The question of the day: Did Canadians really go from "embarrassed, to sad, to angry, to what's wrong, all in a matter of minutes" (to quote the Ottawa Citizen) over our goalless wonders at the FIFA U-20 World Cup?
The 365-kilogram gorilla in the room is the since-time-immemorial Canadian conundrum when it comes to international sports. It's almost like we want to beat ourselves up. So we take halfway measures with athletics and act all surprised when we get our comeuppance from the likes of Congo. Shorter way to put it: Just wait for next summer in Beijing.
The sadness and anger moves a lot more quickly than our goalless wonders moved the ball around the pitch in their losses to Chile, Austria and Canada. That's the Canadian way. Never stay mad for long, lest something be done about the problem. Then you get to be mad over the same thing all over again in, oh, another four years. Isn't this country great?
The spectacle of our goalless wonders -- in case CBC didn't repeat it enough, they tried their best -- also touches on why unredeemed sports nuts in North America always get their backs up a bit over international spectacles such as rest of the world's football and the Olympics. Like Chuck Klosterman wrote about the latter around the time of the last 2004 Summer Games, it's "designed for people who want to care about something without considering why."
Case in point No. 1: Last summer, before Italy played France in the World Cup final, I asked an acquaintance who is Italian-Canadian if he planned to head down to Preston St., Ottawa's Little Italy, to watch the final. His response was no, he didn't go for watching the game with people who are only fans every four years; he planned to watch with some friends who really know their football.
Case in point No. 2: Six months ago when Canada's best under-20 footballer, David Edgar, scored in his home debut for Newcastle in the English Premier League -- against Man U, no less -- it didn't even rate a story from a staff writer in one of the country's largest newspaper chains. Now he's one of the poster children for a national disgrace? Nice try.
Hosting the U-20 was more than worthwhile. The investment in staging the '88 Winter Olympics in Calgary paid off many times over with seeing fresh-faced Canadian kids end up on podiums in Albertville, Lillehammer, Nagano, Salt Lake and Turino. There's little excuse if something similar doesn't happen for men's soccer (the women's team is doing pretty well already) in years to come after that Canadian Soccer Association reaped the rewards from selling more than 1 million tickets.
After doubling their inital projections for ticket sales, CSA ought to be rolling in money it can spend to establish a program that's closer to what it takes to be competitive in 2007, not 1957. Something really should be done so we can actually see Canada playing in World Cup one of these years. Being fans for a month every once in a while isn't enough.
Still, people are upset "we" lost because why... well, they don't have an answer, they just are. There's that "not considering why" element that drives sports nerds up the wall faster than a steady rotation of that razor-blade commercial where the woman falls off the treadmill.
The irony to all the emphasis on soccer is that Canada has had a modicum of success internationally on the ball diamond and the basketball court over the years. That doesn't get one-100th of the attention as our surpassing suckitude in soccer.
Right around the same time Canada was going tits-up on the soccer pitch on Sunday night, Toronto's Joey Votto, Richmond, B.C.'s James Van Ostrand and Victoria's Michael Saunders were helping the World team sock it to the U.S. side at baseball's Futures Game in San Francisco. Canada finished fourth in baseball at the '04 Olympics, but there was a barely a peep when the IOC dropped it from the Olympic roster. Our guys upset the U.S. at the World Baseball Classic last March and it was treated as a minor story since it happened to fall on the eve of the NHL trade deadline.
Similarly, how much media coverage will there be of Canada's progress at the world under-19 men's basketball championship which starts Thursday in Serbia or the Olympic qualifier Leo Rautins' national team will play in next month in Las Vegas? The under-19 team will probably get three paragraphs on a back page, if that. Probably no one will notice outside of the players' extended families, Dave Feschuk at the Toronto Star, Chuck Swirsky at the FAN 590 and Mark Wacyk at cishoops.ca. The senior national team will get a smug passing reference on SportsCentre and Sportsnet Connected, at best.
True, more Canadian boys and girls play soccer than those other two games combined. Together, hoops and baseball/fastpitch don't come close to soccer's international imprint. It's all too telling, though, how collectively we Canadians are so selective about which non-hockey Team Canada we become pent-up over.It's almost like we've chosen not to pay baseball and basketball any mind. There's a risk those teams might actually turn in a respectable showing.
