.

The press, or at least the parts of the press that I frequent, have been abuzz with reports of a new CONCACAF World Cup qualification scheme to be introduced for the 2014 cycle. There are various ideas that various media outlets have been reporting are absolutely certain and placed before FIFA for approval, and as is so often the case everybody is convinced that their source is telling them the One True Way CONCACAF will end up running the show. The only thing that we know for certain is that, if CONCACAF can make its case before the big bosses at FIFA, qualifying for the 2014 World Cup will be vastly different than qualifying for 2010 was.

It’s hard to see this as anything but a good thing. There are two new systems we’re prominently hearing about: one would run each team through three groups of four, progressively narrowing the field and moving the top two in each group on to the next round. In this scenario, a middle power like Canada would face a first group with one other good team (like Mexico) and a couple of real runts, a second round slightly weaker than today’s third round (as there would be four groups rather than three), and a final round slightly weaker than the hex but still nothing to sneeze about.

The other possibility is as horrifying as it is amazing: after a perfunctory qualification process to narrow the field down to twelve teams, the survivors would be thrown into one big pool and left to slug it out. As the current CONCACAF third round divides the teams into three groups of four, we can assume that Canada would be left to play its quadrennial home-and-away against some Caribbean country and then spend the next fourteen months trying to beat the hell out of every decent soccer power on the continent. The press doesn’t mention an equivalent to the current first round in either proposal but there’d have to be one: somewhere where Antigua and Haiti could go to war and something Canada would probably rank high enough to avoid.

CONCACAF’s World Cup qualifying system is infamously shambolic, condemning all but the six teams qualifying for the hex to a short season of meaningful games followed by an awfully long slate of idle misery. Canada knows a thing or two about this, having been on the outside looking in for the 2010 qualifying hex. And the 2006 qualifying hex. And the 2002 qualifying hex. It’s been a rough decade for us, is what I’m saying. During each of these faux-qualifying runs, where we failed to get far enough to even fail honourably, Canada played a total of eight games: two against minnows like Belize, Cuba, and St. Vincent and the Grenadines, and then six in whichever group we were fated to finish last in this time around.

I’ve put together a rough sample schedule of the games involved in either proposal (rounds we either didn’t or probably wouldn’t qualify for are in italics) on the left. Either of the new systems being slung around would see a big increase in Canada’s games played. Even if Canada failed to qualify for the final round in a three-round system, we would play a minimum of twelve games. And if there was a twelve-team final round then Canada could play an amazing twenty-four games in 2014 World Cup qualifying, presuming we have a FIFA ranking to escape the first round, we don’t lose to some Caribbean island country, and we don’t finish fourth in the group and play a two-leg qualifier against a CONMEBOL side.

My god, can you even imagine it?

Neither of these proposals is entirely sunshine and light. If CONCACAF goes to three group stages, Canada would have a pretty easy first round but by no means a gimme. On the left I list a potential schedule based on 2010 World Cup qualifying results, and a first round of Mexico, Canada, Puerto Rico, and Belize is by no means a sure thing. If the gods disfavour us and we wind up with something like Costa Rica, Jamaica, and Cuba, we could have a serious test on our hands before the competition has even gotten serious and wash out in only six games. The advantage is that every game would almost certainly matter and if you can cope with the thought of a year and half of utterly life-and-death fixtures you may find that encouraging.

A twelve-team final group would reduce the risk factor, beyond the obvious (and current) peril of losing a short series against an inferior or badly-drawn opponent. It would also involve Canada and eleven other nations in a marathon of a final round which would heavily reduce the chance of an underdog sneaking into the third or fourth spots. And Canada is an underdog. We rank behind the Mexicans and the Americans, of course, but we’re not likely to be the best of Honduras, Costa Rica, Jamaica, and El Salvador in a long, critical tournament. Even if we do nab fourth place that would send us to an elimination match against a CONMEBOL team which we would almost certainly lose (remember how ignoble Costa Rica looked in their attempt last year).

