The USL Premier Development League is a footnote on the North American soccer scene, an organisation devoted to developing young amateur talent and coming fourth on what the Americans jokingly call their league pyramid behind MLS, USL-1, and USL-2 (USL-2 has never had a Canadian team and no prospect of getting any). Even in Canada, the USL PDL is best known by its connection with higher-division sides: the Vancouver Whitecaps Residency program was a success in 2008, and we all remember the Toronto Lynx running from USL-1 like scalded cats when Toronto FC was founded in 2007.

The USL PDL has four clubs in Ontario and three more in British Columbia, with our introduction coming to Thunder Bay in 2000. But with seven clubs in the country, including two expansion franchises starting this year, the PDL has the potential to be a major part of this country’s soccer development. The Whitecaps Residency program is only the start – when seven Canadian clubs are pulling up talented amateurs, they’re inevitably going to produce assets for higher-level sides.

Of course, it doesn’t hurt that the Canadian PDL sides have been singularly successful of late. So here is a primer on the underappreciated United Soccer Leagues Premier Development League, starting with the four Ontario teams. The British Columbia sides will follow in a future post.

The Thunder Bay Chill are the on-field success story. They managed to win the PDL last season, winning on penalties at Laredo’s home stadium in the single-leg final. They’ve contributed a couple of players to higher levels, with Colorado’s flashy young midfielder Kosuke Kimura plugging along in MLS and striker Brandon Swartzendruber recently signed to a USL-1 contract, and they’ve won the Heartland Division for two consecutive years. These guys, in short, can bloody well play soccer.

Their attendance in the championship season was a mediocre 564 per game, however, against a league average over 800. They’ve been a strong draw in the past and were over 1,000 fans per game in 2005, so it’s not as though Thunder Bay simply doesn’t care about soccer. Season tickets in their “VIP package” are $75 a head, so the price is right. Fort William Stadium isn’t precisely a modern facility, but it has seats and grass and dirt and lights and for the USL PDL anything more is excessive.

Thunder Bay’s got a bit of a weird schedule. They’re the only Canadian side in the so-called Heartland Division, meaning they play such natural rivals as Springfield, Denver, and Des Moines. Travel in the Heartland Division can be pretty brutal when you consider that these are amateur players and many of them are in school. There’s no real way around that for a city as isolated as Thunder Bay, but between difficult travel and low attendance it’s a good thing they’re succeeding on the pitch.

We all remember the Toronto Lynx as the little doormats of Canada’s A-League teams, playing in their dinky thirty-year-old sandlot in front of seven guys losing by a converted touchdown when they played the Impact… those were the days. I make fun of them but they did a lot right, and as an Edmonton Aviators widow I can’t help but respect a team that’s managed to succeed like the Lynx have. So if you’ve been living in a hole and only emerging to watch Toronto FC get thrashed, you may have missed the fact that, since dropping a couple of divisions, the Lynx have been doing great.

Don’t get me wrong, they’ve been losing. They’re the Lynx, losing is what they do.  They were third in the division last year, eked into the playoffs for the first time in any league since 2000, but they drew a thousand fans a night last season

A thousand fans! To watch a marginal PDL playoff team in a city with Major League Soccer! In 2007 they were fourth in the league in attendance! The Toronto Frickin’ Lynx! Did I fall into an alternate dimension or something?

I’m going to come right out and say it. I thought that, when the Lynx went down to USL PDL, the guys on the pitch would outnumber the guys in the stands and by now I’d have run into Rick Titus serving me at an Orange Julius. It turns out I’m a massive idiot. Why are you even still reading? The Lynx are a fantastic success story and they’re an achievement Toronto soccer fans can be proud of. I can’t believe I just wrote that sentence.

Of our PDL teams, the Ottawa Fury have provided the largest number of recent, consequential players. The country’s youngest soccer nomad Tyler Hemming played a couple seasons in Ottawa and Leonardo Di Lorenzo is a top player on one of the best teams in the USL-1. So they’ve never made the playoffs in their four-year history. What gives?

