Like probably every other preview you’re going to read for this friendly, I’m going to come right out and say it: I want the veterans to play.

My preferred lineup is on the left, and if there’s anything in there that’s really going to surprise I don’t see it. Yes, I do have Finnish third-division striker and national team rookie Tossaint Ricketts in the hole, but who the hell else are you going to use from this lineup? Ornoch? God help us, McKenna?

Probably the biggest departure I’m making from orthodoxy is having Jamie Peters at fullback and Paul Stalteri at midfield. But, at the international level, Diesel has always been at his best on the wing. I have no idea why this is true but it is and has been for years: Stalteri simply gets into the game much more easily when he has more control over the play, and that’s what he gets at midfield. Even in the recent World Cup qualifying, Stalteri alternated between uninspiring and lethargic until Mitchell cut him lose to go further forward in the Mexico match, when he was Canada’s third-best player behind Radzinski and Klukowski.

Peters at fullback, meanwhile, is simply because that’s where he’s been playing lately with Ipswich Town. I really like the idea of Peters as a defender. He’s pacey, he’s better on the ball than our current backline except Klukowski and McKenna, he’s really the best young option we have on the flank, and our midfield is stacked with talent for the next decade or so. This would be his first minute of national team action at fullback and I’d embrace the opportunity.

Honestly, I don’t expect Stephen Hart to agree with me, and I wouldn’t be surprised to see Stalteri and Peters switched in the real lineup. But I do expect to see Nik Ledgerwood and Simeon Jackson start, and I’m excited for that too. Ledgerwood would be making his second appearance and his first in over a year and a half for the national team. It’s so easy to forget that Nikolas is already 24 years old: he’s seemingly been a top prospect forever. He’s small, pacey, and reliable in the inimitable fashion of the German-trained midfielder. Mostly on the fringes of 2.Bundesliga side TSV 1860 München, Ledgerwood’s career has been right on the development curve, and this is a good chance for him to prove he deserves more international experience.

Simeon Jackson, of course, needs no introduction. His goal to put Gillingham back into League One (with the assist to Charlton prospect Josh Wright) is already the stuff of legend, and for a twenty-two year-old his resume is positively starstudded. Amazingly, this will be his first appearance for Canada (and he will appear: he made the trip to Jamaica with the nats at the end of World Cup qualifying but Dale Mitchell did not put him on), but it certainly won’t be his last. Jackson is already the quickest striker Canada has had since Radzinski in his prime and has that touch around the goal that you can’t teach. His minuses are size and big-game experience, and the latter is looking better by the moment. I’d play him ninety minutes against Cyprus, and honestly I might play him ninety minutes for every game until Paul Stalteri is accepting the Gold Cup at Giants Stadium.

My pick for Jackson’s fellow striker is Tossaint Ricketts. Ricketts is the reverse of Jackson in many ways: his club career has been both short and indistinguished but he’s got it done with les rouges at the youth level. Only six Canadians have ever scored hat tricks in international play and Ricketts is one of them, bagging his in a U-20 friendly against the Americans of all sides. Ricketts reminds me of a young Ali Gerba: not fast but a good final burst, almost no moves but the ones he has he can perform reliably, and if you make a mistake against him he’s going to punish you for it.

Being a friendly, there should be plenty of action off the bench. Kenny Stamatopoulos should only get up in case of injury: he’s not the answer to any of our problems and we need to get Hirschfeld as much match experience as possible. Richard Hastings was a great fullback for a long time but has hit the wall, fallen onto the reserve squad of a mediocre Scottish Premier League team, and all his arrows are pointing down rather than up. I wouldn’t bring him in either. The rest are fair game.

Yes, that includes our favourite pair of no-names, Dominic Imhof and Eddy Sidra. Sidra turned twenty at the end of February and is by far the youngest member of the team. A fullback in the Energie Cottbus youth setup (home of fellow Canuck and first team why-the-hell-didn’t-you-call-him-up all-star keeper Adam Straith), Sidra has never impressed in the U-20 setup and lacks much to recommend him: he is small for his position, not particularly quick, and hasn’t got enough experience for this level of competition. But he is in a very well-respected training program in Germany, has put in good performances in the past, and perhaps most importantly to Stephen Hart he was born in the Sudan and retains full eligibility for their national team. Has he heard whispers of the Sudanese trying to cut Canada out of the loop? Perhaps this is just a case of better safe than sorry. At any rate, you bring a twenty year-old into Cyprus for a friendly, you may as well play the kid and see what he’s got.

