Sports fans in Canada tend to be a tad bit on the provincial side. As with any generality, there are exceptions—and many readers here would fit that bill—but across the board, most Canadians follow sports that very few people outside of Canada follow.
If you were to walk into a café in Saskatoon and ask a fellow patron whether he saw “the double in-off take out last night at the Scotties” you’d get an animated response that likely would involve the term “the hammer.”
That same conversation (it’s about curling, by the way) would be met with blank stares in most of the rest of the world.
If a person turned to the passenger next to them on the subway in Toronto and said, “There can only ever be one Dougie, eh?”, there’s a good chance they’d respond with high-fives and talk about a 20-year-old overtime winner against the St. Louis Blues. In Mexico City, impromptu hockey talk would result in an empty seat beside you as the passenger moved slowly away from the unhinged tourist.
On the other hand, in Canada conversations about the how great Messi is are as likely to be met with the response “I prefer to keep things tidy” than “Barcelona is a special team, aren’t they?”
The world’s most popular game is, although growing in popularity, still a blip on the radar in most Canadian’s mind.
One could not help but be reminded on the true place of the sport in Canada yesterday during the press conference announcing Paul Stalteri’s retirement.
Canada’s all-time cap leader is an athlete that should be a household name in this country, but is not. He’s hardly alone in that regard. Among Canadian athletes that mostly play in Europe (footballers, skiers, speedskaters, etc) it’s rare to find one that does breakthrough into widespread popularity. Only through long-term Olympic success (recently retired speedskater/cyclist/national treasure Clara Hughes might be the only current example) do you ever see it.
Even Christine Sinclair fits this description. Sinclair has a chance to gain greater traction, but she could just as easily be forgotten over the next few months as a breakout star. Bluntly, Sinclair could score 50 goals for the Portland Thorns this year and not get a single vote for the same Lou Marsh Trophy she won this past year from the efforts of a single game at the Olympics.
If an average Canadians know a single player on the men’s side it’s probably Dwayne DeRosario. DeRo isn’t the most accomplished Canadian male player (One example: Stalteri being a key piece to Werder Bremen’s historic double winning season), but he did play in Canada so people have vaguely heard of him.
If you are a Canadian sports fan that does try and look outside our borders for talent the lack of recognition at home can be frustrating. You want other Canadians to give these athletes the respect they deserve. You might angrily tell a friend at a bar how “Atiba Hutcheson can’t walk down the street in Holland, but he’s invisible in his own country,” and you will probably blame that friend for being a small-minded sports fan.
Your anger is misguided. You can’t force people to care and they can’t care if they aren’t provided the opportunity to do so. For years, the Canadian sports system has failed to promote its stars. Restricting it to football, how often was the CSA talking about Stalteri in 2004 when he was a hero in Bremen? Before London, how much was the CSA doing to make Christine Sinclair a household name?
It was great that the CSA gave Stalteri his day yesterday, but ultimately it was the same seven writers writing for the same audience that are at every press conference. No one new was exposed to Stalteri’s accomplishments. No new fans were drawn in.
There is a perception among average Canadians that Canada cannot play this sport, that we’ve never produced any players worth watching. Although as a country we have not produced nearly enough elite players, that is simply not true.
The Canadian soccer community needs to promote its stars more. And not, like Stalteri, only when they retire, years after their peak performance. Nor, like Sinclair, only when they’ve done something truly remarkable. Rather, the day-to-day accomplishments of players need to be promoted and celebrated.
It’s only through the continued and consistent hard work of doing so that the sport will finally, fully breakthrough to the mainstream.
The CSA is killing football in the country. Even with the new president there is animosity towards them. They have destroyed this game in Canada and if it weren’t for the 2 MLS clubs in Vancouver and Montreal, then interest would be even worse.