In four seasons the team’s moved through three managers. All-time, they’ve averaged 293 fans per home match. You’ll have an easier time finding tomorrow’s 6/49 numbers than Fury highlights in an Ottawa newspaper. A season ticket is $65 which makes the Thunder Bay prices look positively decadent, and yet nobody buys them. By the way, this city wants an MLS team. I’m actually glad Melnyk’s bid failed for that reason – Ottawa’s soccer apathy might have set Canadian club expansion back five years.

(Non-PDL-related aside: I’ve said that last sentence to several people and they’ve all looked at me like I was insane. But consider the following. After the Edmonton Aviators and Calgary Storm bombed out of USL-1 because of horrible ownership, when were we even considered for a USL-1 team again? To say nothing of an MLS side? Edmonton and Calgary had gone under, so the American football establishment said “them Canadians don’t like soccer”, stuck their fingers in their ears whenever the Whitecaps, Impact, and to a lesser extent the Lynx raised their heads, and hoped we’d go away. Then we had the great women’s U-20s, which led to BMO Field, which led to Toronto FC and the fantastic men’s U-20s, but those events don’t come along every day.)

I talk about the PDL being successful and good for Canadian soccer, but the Fury are an exception. The good news is that they have solid ownership and, really, it doesn’t cost a lot to run a PDL team even when the fans aren’t turning up. The Fury crew can afford to be patient, but the state of the Fury says a lot about how Ottawa would handle the big leagues.

Finally, the new guys, FC Forest City London.  Being an expansion team, it’s hard to judge just where they’re going to go. But they’ve made a bit of a splash early, bringing in Canadian U-20 international Michael Periera. They’re also squaring off directly against a Canadian Soccer League team, London City. London’s a decent CSL town, good for a couple hundred on good nights. But is there enough enthusiasm for minor league soccer in London to split two ways?

Forest City London’s had some facility problems too. Initially, they planned to play their home schedule at North London Stadium, while London City played at Cove Road Field. Instead, FC London will primarily play at TD Waterhouse Field, as well as Cove Road, Marconi Field, and the London Portugese Club for one game each. TD Waterhouse Field is smaller and frequently booked, and moving between four stadia is a hassle of epic proportions. But they also have liquor licenses, and North London Stadium did not. Even in the PDL, money talks.

It’s hard to pick a dog in this fight. All else being equal it’s obviously important for the CSL to succeed. We’re only going to get so far when our teams are feeders in American leagues, after all, and more importantly the CSL remains the best prospect for getting soccer between the Rockies and the Canadian Shield within our lifetimes.  But at the same time the CSL remains an Ontario league with one team in Quebec, and their pretentions aside any talk about them becoming a true national league has been only talk. Hopefully both Forest City London and London City can survive, with the PDL team catering to young players, the CSL to older ones, and everyone’s happy.

But when it comes to Canadian club soccer, when is everyone ever happy?

It’s Stephen Hart for interim manager of the men’s team. Not a bad choice, and if we were going to take an interim manager Hart would be my choice. Let’s not forget that I’m the guy who called Hart “the only plausible candidate“. We can go ahead and forget that I’ve spent pretty much every millisecond since then predicting Tony Fonseca, though.

Unfortunately, apparently “Stephen Hart” is French for “long-term solutions cost money”. You’re really going back to the interim tag? Really? After the World Cup consequences of switching from Hart to Mitchell were so catastrophic? Really? I understand that the CSA is under heavy financial pressure, only partially of their own making. But if you’re completely unable to afford a proper manager in 2009, what are the odds you’ll be able to bring in a big name in 2010?

If you’re going to go with Stephen Hart, then by god go with Stephen Hart. Give him a two-year contract and the keys to the car. Let him run through the Gold Cup and the 2010 friendly season without the Sword of Damacles hanging over his head. If he’s a bust, we know something’s coming way in advance and have time to get our ducks in a row. Hart goes on his way and we get a new manager in plenty of time for the 2011 Gold Cup. If Hart’s a success then by god we ride that Trinidadian horse into 2012 and beyond.

