Soccer eh?

Greetings to all,

The title pretty much sums up the feelings of soccer in Canada at times. Millions of kids grow up playing soccer in the vast land that is Canada, but most of them end up turning to other sports such as hockey or American football and don’t continue to play soccer.

While eating all those orange peels and having everyone running in a pack chasing the ball is a great childhood experience, it has not brought success to the Canadian national team. While the woman’s team has out performed the men’s team by qualifying for world cups, mostly with regards to the better gender rights in Canada than almost other other places in the world minus Sweden and Norway sooner or later the globe will catch up to them too.

If this post reads depressingly, I’m sorry, but it is the truth, while being a big soccer fan I do have some problems with the way the system in Canada has worked. Too many times have we had to watch ourselves not qualify for the World Cup. The only reason that the men’s team qualified in 1986 is that the tournament was in Mexico, so that left 2 extra spots open, as the US will dominate and take one of the 3 spots available. Leaving Canada a very good shot to qualify.

It’s sad when we can’t seem to ever manage to get the 3rd spot, or even the qualification game against the Asian counterpart. Why a country with 30 million people can lose to countries such as Trinidad and Tobago and Costa Rica who respectively have populations of 1.3 million and 4.5 million people. I don’t have anything against those nations, to be honest congrats at qualifying, but again why Canada can’t beat these nations is up for great debate, is it because of the coaches we choose, the junior system, or is it because in the end with 30 million people we would rather watch hockey and drink beer than even think about the idea of playing soccer.

So what am I saying in the end, well it’s simple, I’m hoping for hope that we can qualify for the tournament in 2010 and that we don’t get any Mexican officials anytime soon.

Farewell to all eh, and as always being the polite Canuck that I am, thank you for reading.