But it would be progress all the same. It’s been a long-term obsession for many of us that Canada needs more  matches. It’s an obsession that we share with many of the mid-table CONCACAF sides, as fans of the Jamaican or Trinidad and Tobagan national teams would happily regale you about at length. The recent spurt of friendlies with which the CSA has gifted the Canadian team is both helpful and welcome, but there is no replacement for a competitive game. And until we actually qualify for something there can be no match more competitive than World Cup qualifying. It is the yardstick by which casual fans measure us. Not even the 2000 Gold Cup title could stand as an achievement next to actually making the World Cup for the first time in a generation. As we are once again seeing around the country, the World Cup is when even casual soccer fans come out and pay attention, and merely seeing Canada in that schedule would lend some legitimacy to the entire national program.

If I had to pick, I’d prefer the large, twelve-team group. There’d be something viscerally delightful in seeing the lines of Mexico or Costa Rica playing at Commonwealth Stadium in February, of course. It’s the surest way for Canada to get as many games as possible, which is the point. And if we ever get our act together, if those wavering guys like Junior Hoilett and Teal Bunbury start to pick Canada rather than the alternative, and if the CSA continues to trend in the right direction, then we might just be the third best team in CONCACAF on merit by 2014. There are a lot of “if”s in that sentence, but the large group would give us our best shot at making our dreams into reality.

Either proposal, however, would be better than what CONCACAF has now, and I cannot hope more than I do that the powers that be pick one of them.

I don’t write about the World Cup much in this space, for a number of reasons. First off, this is a Canadian soccer blog and Canada’s not in the World Cup, so I’d kinda be abandoning my core competency as the corporate types put it. Second, what, am I going to add something to the discourse? It’s the World Cup! It’s not like when I blather on about FC Edmonton and I’m the only one talking about it. The Internet is currently 96% World Cup content by weight, so what am I going to add? Uh, that Messi’s pretty good, isn’t he? Please.

I did, however, have one World Cup-related tidbit I wanted to get off my chest. As anybody who is functionally literate knows by now, our deadly rivals in sports and in life the United States have been drawn in the same group as Mother England, parent state of the glorious empire that gave birth to our beautiful nation and home of the monarchy we still call
our own. Canadians have traditionally had an affinity for the English soccer team, partially because of our national history and partially because they’re essentially the Canadian team on a larger scale: like us, they’re lovable losers who face immense expectations which they never,
ever live up to. When they succeed, which they rarely do, it is more off of heart and grit than skill. And their entire soccer memory revolves around one moment in their distant past when they actually reached the promised land they have spent generations since aspiring to. Also, Owen Hargreaves isn’t on the team this year, which takes care of one problematic factor for the Canadian.

So, naturally, I’m cheering for the United States.

I was all excited about my American sympathies. The United States is another country where soccer barely registers on the national consciousness and yet their media is so tied into ours that when the American team does well, as it did in last year’s Confederations Cup, the surge in interest carries over the border. Even people asking “huh, the American national team is pretty good, why is ours so shit?” is more attention than the Canadian national team usually gets and if the sight of Sam’s Army cheering the Americans along motivates people to come out with the Voyageurs the next time Canada’s in town, then that’s brilliant. Of course we should cheer for the United States! If the Americans do well, it can be nothing but good for Canada, and besides they’re a likable team of hard-working, modest men (as well as Landon Donovan) given no chance by the inbred cadre of European-based soccer elitists.

It seemed like a terrific post until I noticed that, in true World Cup fashion, everybody else had already written it. The Canadian guys went in the tank for the United States back in
May. On the Voyageurs board, hotbed of both Canadian soccer support and old-school European-centric attitude, support for the Americans runs about fifty-fifty. Duane Rollins, who I may never have agreed with before, is undecided-leaning-United States. Even Ben Knight wants the Americans to go all 1776 on the English, and if Ben Knight is rooting against the English the rest of us should probably just give up.

How am I supposed to be a contrarian now?