Personally, I don’t think Stephen Hart is a long-term fix. The Gold Cup was a fantastic tournament but Dale Mitchell had some brilliant moments too (before the U-20 World Cup he was practically a golden boy). We need to find someone from outside the CSA system, someone with his own ideas on how to run things, and Hart is a career Association man who is singularly underqualified in any case. But if you’re going to trust Stephen Hart, then trust Stephen Hart. Give him the chance to prove me wrong.

Congratulations are due to Lars Hirschfeld on achieving a remarkable milestone earlier this week. Unfortunately we missed it at the time, but better late than never: April 6 was the one-year anniversary of Lars’s last appearance for his club, CFR Cluj of Romania.

Er, hooray?

It all looked so promising at the outset. Cluj paid €1.3 million to lure the signature of Hirschfeld from Rosenborg B.K., powerhouses of the Norwegian leagues, during the January 2008 transfer window. Saying Cluj is the best team in Romania would be like saying that Diego Maradona in his prime would be the best player for a PDL team: true but significantly understating matters.

Unfortunately, being a strong team, CFR Cluj has some strong goalkeepers. Portugese keeper Nuno Claro has been with the club since 2007, while domestic talent Eduard Stăncioiu joined in 2006. Still, €1.3 million is a large transfer fee in anyone’s books, and if an Eastern European team that’s not exactly rolling in revenue were to spend that much on a player, you’d think that they’d, I dunno, put him in more than five matches over almost eighteen months of continuous employment.

Lars Hirschfeld is good. Canada fans have wildly varying opinions of his talent but for my money he’s the best keeper this country has produced since Craig Forrest. Starting in World Cup qualifying after Pat Onstad laid an egg at BMO Field, Hirschfeld was always reliable, sometimes spectacular, let in one particularly hideous goal at San Pedro Sula and had that whistled back on offsides. But Hirschfeld’s club career has been nightmarish since leaving the Calgary Storm of the A-League in 2002. Joining up with Tottenham, Hirschfeld went on a loanee’s tour of Luton Town, Gillingham, and Dundee United, playing a total of nine matches over three years. A free transfer to Leicester City produced one more game, and another free transfer to Norway’s Tromsø I.L. led to eleven appearances in 2005 and, finally, some notice.

When he moved to Rosenborg to begin the 2006 season, things finally seemed to come together for Hirschfeld as he played in fifty-two matches for Norway’s finest side. Then, one ill-advised transfer to Romania, and it all comes smashing down.

Aside from Hirschfeld, our goalkeeping choices for the coming Gold Cup are limited to 41-year-old Pat Onstad, whose last national appearance resulted in him fisting a critical goal into his own net, 31-year-old Greg Sutton, who only Toronto F.C. fans seem to rate at all, and 29-year-old Kenny Stamatopoulos who, er, is Kenny Stamatopoulos. This isn’t just an area of concern, this is a critical vulnerability. And our one international-calibre goalkeeper is eating Cheetos and stopping shots behind 14-year-olds on a Romanian reserve team.

God, I hope Adam Street comes along in a hurry.

On Monday, we learned what had to be the least surprising development in CONCACAF history. Jack Warner, president of CONCACAF and vice-president of FIFA, and his lackey Chuck Blazer were both reelected to their positions in CONCACAF by acclamation.

Would it be tasteless to say of Warner, 66, “well, hopefully he’ll be dead soon”?

Regular football followers won’t need any introduction to Jack Warner, but for those less interested in the dark corners of the sport, Jack Warner is to CONCACAF what Kenneth Lay was to Enron, running the confederation as his own personal toy-cum-piggy bank.

Maybe you’re snorting derisively. Look at the Canada fan thinking CONCACAF’s out to screw him. Alas, the situation isn’t so cute. Basically, Jack Warner ordered free tickets for the 2006 World Cup and he and his family scalped them along with heavily marked-up vacation packages, netting a cool multi-million dollar profit. Warner was caught with his hand in the piggy bank and escaped major sanction from FIFA thanks to Sepp Blatter, who needed the CONCACAF vote in order to stay in power. Warner was fined a million dollars – only a fraction of his illicit profits – by FIFA, and didn’t even bother to pay that off.