Dominic Imhof I’ve gone on about at length, so there’s no need to rehash my earlier ranting. Suffice to say that I don’t think he has what it takes. But our backline isn’t at its best with this selection, so I’d consider bringing him in for McKenna and seeing what he can do. Imhof is known for offense, and if we’re down late he might be an interesting choice when we’re pushing the back line forward.

So, A Prediction Maybe?

I’ve got Cyprus taking this one 2-1, Canada’s lone goal coming from Simeon Jackson.

Cyprus is better than most of us think. They’re a small, poor, famously divided country not known for their sporting heritage. Most of their players are domestic and in a league that nobody rates. But you put them out on a pitch and they get results. Canada faces a few teams like that in CONCACAF, with El Salvador the most topical example. Cyprus would be a realistic opponent for a Canadian A-team, and against this bunch I can’t picture the Canadians snatching the result.

There’s too many question marks in this lineup. Too many players without either ability or experience. Lars Hirschfeld hasn’t played a millisecond of competitive football since World Cup qualifying, and Kenny Stamatopoulos is just dreadful. But I hope to be proven wrong!

Canada takes on Cyprus, in Cyprus, at 1 PM Eastern time.

Edit (1:05 AM PST): According to an e-mail from Richard Scott at the CSA, “there will be updates on our website before, during and after the match.” Since there was a reply to my question about whether there was any Cypriot broadcasting, the Cyprus football federation website mentions no broadcasting, and nobody can dig anything up on the Voyageurs board, I think it’s safe to say that our options are either “stay glued to canadasoccer.com” or “fly to Cyprus”.

He was one of the rarest of players. Canadian to the bone, a young west-coast superstar who was being scouted by the Europeans almost from the moment he first saw a football pitch. He was with the Celtic youth academy by the age of 15 and then moved up to Feyenoord, getting an Eredivisie match at age eighteen.

How many Canadians have done that? He was big, quick, and talented: three pretty good attributes to combine. Particularly good off set pieces and probably the best young midfielder this country had since… actually, I’m not sure we’d ever had one at his level.

Alas, success was not to be. Rotterdam was a long way from his native Vancouver and he’d been packing suitcases on a tour of Europe when he was younger than most of us were when we started driving. In an interview later with The Province, he said, “I just wanted to completely remove myself from the situation because I burnt out so badly I couldn’t take it anymore.” So 19-year-old Jacob Lensky requested his release from Feyenoord, one of the best sides in Europe.

Said Peter Bosz, technical director of Feyenoord, “Feyenoord is saddened by the player’s departure, given that his footballing qualities were unquestionable.” But the Dutch giants were class until the end and let Lensky go on his way. The young starlet retired and flew home to Vancouver.

You know what just about everybody in Canadian football said at the time? Good for him! There had always been rumours, and more than rumours, about the Lenskys. Jacob’s father Boris Lensky was your stereotypical football father, flying Jacob around hell’s half acre, openly gunning for a youth deal with Manchester United before inking terms with Celtic. Before Feyenoord, all the Canadian footballing world knew of Jacob Lensky was what Boris Lensky told us and the exciting quotes that filtered through the youth academies of the big European clubs as Boris jerked Jacob around from country to country. As a teenager Jacob played for five European youth setups in three countries. And these are simply the facts of record, before getting into the usual whispers that surround cases like this.

Then, out of nowhere in January, stunning news came down the wire. Lensky was on trial with a football club again. But for the alumnus of Celtic and Feyenoord, the side this time was more humble: the defending USL Division 1 champion Vancouver Whitecaps. In a report from The Province, Lensky identified the reason he was back: he was happy to be playing closer to home and away from the pressures of a big European club. All around, Canadian fans applauded at a young man seeming to be getting back into the game the right way. He impressed in Vancouver and received a trial offer from the MLS’s Seattle Sounders. All was right with the world.

Then Lensky left Vancouver camp. Not to go to Seattle, but to go home. The Sounders confirmed Lensky hadn’t accepted their trial offer. Had he simply grown sick of the game again? Nobody in the Lensky camp was talking, and Jacob was left to fade into the obscurity that is the rightful due of every nineteen-year-old.