This outpouring of (tepid, somewhat self-conscious) support for the United States is, as far as I can remember, unprecedented. I cheered for England in 2006, and so did many others. The horror of that penalty shootout with Portugal, in a tournament where England had for once played up to its reputation, is a moment that still resonates in my mind and I’m sure in that of many of my readers. In spite of my reverence for Paul Peschisolido, when I remember David Seaman it’s not for robbing Pesch blind in the FA Cup in 2003 but for the previous year and that other thing he did. My Canada-first-England-second cred is pretty solid, and I’m not alone, but the country is swinging the Americans’ way. There’s an awful lot of “I usually cheer for England, but this time…” out there.

It’s not like this is a particularly unlikable English team. All the media hype and the WAG factor and the focus on a few stars in the tabloid press… none of this is new. It seems to me that this is just more evidence of shifting priorities among fans of Canadian soccer. Whether it’s because of MLS and Canadian success there-in or simply increasing awareness of the fact that we play soccer too, Canadians are paying more and more attention to their own backyard. You’d be hard-pressed to say that soccer in general is more popular in Canada; registered players in Canada actually decreased by nearly 8% last year. But we’re looking more and more to our own professional ranks instead of across the pond: even the second division in Canada is getting more attention than it used to. It’s not so long ago that Swangard Stadium never sold out and the Montreal Impact were playing in front of 9,000 mostly empty seats at
Claude-Robillard.

And when you think of soccer in Canadian terms, cheering for the United States just makes sense. Are we finally getting past our collective fetish for “the old country” in Canada? I think it’s finally happening. Very slowly, but it’s happening all the same.

On Full Time (Vancouver’s soccer show!) last Sunday, that media-friendly imported Canadian hero Stephen Hart spoke to the TEAM’s Mike Martignago and Tyler Green and, in spite of his downhearted demeanour throughout the interview, managed to get through the entire thing without shooting himself.

Hart’s a good interview on a number of levels. For one thing, unlike Dale Mitchell, he actually gives them. Also, he tells the truth, which gives him a big leg up on certain Yugoslav-born goalkeepers I could mention. When asked about Asmir Begovic, Hart said that the prospective traitor is “leaning towards Bosnia.”

First off, full disclosure. Stephen Hart is a very bright man, but he is an employee of the Canadian Soccer Association and the CSA has made having no idea what’s going on into a fine art. It’s entirely possible that Asmir Begovic is dealing with the impending birth of his first child, thinks that he blew that whole Bosnia rumour to bits earlier on Full Time, and Stephen Hart is simply as panicky and used to this sort of thing as we are.

But if it’s true. Good god.

I hate today’s international game like it killed my father. The overtly mercenary nature of the teams deprives the sport of meaning and makes me a sucker for caring about it. I can’t stand Sepp Blatter, Jack Warner, FIFA, and everybody who has ever worked for them. But the players are only variably guilty; I’ve always said there are three sorts of defectors, some more culpable than others:

1. Dani Fernandes. Born in and passionately interested in one country, which wasn’t interested in him. Went and played for someone else. These guys are okay by me. In Fernandes’s case, he was the backup on the Canadian U-20 team to some kid whose name I’ve forgotten but I seem to remember played college soccer for a couple of years and is now selling mufflers in Abbotsford. He never got a sniff from the Canadian system and was told as much, but Portugal was a bit further-sighted. That said, Dani is eligible to come back to Canada if he wanted to, and I know they’d take him. Canadian equivalent: Marc Bircham.
2. Jonathan de Guzman. Somebody who may have been born and raised in one country but had very real connections to another. Jonathan (and Julian)’s entire family was of Dutch ancestry and the younger de Guzman has also played in the Eredivisie his entire career. He is probably more Canadian than he is Dutch, but he is tolerably Dutch. Also eligible for Canada now, of course. Canadian equivalent: Simeon Jackson.
3. Owen Hargreaves. “What’s that, endorsers? You’ll pay me more money to hawk aerosol cheese if I do it in an England shirt? By god, old chap, I was a bally ol’ Englishman who just happened to be born and raised in Calgary!” Canadian equivalent: none, although Mike Klukowski would be level two and a half if such a thing existed.