Of course, maybe Warner’s a great administrator, building bridges between nations and keeping FIFA running smoothly, such as when he went on a massive, unprovoked tirade against England’s chances of hosting the 2018 World Cup and saying, among other tidbits, that noone in Europe likes them.

And that’s sticking to documented facts reported by most of the world media instead of getting plain cynical, like looking at the weird fact that Trinidad and Tobago seems to keep getting easy draws for World Cup qualifying and that if a CONCACAF referee has ever made a decisive call against Warner’s home country, no eyewitness reports have reached our world. Or the fact that, if you look at the 2009 Gold Cup schedule, it seems to be set up to guarantee the United States and Mexico a smooth path to the Finals.

So even if you don’t believe a word that hasn’t been reported on thoroughly, proven three times, and acknowledged as true by FIFA, anybody who supports Jack Warner is in the position of saying “wel, a few million dollars worth of corruption is okay” and then facing a devil of a time trying to explain what value he’s bringing to world football without counting “ballast”.

For crying out loud, Dale Mitchell could manage a confederation better than him.

When you’re a Canadian football fan, the question of club teams tends to come up a lot. After all, the international season is short, and even shorter when you root for Canada. So people start talking about their Liverpools and their Manchester Uniteds and their Vancouvers and their Montreals and their Torontos. And I smile and nod and kinda look bored.

It’s not that club soccer doesn’t appeal to me. I call myself a Charlton Athletic fan, to the extent that I’m a fan of any club these days. But in truth, I’m a club widow.

I miss my Edmonton Aviators.

Those of you who know your A-League history just laughed so hard milk shot out your nose. The Edmonton Aviators were, for one glorious summer in 2004, Edmonton’s first taste of professional outdoor football since the old Edmonton Drillers of the North American Soccer League closed up shop in 1982. The Aviators boasted an assortment of legendary names in Canadian football, like Rick Titus and… actually, just Rick Titus. And even he went back to the Lynx before the season was through.

The Aviators had two essential problems. First, they were formed when Edmonton was still bathing in the afterglow of the successful U-20 Women’s World Cup, which saw Edmonton come close to selling out 60,000-seat Commonwealth Stadium to watch teenage girls play soccer. The Aviators optimistically set up shop in Commonwealth as well, overlooking the fact that a large majority of attendees, including yours truly, were either attending on free tournament passes handed out to every registered youth player in the capital region or family of the same. Worse, while the best-attended U-20 games were on the weekend, the Edmonton Eskimos and the Churchill Cup (a major rugby tournament being held in Edmonton that year) conspired to limit the Aviators to two weekend dates at Commonwealth.

Even during the week, there were problems. Training facilities, staff, everything belonged to the Eskimos and the rugby players first. Edmonton boasts Canada’s most northerly major grass pitch, and although the Edmonton turf crew is the best in the country the climate takes its toll on trying to create a durable surface. The Aviators only ever got Commonwealth Stadium when the Eskimos were done with it, and to call such a pitch “sloppy” would be understating the case by an order of magnitude. And that’s without even getting into the rent the Aviators paid: to my knowledge the figure has never been revealed, but we know that it was a hell of a lot.

Concessions were understaffed. The stadium was a massive, empty bowl. The team was possibly the worst professional franchise in any sport ever to take flight in Edmonton, and management’s emphasis on recruiting local (read: cheap) talent meant that a bunch of nobodies could enjoy the experienced of being massacred by even the minnows of the A-League. There were gridiron lines on the pitch!

The second problem was the ownership group. Because – and nobody ever believes this when I tell them, but you can look it up – in spite of playing in the most inhospitable environment it is possible to conceive, with a bunch of hideous players nobody had ever heard of, as an expansion franchise with no history, in a city which hadn’t had a professional outdoor squad in twenty years, attendance was a shade under 1,500 paying fans per match.