Finally, today, almost exactly four months after the Vancouver-Seattle soap opera, Jacob Lensky is back on the footballing pages. Back in the Netherlands, Lensky was on trial with FC Utrecht (Dutch) – and, in spite of eight months layoff, impressing. Lensky is back in Canada now, and the question does not seem to be whether Utrecht wants Lensky but whether, so soon after his release from Feyenoord for personal reasons, he is eligible for another Eredivisie contract.

Of course, there’s still the open matter of whether Lensky really wants to play again or if he’s just being pushed from a certain direction. But not to worry! According to FC Utrecht head of scouting Edwin de Kruijff, Lensky was just taking a gap year to resume his studies.

Where did that come from? In which parallel dimension can one take the words “gap year” from the quote “I burnt out so badly I couldn’t take it anymore?” Burned out so badly that he wasn’t even willing to play for Seattle in North America’s second-best football league, on a team so close to his home town that he could drive back. And after about a semester, he decides “wow, I feel great, and all that studying that I never told anybody about and that was so intensive that I couldn’t, say, stay in shape by playing for a university or in the USL PDL or something has really paid off! I think I’ll go back to the Netherlands and really, really piss off Feyenoord by signing for one of their rivals after securing my release quite possibly under false pretenses!”

Believe me, this is not the last chapter of Jacob Lensky’s footballing soap opera.

I’m not sure what my least favourite part of the Gold Cup is. It’s probably the omnipresent agony that is CONCACAF refereeing. Sometimes it’s seeing which major Canadian player will completely forget how to play this game. But right now, it’s probably the usual chorus of very intelligent, very well-read, very experienced Canadian football observers saying that the Gold Cup doesn’t matter.

This isn’t just the guys at TSN saying the Gold Cup is irrelevant because soccer is irrelevant. The 24th Minute’s Duane Rollins, as big a Canada fan as you’ll meet, seems to be treating the Gold Cup as a friendly schedule with a gaudy trophy at the end. Surf over to the Voyageurs board and see serious fans suggest lineups that stop barely short of including “this twelve-year-old across the street who can keepie uppie for, like, two hours and has a Honduran grandmother”.

You know what? Screw that. I’m not going to the Gold Cup because I feel sorry for it. The Gold Cup is CONCACAF’s championship, it’s the second-biggest tourmanent Canada’s men will ever be able to play for, and it’s a major event on our calendar for all the right reasons.

• It’s the only thing we’ve ever won. Canada is the only country that isn’t Mexico or the United States to ever win the CONCACAF Gold Cup. We and Costa Rica are also the only non-American, non-Mexican teams to win multiple CONCACAF championships in any incarnation. People gripe that football has no winning history in this country and then belittle the Gold Cup, which is the only winning history we’ve got.
• Adults play it. In 2003, Canada reached the quarterfinals of the then-World Youth Cup, scraping our way through wins and draws before finally losing. To Spain. In extra time. It was possibly the most improbable tournament in our history, and outside of the usual suspects nobody noticed. Canada fans will turn out when we host a youth tournament, but when it’s happening in some far-flung corner of the globe nobody will remember the results.
• People pay attention when we win anything. Am I the only one who remembers this? When Craig Forrest spent two glorious weeks as the best goalkeeper in the world and an underskilled bunch of European rejects took the 2000 title with nothing more than grit, determination, a great manager and a lucky coin toss, people around the country cared. The sorts of people who went down to the pub yesterday to watch Manchester United – Barcelona without even knowing Vancouver – Montreal was happening. Canada, normally the doormats of CONCACAF (or so the casuals can be forgiven for believing), had told the Americans, the Mexicans, and those bastards the Hondurans where they could shove their tradition. And then we flamed out of the 2002 World Cup qualifying season in spectacular fashion even for us, and that was that.
• Maybe if we sucked less, Canadians would actually play for Canada. You’re David Hoilett. You can play for either Canada or Jamaica. Neither team is in the hex, but the Gold Cup comes, Jamaica sends a real lineup, and Canada sends kids. We play July 3 in Los Angeles, and Jamaica just rolls us. David Edgar misses the rest of the tournament with windburn because he got blown by so many times, that kind of thing. Jamaica ends up losing the final to the Americans, Canada ends up golfing. The next FIFA date, both Jamaica and Canada call you. Are you going to go play for the team that wants to win games, or the team whose motto is Latin for “wait until next year”? The whole reason Owen Hargreaves and Jonathan De Guzman went to England and the Netherlands was because they could win trophies there. Want to solve that problem? Win some trophies.
• Nobody learns from losing. When I was a youth player, I was a midfielder on the championship team from St. Albert, Alberta. We weren’t at the elite level but we were up there a bit, and let me tell you, that team was a cocky bunch. We even added a couple ringers; top players from other teams in the city. We went down to Calgary and you could take home the games we won in a matchbox without taking the matches out first. I broke my right wrist in our second-last game, played the last game anyway because we were all in the sort of suicidal despair that numbs mere physical pain, and we lost something like 15-0. I kicked a kid in the testicles just so I could get my foot on some sort of ball. Did that make us better players? Hell no, it just made us want to come back next year a lot less. We should probably try and avoid that with our national team.
• Let’s Face It, Winning Is Just Nails. If we named a bunch of thirty-somethings, went down to the States and won this thing, I bet nobody would be complaining then.