That’s it. Three levels, in ascending order from “good guy in a bad situation” to “scumbag”. Then FIFA brought in that new rule and by god, we have a level four.

4. Hypothetical Asmir Begovic. Move to Canada at a young age because your homeland is like a country full of alcoholics, except instead of booze it’s genocide. Grow up in Canada, taking advantage of our generous refugee policy. Accept tens of thousands of dollars in training and youth development time from the Canadian Soccer Association. Do a touching advertisement for a shoe company talking about your Canadianness. Train with the senior team, accepting a callup to sit on a bench for ninety minutes in Jamaica during the merciful euthanasia to our World Cup qualifying run. Passive-aggressively decline a cap-tying callup to the Gold Cup squad because of “pregnant girlfriend” mumble mumble and “‘establish myself in Portsmouth” mumble mumble. Go on the country’s largest soccer radio broadcast and say that you’re Canadian. Go to the largest sports newspaper that hasn’t been bombed out in Bosnia and say that you’re Bosnian. Bolt in the night to Bosnia leaving a trail of evasive statements and outright lies in your wake because you want to hawk aerosol cheese. Pretend that you want to win games, even though the only reason Bosnia is still alive in World Cup qualifying is that, in UEFA, everybody still is. Hope you don’t get ethnically cleansed.

I have strong feelings on this. It’s one thing to leave a country as a refugee and say “I will always be grateful to Canada for completely saving my family’s asses, but in my heart of hearts I am Bosnian and always will be.” I’d understand that (an Ottawa resident, Mahir Hadziresic, was called up to the Bosnian U-20 squad but nobody minds for that reason). It’s another thing to arrive in Canada at eleven years old, come up through our ranks, get into our youth setup, take advantage of our training, our facilities, and our money, and then as soon as Bosnia shows any interest leaving us at the altar with the wedding already paid for, without even having the stones to tell the truth.

It has nothing to do with freedom of labour or even FIFA regulations (in Lord Bob’s FIFA, Begovic would be eligible for Bosnia until cap-tied because he was born there). It’s a matter of not being a complete dirtbag. And if the rumours are true then, well, I just became a Serbian White Eagles fan.

When Canada took on the world’s best in the 2001 FIFA Confederations Cup, it was (and remains) our senior mens team’s only appearance at a full FIFA tournament in my lifetime. Canada and Mexico qualified out of North America: the Canadians by virtue of winning the 2000 Gold Cup and Mexico as the defending champions from 1999.

Of course, the Confederations Cup isn’t a major tournament on the calendar. But for the Canadians it was the biggest stage we’d been on since 1986. Even the major countries send a few top players and play to win: just ask the New Zealanders if Spain was taking it easy last night. And with the Confederations Cup back in the spotlight thanks to the beginning of the 2009 tournament in South Africa, the time is right to look back on the glory that was the 2001 Confederations Cup.

As is traditional, the Confederations Cup was used as a warmup for the next year’s FIFA World Cup, taking place in Japan and South Korea. Canada was drawn into group B with the co-host Japanese, Cameroon, and Brazil. Predictably, the group was based in Japan, playing at Kashima Stadium in Ibaraki and Niigata Stadium.

It was a tough group but the marvelous thing about the Confederations Cup, the thing that makes it so valuable to us middling powers, is that there are no easy groups. Going in, Canada knew they’d face a stern test against three better teams. Fantastic! It would be a great way to test our mettle against some of the ranking sides in the world after the high of our Gold Cup victory. And we had already washed out of World Cup qualifying so this was the biggest opportunity we were going to have for a long time.