That was good for second-last in the A-League, ahead of only fellow hapless Alberta squad Calgary. But it was perfectly tolerable for a team as new and as dreadful as the Aviators. Atlanta had a bunch of seasons when they would have killed a drifter for 1,500 fans a match and they lasted thirteen years. The Aviators were marketing themselves as competition to the Eskimos, not as a product, and they were doing such a shoddy job of it that I played with people on my youth squad who didn’t even know Edmonton had a football club.

The sorts of people who go to Eskimos games would never got to Aviators games. Setting aside the fact that they were completely different sports, there’s a history in the green and gold that the Aviators obviously couldn’t match. You borrow an Eskimos fan’s season ticket, talk to the guys you’re sitting next to, and they’ll have been going to games for thirty years. It didn’t hurt that the Eskimos were always contenders and were in the midst of the longest playoff-making streak in the history of professional sport.

I remain convinced that with decent ownership, they’d not only be in USL-1 but they’d be in the conversation for MLS. Instead, the Aviators were owned by a consortium of nineteen men. Nineteen men of no stature in the community, with no experience in sports ownership or management, and with no money. When they were granted an A-League expansion franchise, they said that in the worst-case scenario, they would be able to operate the Aviators at a big loss for three seasons out-of-pocket. Of course, they also forecasted attendance of eleven thousand fans per match, so they were clearly huffing solvents even from the start.

On August 25, the Aviators were grounded. The nineteen-man ownership group debated between ordering pizza and trying to keep the team running, and opted for pizza. They ignomiously turned the team over to the league and ran for the hills, sticking around only long enough to take all the intellectual property with them and forcing the league to operate the team as “Edmonton FC” until the season drew, mercifully, to a close and Edmonton’s franchise could be terminated with a single shot to the back of the head.

If you thought the ownership group ran things cheaply, that had nothing on what the league did. They got rid of Rick Titus and all the other players who made more than bus fare. They moved the team out of Commonwealth and into Foote Field at the University of Alberta, a pretty decent modern facility seating about six thousand. The team stunk more than ever and the executioner constantly hovered just off-stage, waiting for play to finally conclude so he could dispatch the franchise and move on to more profitable enterprises. Promotion stopped.

Attendance went up about twenty-five percent. Amazing how little it takes to get people into a building.

I don’t even live in Edmonton anymore. If a new team moved into Edmonton and made a go of it, I’d be happy but I’d hardly get to see them. But it could work. All we need is someone with the stones to try.

Still, there’s no way to replace the Edmonton Aviators.

It is well for the heart to be naive and the mind not to be. -Anatole France

I have a confession to make, I only recently began following Canadian soccer, and only shortly before that soccer in general. In fact, I have never been to an actual soccer match (youth soccer doesn’t count). Sure, for years I would watch the World Cup or the European Championship on television because it was a big event, and there is an intrinsic flow to soccer which no other sport has.

My first, memorable, non-World Cup or European Championship match was Newcastle’s Premier League home tie against Arsenal in the 2005-06 season, as it was the reason I began watching football matches on a regular basis. The only thing I remember from the match (everything else I looked up) was Scott Parker running around like a madman after he had his teeth knocked out (or chipped), gauze with some numbing agent in his mouth, diving head-first all over the place. It was a remarkable performance and I (foolishly) decided to take up Newcastle as my favourite side. I began to pour hours into playing Football Manager (the best learning tool for a new football fan), seek out websites, and find matches on television to watch.

So, as of 2005 I had found my club, but what about following my Country? As we all know, following the national team is a logistical nightmare. Nonetheless, in 2006 Sportsnet decided to show a couple U-20 matches against Brazil, and so I saw my first national team match. Besides David Edgar, I knew nothing of the Canadians. In fact, Edgar ended up scoring in that match, Canada winning, and my support of the national side started off on unusual footing, although Dale Mitchell was the coach of that U-20 side. The next year I watched as Benito Archundia made one of the worst calls I have ever seen in sport, and my sugar-coated view of soccer came crashing down. If there was a silver lining, that horrible offside call galvanized my support.