Reducing our calendar to “World Cup qualifying” and “friendlies with fancy names” is not the way to build football in this country. There aren’t a lot of opportunities for us to win silverware and show the public that Canada takes the sport seriously, so let’s not belittle the ones we have.

I consider myself a pretty big fan of Canadian football. I like to think that I know a thing or two about the guys who don the Maple Leaf. I could pick Andrea Lombardo out on the street (and I could pick him out if he was on Adam Street, but that’s really none of my business). I can tell the Hoilett brothers apart, and I’m not sure their mother can do that. I even recognized Dale Mitchell when he was making me a smoothie at the Mayfair Mall Orange Julius.

So take it for what it’s worth when I say who the hell is Dominic Imhof?

The latest callup for our friendly Saturday against Cyprus, Imhof is the brother of 1.Bundesliga star midfielder Daniel Imhof, which appears to be his main qualification for the men’s national team. He’s also a fullback and possibly the best player for FC Tuggen, a team in the Swiss third division. There’s a Swiss third division? And we’re pulling players out of it to prepare for the Gold Cup? Did we suddenly become Moldova when I wasn’t looking?

While I’m all for developing promising young talent in a friendly, Imhof is twenty-seven years old. How many twenty-seven-year-old Swiss third division defenders do you know that went on to become the next Franz Beckenbauer. A few sites around the Internet suggest that Imhof also holds Swiss citizenship, but did we really worry about having to cap-tie him? What’s next, calling up the long-lost De Guzman brother and 39-year-old Scarborough pipefitter Ted De Guzman? Asking Bob Lenarduzzi to tug on a jersey and a mullet wig and come for another runout? Call up Kenny Stamatopoulos? Oh, Christ, they did that too?

Now, we knew this was going to be a pain in the ass of a friendly to get players for. It doesn’t fall on a FIFA-approved friendly date and clubs were always going to be reluctant to let players go. Promising youngsters like David Edgar and Asmir Begovic were question marks as Edgar tries to find a new ride with his contract expiring and Begovic tries to crack a Premier League roster for next season. Skilled veterans like Tomasz Radzinski and the Imhof we all thought was getting called up often had other commitments and, frankly, better things to do than run out against Cyprus. Injuries were knocking out our share, with Gerba, Friend, David Hoilett, and others on the limp. Frankly, I’m amazed we got as many names as we did – Stalteri, De Guzman, and McKenna are all making the trip, among others.

And there’s a few good kids out there. I’m pumped up to see Nik Ledgerwood. Calling Tyler Hemming across the ocean from the USL-1 seems bizarre but he’s a good young player. Issey Nakajima-Ferran and Jaime Peters were both overdue to make their returns to the national team. But first Stamatopoulos and Tossaint RIcketts, and now this? Are there really no other Canucks left? If I was some random Canadian playing in the Icelandic ninth junior reserve division and Stephen Hart didn’t at least call me I’d be pretty pissed off right now!

Canadian goalkeeper Asmir Begovic is making his English Premier League debut as we speak with Portsmouth against Sunderland. Pompey currently has a 2-1 lead and Begovic has looked good: his only goal against was an unstoppable blast from Kenwyne Jones.

Catch a live feed here, and let’s get blitzed for Begovic!

(EDIT: Portsmouth wins 3-1 and Begovic survives his debut with a good chunk of credit.)