That's all for now. Send your thoughts to neatesager@yahoo.ca.
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7 comments:
that was a great read.. good points all around.
The U20 tourney, with no Canadian content, is drawing larger crowds to Frank Clair Stadium per game than the Renegades did.
Shows us what Ottawans thought of the product the Gades were fielding.
Put a good product on the field, hype it, and they will come.
The Ottawa Fury do that and how many people could even tell you where they play?
There's no valid comparison between a short-run event like the U-20 and something like a CFL season which takes place over a number of months.
interesting points all around.
my only guess why we are so worked up over this soccer business is that it is the byproduct of canada hosting the tournament, a national broadcaster devoting large chunks of programming to it, and nothing happening in the sports world because it is summer. seriously this is the most boring week in sport, yet media outlets still need content. after hearing about canada's chances at advancing and all of the cbc puff pieces on their players, i think this reaction is largely directed towards cbc - the public broadcaster is a gimmee target for schadenfreude.
that said, i was reading an article about how the espn is killing hockey in america.
http://thesituationist.wordpress.com/2007/07/02/negative-press-is-espn-is-killing-the-national-hockey-league-by-influencing-public-attitudes/
essentially, the article discusses the extent to which ESPN has harmed the NHL by either ignoring or belittling it. i'm wondering, given that none of the major sports networks in canada had the tv rights, if the same thing happened with the U-20 tournament. on sportscentre and sportsnet connected, coverage was typically buried after the second commercial break; the websites for tsn and sportsnet and the score provide links to coverage, but they are anything but prominent; now the coverage of the tournament talks about canada's "failure" and the related "disappointment" in the tournament; similar to the nhl and espn, people have misplaced their scorn for the sport not the broadcaster.
do you think that the lack of coverage by the major canadian sports networks is contributing to the public's view of the canadian team?
That's a good question. I hadn't really considered the TSN/Sportsnet coverage as a contributor; I figured they were just burying it out of spite since CBC won the rights — remember, Sportsnet is the soccer network — and cut them out of the deal by putting coverage in the digital-channel netherworld (GolTV and Country Can.).
TV coverage does have a tremendous sway, though. I think it might have contributed to the perfect storm — our self-loathing, our xenophobia toward the world's game, and our antipathy toward the People's Network.
This is very reminiscent of the 1986 World Cup, in which Canada qualified, and then promptly scored zero goals. 21 years later, after a so called "soccer explosion" in Canada, this is what we get. ZERO goals scored in a tournament played in our house. Ouch. Our team was humiliated in the fullest sense of the word.
This, however, is a tempest in a teapot sports wise. People have already started to forget, and by the time hockey season rolls around, this tournament will be a distant memory. Canada never will be an elite soccer nation, and people should stop trying to make us one. In a country where soccer gets few, if any, of the top athletes past the age of 12, and where the weather pretty much sucks at least half the year, it is impossible to establish any kind of soccer excellence.
In addition, the youth soccer numbers in Canada are a mirage. House league soccer is the default sport for parents who are reluctant to commit to anything more demanding, and who don't want anything "too competitive". You give out orange slices at halftime, say, "great game, Jimmy!", even if Jimmy didn't touch the ball all game, and then go home. How do you reasonably see any excellence coming out of that? All that time, the truly competitive parents, those with a passion for sports and/or whose kids have a passion for sports, are generally to be found at the hockey rink, lacrosse arena, etc.
Bonus for a non-soccer guy like me -- at least for a while I don't have to listen to Soccer Guy in Canada crowing about how, "the world's game" is going to overtake hockey in popularity here in Canada anytime soon.
Dennis, so good to have you back! (Sometimes it's like you should be writing this, not N. Sager.)
Hey, we like watching the soccer, but it's too bad more in the media aren't challenging some of the soccer lobby's claims. Yes, it has the most youth participating, but as for quality of participation, baseball, basketball, football, lax, dance and cheerleading probably each compare very favourably.
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