That all being said, when it comes to our National teams, I am still fairly naive. I don’t know much NT history and, more importantly, I haven’t experienced the anguish most seasoned fans have. The Gold Cup officiating was harsh, but I wasn’t completely invested at the time and didn’t know who most of the players were. I didn’t realize that following the national team would mean getting all my news from the internet, following the Voyageurs’ forum, or listening to World Cup Qualifying matches thanks to the radio broadcasts of the other team (Phillip’s Bakery: A step above the rest!). Hostile “home” crowds, poor officiating, the CSA, and CONCACAF officiating are obstacles which, as far as I was concerned, may as well have not existed few years ago; I am still in the learning and conditioning stage of my fandom.

I guess what I’m trying to say is, there is so much I did not know going into this odyssey that is supporting the national teams. However, now that I am involved, ingrained, in this voyage, there is a sense of pride in being one of the few. Any idiot can cheer for Canada’s hockey team at the Olympics (and possess an unbelievable amount of arrogance even though they cannot name half the players), but being a Canadian soccer fan, there’s something special there, or at least I think so. Then again, I don’t have the cynicism that comes from experiencing heartbreak after heartbreak.

First off, barring extreme personal financial or passportal disaster I am all-but-confirmed to be attending Canada’s 2009 Gold Cup matches on July 3 in Los Angeles (against Jamaica) and on July 7 in Columbus (against El Salvador). I’m also a very strong maybe for July 10 in Miami (against Costa Rica) and, if necessary, a quarterfinal match in either Philadelphia or Jamaica. For the semi-final and final I’d have to go to work, but somehow I don’t think I’ll be missing much.

And I’m sure I’m not the only one. If you’re going to be at one or more of the cities, shout it out! Look me up! Let’s get a big mob to a football pub in the States so I can spill things on people in that incomparable Lord Bob fashion! Unfortunately, fellow Maple Leaf Forever contributor pRoke won’t be going, but that’s only because he sucks.

When July hits, I obviously won’t be able to liveblog the matches or anything but I’ll be bringing my laptop along and you’ll get plenty of memories and photos to keep you company as I fall into the cheapest hotel bed I can find and pass out into a semi-drunken torpor. And who says the Gold Cup can’t be a fun tournament?

On Thursday, we finally got the draw for the 2009 CONCACAF Gold Cup, taking place this July in pretty well the entire continental United States (for 2011, Jack Warner is supposedly trying to schedule a date on Jupiter).

Well, when I say “draw”, I overstate the case somewhat.

“We’re excited at having created these groups. They are well-balanced and will provide very interesting matches,” CONCACAF general secretary Chuck Blazer said. “Given the variety of teams and the cities we’re going to, it offers something for everyone.” (Canwest News Service)

In what I’m sure is unrelated news, the Americans and Mexicans have cotton-candy hugs-and-kisses draws whereas Canada is drawn against Costa Rica, Jamaica, and El Salvador. You can make an argument that three of the six strongest sides in CONCACAF are in one group but, hey, at least those honest souls at CONCACAF think the matches will be “very interesting”.

But I digress.

Canada will travel a combined distance, stadium to stadium, of 4,787.67 kilometres during the group stage according to Google Earth, from the west coast of the United States in Los Angeles to the southeastern tip in Miami, passing through almost the geographical centre of the country in Columbus en route. Their opponents in the group will suffer the same trials, but it’s almost like they wanted to soften up Group A so that the United States and Mexico wouldn’t have any trouble…no, what an absurd concept.

We’re in the Group of Death, but there is opportunity here. Canada was the better team when we played Jamaica at BMO Field during World Cup qualifying and drew only due to a single Pat Onstad gaffe. El Salvador are far and away the weak sisters of the group, so that means that whether we can beat the Ticos in Miami is largely a matter of pride and a favourable quarterfinal draw.

I’m not going to lie to you. I think we can make it.

Costa Rica’s the class of the group, obviously. They’re the role models for having a strong domestic league. Their roster consists of the occasional foreign star, such as Carlos Hernández of the Los Angeles Galaxy, but they’re padded with a bunch of guys you’ve never heard of from the Costa Rican league. C.D. Deportivo Saprissa contributed four players for their last match against Mexico, including their most-capped player and top scorer, midfielder Walter Centeno. When was the last time you saw a C.D. Deportivo Saprissa match?