If I may, I would like to step away for a moment and address coverage of the sport in the country, rather than clubs or national teams.

The Broadcasting of matches on television likewise is touch-and-go.  At the high-end of the spectrum are the dulcet tones of Derek Rae calling Champions League, at least when there’s not curling or a second-rate hockey tournament to be shown.  At the opposite end of the spectrum is GolTV’s coverage of Spanish soccer, with commentators who seem to be falling all over themselves when it comes to Barcelona and Real Madrid; saying too much; providing descriptions which could be coming from a fan, rather than a professional analyst.  Canadian broadcasts lie somewhere in the middle of those respective broadcasts.

Nonetheless, it appears as though soccer is gaining a foothold on the airwaves.  Toronto Star’s Chris Zelkovich reports that Toronto FC has been receiving positive viewership, including 261,000 viewers of the Columbus-Toronto match on CBC last weekend; a number comparable to what the Toronto Blue Jays are drawing.  Further good news for fans of soccer, with broadcasting being a zero-sum game with regard to time slots, are the abject Canadian ratings of the NBA.  17,000 viewers on the Score for a 2nd round matchup cannot be anything but abysmal.  I would like to see the statistics for the UEFA Champions League coverage to compare with the NBA; yes, the Champions League does not have to go up against hockey, but on the other hand, it is in the afternoon.  If basketball continues to have nobody watching it, and soccer viewership is stronger, would it not be beyond the realms of possibilities to see networks try to show more soccer matches and more highlights in their sports news shows?  I don’t think it is, and I would be delighted to see it.

Less Curling, More Football?

It may have gone unnoticed a month ago, but TSN will no longer be airing the Champions League, starting next season.  With Rogers picking up the rights, and splitting the matches between Sportsnet and Setanta, perhaps we will be able to see the entire knockout stages live, rather than have them tape-delayed due to curling.  Mr. Zelkovich mentioned that Sportsnet would show about half of the matches and I would presume Setanta would pick up the other half.  In an ideal world, I would see Sportsnet using their digital platform to show multiple matches live during the group stage, allowing those of us with all four Sportsnet channels to choose from a number of matches rather than the one they choose to air.

Sportsnet has done a great job with their soccer coverage; airing a number of the Men’s National Team World Cup Qualifiers (and providing a stream when they had other commitments), as well as coverage of the Premier League Saturday mornings.  It appears as though soccer is something which they believe can be a winner for their networks, and since they don’t show curling (yes, this is the third time I’ve brought it up; I’m a bitter, bitter person) live coverage is something we could expect.  With Fox Soccer Channel owning the US television rights, I assume they will either pick up an overseas commentary feed or provide their own, with Sportsnet/Setanta using that.  The prospect of someone other than Derek Rae commentating on Champions League matches is disappointing; I love his voice and the manner in which he calls matches, and when watching a match on TV, there is no other person I would want to have calling a match.

I’m not a club football sort of man. I support Charlton Athletic over in England, which, as you might have heard, is getting pretty tough these days. My North American side is and has always been the Edmonton Aviators, regardless of whether they exist or not. Even when I moved to the west coast and the siren song of the Southsiders seduced me, I held firm in my resolve. Someone asking me “club or country?” is like someone asking me “kick in the testicles or delicious ham sandwich?”.

Yeah, I cheer for Toronto, Montreal, Vancouver, Thunder Bay, Abbotsford, and all the Canadian sides up and down North America, but I don’t really care. I want them to do well out of a general support of Canadian football, not out of any specific affiliation. Most of the time, club football is a pleasing if generic background to my constant angst over which nation David Hoilett is going to play for.

Naturally, I am fervently looking forward to the Voyageurs Cup resuming tonight, when the Whitecaps travel to Toronto to take on The FC (Sportsnet, 5PM PST).

There’s no need to be generically supportive at the Voyageurs Cup. Two Canadian teams walk in, one Canadian team gets their brains kicked in! This is (sad as it is to say) the very height of the Canadian game, and the perverse advantage in having only three teams in the Voyageurs Cup is that all three teams want to annihilate the other two and every goal could be the vital one. From supporters bashing each other on message boards to serious, respectable journalist Duane Rollins falling over himself to point out bulletin-board material for TFC, people care again.