It’s easy to forget the calibre of the team we assembled. Craig Forrest is, of course, the best Canadian footballer who has ever lived. Paul Peschisolido was in his First Division-wrecking, butt-kicking, hero-making, managing-director-marrying prime. Mark Watson and Jim Brennan were risking serious arm injuries plunging knives deep into Holger Osieck’s back but they were still good players in high-quality leagues. Jason De Vos is one of the best centre backs we’ve ever run out as well as one of our best pundits. Guys like Davide Xausa and Carl Fletcher were minor pieces when if we had them, in their primes, today we’d be beside ourselves with joy. Carlo Corazzin, Dwayne De Rosario, and Richard Hastings were all on the bench.

The one glaring flaw was the Kevin McKenna Experiment still being in full swing, with Osieck having convinced himself beyond all reason that the big, talented 21-year-old centre back was secretly Marco Van Basten. Considering the trouble Canada would have scoring goals in this tournament, this would be significant.

Canada kicked off against the Japanese on May 31, 2001. The Japanese were famous for their quick attack and their fantastic transition game that was probably the best in Asia. Canada was famous for winning a coin toss against South Korea and then climbing onto Craig Forrest’s back. It was a one-sided matchup on paper, and a reporter asked Mark Watson what he thought of Japan’s speed. “They don’t run so fast,” Watson replied, “when they’re lying on the ground.”

Well, the Japanese attack tore up Watson so badly that they could have used him as sharkbait. Canada limped through the first half thanks to Forrest but with no chance of scoring, and then got shredded for three goals in the second half as Canada went down 3-0.

Realistically, that was it for Canada. They were never going to beat Brazil and a result over Cameroon wouldn’t be enough to put them in the top two. That match was the swing match for the Canadians and they came up well short. But everybody knew they would: for once the results were just the gravy, and what mattered was how they played.

Against Brazil, probably the best team in the world, they played pretty damned well. They did what Holger Osieck teams always did against superior opposition and bunkered in the John Limniatis Memorial 10-0-0 formation whenever a yellow shirt was within radar range of Craig Forrest. Even the lineup adjusted for defense, with Tony Menezes coming in for Carl Fletcher to start. They tried to snatch chances on the counter, which would have worked a lot better if the team was a bit quicker up front than Paul Peschisolido and Kevin McKenna. Canada held against Brazil and got into the half tied at nil.

Then, something odd happened. Midfielder Davide Xausa came out and in came Carlo Corazzin. A striker. Yes, McKenna moved back, but Holger decided “screw this, we can beat those bastards.”

We damned near did it, too. God, but that was a game. It was exactly what you picture when you remember the era of Holger’s Heroes. Forrest was a god incarnated as a man. Brazil constantly buzzed and got opportunities. They were miles and miles more skilled than the Canadians but they couldn’t break us down. Yes, Canada’s defense got worked like a speed bag, but we threatened at intervals. They earned that 0-0 draw and on a lucky day, Canada might have won that match.

The result was good for three points in the Moral Victory column and one point in the real standings. One precious, life-giving point. In a century of Canadian football, our senior mens team, the highest-profile football squad in the country, has achieved precisely one point in a full FIFA tournament. We got it over eight years ago on June 2, 2001 in front of 12,095 largely bored Japanese fans.

Canada followed that up by collapsing in front of the one team we should have had a fighting chance against, Cameroon. Going down 2-0, Canada emerged with little credit in what would be, to date, Canada’s last tournament match outside North America.

Eight years ago.

It’s a bittersweet memory, mostly because of what’s happened since. At the time it was promising. Canada hung tough with better teams against Brazil and for a half against Japan. World Cup qualifying was unfortunate but we seemed to be going up rather than down. Then Osieck took the pipe thanks to bootroom politics and was succeeded by an inept series of overly opinionated and inadequately talented self-described national heroes. Our best results came when we once again went outside Canada for our boss, using interim boss and Trinidadian Stephen Hart. Canada has not yet matched the glory years of 2000 and 2001 despite on paper having every reason to do so.

So, fantastic though the tournament was, we should concentrate above all on getting to the next one.