But the Ticos keep doing it. They’ve qualified three times for the World Cup, including twice consecutively, and they’re favourites to make it three in a row. My god. It’s almost like having domestic and near-domestic players who can play with and against each other on a regular basis leads to having a superior team. Which is why I’ve always felt that you should cheer for every Canadian club except when they’re playing against your own side. If we can get three MLS entries by 2012, that’s a total of fifteen Canadians required to be on MLS rosters plus those who succeed on their own merits around the league.

Be like Costa Rica, is what I’m saying. Considering how easy travel is when you don’t need to recall players from aroudn the globe I’d be stunned if they didn’t send their best team to the Gold Cup, and that means they can book a trip to either Philadelphia or Dallas in pen. We play Costa Rica July 10 in Miami, our last match of the group stage. Later that night Jamaica plays El Salvador, and since we can probably predict how both of those matches will turn out without even seeing the rosters, let’s cross our fingers that we’re qualified before kickoff.

Jamaica’s more-or-less in Canada’s boat. They were kicked out of World Cup qualifying in inglorious fashion and they’re playing their first match of 2009 with a different manager than the one who managed the beginning of 2008. They’re going to be burning for a big Gold Cup, and they’re going to look at their strong group as nothing less than an appropriate challenge. They’re probably going to combine young players (hopefully not Dave Hoilett!) and veterans to prepare for 2014.

Yes, they beat the hell out of us in Kingston in our last match, but by then Canada was out and playing nobodies (remember the Kevin Harmse Experience, everybody?) while Jamaica still had everything to play for. And we could easily have reversed the scoreline in Toronto, but Ricketts was solid and Onstad, er, wasn’t. Well, you can bet that the Reggae Boyz won’t have old man Onstad around to help them out this time.

I’m an optimist. I think that Jamaica’s overall skill level is below ours. I think that our best players wallop their best players and we take our roster filler from MLS and the USL Division One whereas the Jamaican Digicel Premier League just stinks. If we play Jamaica ten times we should win five of them and draw three more. There’s more grassroots support for soccer in Canada, more high-level support for soccer in Canada, more everything for soccer in Canada, and if we haven’t got the results against Jamaica lately then, well, let’s just hope that whoever our new manager is can put a game together.

We open our tournament in Los Angeles against Jamaica on July 3. There’s a fairly strong contingent of western Voyageurs already committed to this match, so hopefully the boys can get us off on the right foot. Canada – Jamaica will clearly be the vital match of the group: with Costa Rica nearly certain for qualification and El Salvador so far below our calibre, it’s almost certain that the winner of that match will go through.

El Salvador is the “and the rest!” of Group A. They’ve made it to two World Cups (though none since 1982) and they’re a very credible team capable of shocking anybody in CONCACAF if they play their best match. Essentially the entire El Salvador squad plays in their premier league, so they’re as familiar with each other as it’s possible to be. They’re a legitimate footballing nation with pedigree up the rear and they’re stunning in World Cup qualifying, getting through to the hex, achieving a 2-2 draw at home to the United States, and showing magnificent style losing 1-0 in Costa Rica. But they’re just not that good, their players are of strictly local calibre, and they’ve somehow contrived to be lower in the FIFA rankings than Canada is. In the previous World Cup qualifying round, El Salvador’s Group 3 was laughably bad, boasting minnows Haiti and Suriname along with Costa Rica.

But I’m not looking past them. We play El Salvador July 7 at Crew Stadium in Columbus (plenty of Toronto Voyageurs signing up for a bus trip, which should be fun) and I’m terrified. You can bet that Columbus football fans won’t have fond memories of Toronto FC and might well be in El Salvador’s corner. When the schedule came out, I circled July 7 as “The Sort of Game Canada Loses”. If we play our best match we will win barring intervention from the football gods.

God, I hope we play our best match.

Match Predictions