I’m in the Whitecaps’ corner for the Voyageurs Cup. I always cheer for the underdog so that rules Toronto out, while Montreal hasn’t yet earned my forgiveness for their disgraceful support in the Canada – Honduras match last year. But I also think they’re the weak sisters of the tournament. Vancouver’s been disappointing in the league so far: too many new faces, too many injuries. As the season wears on Vancouver is expected to improve, but the Voyageurs Cup is a magnificently short tournament and two weeks will be too late. I’ve got Toronto down for a 3-0 win on the plastic pitch tonight, and I’m going to pull a squizz and predict a brace for Chad Barrett.

You know what, though? I don’t even care. Canadian soccer is back, baby. Relish it.

Dave Hoilett has been knocked out (German) of the rest of the German 2.Bundesliga season with a broken toe, sustained earlier today in 1-0 loss for his FC St. Pauli side.

This is obvious a serious damper on our hopes of getting Hoilett a cap in the Gold Cup. A broken toe isn’t a hugely serious injury and Hoilett could be back in July if he really wanted to, but is someone with his history of national ambivalence going to put himself through pain in order to wear the maple leaf? I’m not holding my breath.

That said, the Hoilett saga is at the point where, if I’m Stephen Hart, I’d name Hoilett and put him out in the 90th minute sometime just to get him capped if he was willing to come. But coming on the heels of hopeful comments from Hart on It’s Called Football a couple of weeks ago about getting Hoilett a senior cap, this is seriously disappointing. Hopefully the Jamaicans are so disspirited by this minor injury that they never call him again.

Asmir Begovic is a goalkeeper for the Portsmouth reserve team. He has never played a senior match for the Premier League club. Most of his senior experience came last season with Yeovil Town of League One, where he took the starting role from fellow Canuck Josh Wagenaar and was, at best, pretty good on a lousy side. He’s twenty-one years old, and he’s the great Canadian goalkeeping hope.

So we have problems.

Begovic is a legitimate prospect and Pompey take him seriously. He’s the third-choice keeper on their depth chart behind England starter-cum-iron man David James and the more experienced Jamie Ashdown, and has seen a few games from the substitute’s bench this season. Portsmouth’s been careful to keep him in match shape, giving him matches with their reserve team as well as his big loan to Yeovil Town this year and a shorter but still significant stint with League Two Bournemouth in 2007. In July of last year he was given a three-year contract extension, and Premier League clubs don’t dish those out to just anyone. At the U-20 World Cup in Canada, he was about the only Canadian player to come out of the tournament looking better than he did going in.

There’s an awful lot to like about Begovic. He is an titan in goal but is incredibly agile for all that. His frame recalls a basketball player rather than a footballer, big and lean rather than squat and powerful, but as we saw in the U-20s he can move like a cat. His reflexes are magnificent and when he’s in his late twenties, barring injury, I think we all expect him to be a star: probably the first Canadian starting goalkeeper in the Premier League since Craig Forrest.

The goalkeeping situation has been getting some attention in the last week, with reports that Lars Hirschfeld is finally on the outs in Romania (in Romanian). Most of us can live with Hirschfeld and Onstad in the short term, even if the thought terrifies us. In the long term, Begovic and the promising Adam Street at West Ham both look like the real deal. Our problem is that we have nobody in the medium term, nobody who we can rely on in 2012 and 2013 when we take our next crack at World Cup qualifying. Begovic will be only twenty-five, or six months old in goalkeeper years.

What we need is someone to take the reins between the decline of Hirschfeld and Onstad and the rise of Begovic and Street, but our only guys in that age bracket are Kenny Stamatopoulos, Josh Wagenaar, Hirschfeld, and by the most generous possible interpretation Greg Sutton, all of whom are currently backups for lower-league clubs. Wagenaar’s got plenty of learning to do yet but he doesn’t look like much so far, whereas Stamatopoulos has a well-established record of mediocrity and Greg Sutton clearly is what we thought he was. Lars, for all his technical prowess, needs to get a ride on a first team somewhere before he’s even in the conversation.

Come 2012, when the next qualification cycle begins, odds are that it’ll be some combination of Hirschfeld, Begovic, Wagenaar, and Stamatopoulos. Asmir is the only guy on that last whose career is trending up rather than down. Which makes him, as far as Canadian football fans are concerned, a rival with David Hoilett for the position of most important man the world. And in the not-terribly-unlikely event that he is pushed into a role with the national team sooner than his age would normally allow, he will have to prove to be as strong as we all hope he is.