If Canada wants to promote soccer, it has to play outside of its comfort zone and play friendlies on turf. The athletes are going to have to travel across the country to play games. They have to stop acting like princesses and act like men. They surely don’t have any talent or results to warrant how they have been treated so far.
get over it, playing qualifiers in edmonton doesn’t help anyone. they did it for decades and all theyve got to show for it is an nasl team with no stadium and really there is no correlation between the two. just let it go, having a familiar home is better than taking the sideshow on the road and putting yourself through the same troubles as your opponent.
“They surely don’t have any talent or results to warrant how they have been treated so far.”
You didn’t see a huge increase in results over the last cycle compared to the previous ones? When was the last time Canada was had a chance to progress to the Hex going into the final match of the round?
7 of 9 points or something like that at home…
No, honestly didn’t because I didn’t give a crap about the Canadian’s men qualifying because they don’t have the talent to qualify. Again, why should we care for a “National team” which alienates the majority of the country?
That is an excellent question, why should we care about advancement of the National program when there are much more important things to focus on. Things like random, off topic tangents on comment boards…
A national team isn’t defined by how many cities in Canada they play in. The Cdn women national team rarely play in Canada let alone across cities. Yet, no one has any problem them being our national team.
Make sure the matches are on tv and then just win baby.
alienates the majority of the country? do you not own a tv? they don’t fill stadiums anywhere so clearly people dont care. a world cup would do tenfold more for soccer in canada then playing some qualifiers in moncton.
I personally follow the national team and attended the qualifiers, but I’d hardly call what happened in the last cycle progress. We were drawn into a very reasonable group and we increased our points total but still failed to make it to the next stage. I wasn’t terribly impressed.
This is a very microscopic sense of progress, if it even represents it at all. I think we sometimes forget that while we slowly correct our mistakes, other countries are moving to correct theirs as well. We might be improving but we aren’t improving as fast as the rest of the world.
The CSA and it’s parochial leadership continue to be a determent to progress. We’ve traded one set of amateurs at the top for another. They are different, but not better. They market the idea of a Canadian made solution, but it’s just another form of self entrenchment.
When we hire real people with established track records to come in as opposed to another provincially developed technocrat blow-hard I’ll get excited. Unitl then “reform” is over sold and under delivered.
“I didn’t give a crap about the Canadian’s men qualifying because they don’t have the talent to qualify.”
So why the fuck are you spending so much time complaining about them?
OK, I agree with the majority of the article but if Toronto FC fans were told that Paul Stalteri would have a retiring announcement I’m sure they would have packed the facility with a few 100 people.
For the last time I’m blaming the loss against Panama and Honduras in qualifying on a ridiculous attachment to Lars Hirschfeld. It was for this reason that the CMNT lost Begovic to Bosnia-Herzegovina. Marcel de Jong was on the bench with Pacheco and Borjan. Shameful man management.
Bad coaching same fucking results.
“DeRo isn’t the most accomplished Canadian male player” – typical TFC reporter
DeRo is for sure among the most accomplished Canadian male players. He did not win a Bundesliga title, but his haul of individual accolades (including 4 Canadian player of the year honors, to Stalteri’s two) speaks for itself. Oh wait… you’ll him “MeRo” and your rebuttal will be complete.
Do you even read what you write?
I’m dumber for having read your comment. Really.
I didn’t read this article. I just read the title. but we do not need to promote the saulteries we need to invest in youth soccer! dam these idiots at csa are dumb.
We do need to invest in youth soccer, but one could argue that promoting the success stories helps at the youth level to some degree. No doubt Christine Sinclair has inspired many kids to take up the sport, or to take the sport more seriously.
“I didn’t read this article. I just read the title. but…”
I ran this through Google Translate; it comes out the other side as “I’m an idiot.”
The bottom line is that soccer fans in Canada for the most part watch the Premier League, La Liga, Serie A, and MLS, but I don’t think there is much viewership of the Bundesliga, or Eredivisie, etc.
If we are able to get Canadians to feature in the leagues I mentioned, then that’s who will inevitably get recognition. For example. DeRo.
CSA to the OSA to the OYSL to all the youth leagues below…terrible youth program…we’ll never get anywhere with the politics that flow throughout the youth system…
You can add the whitecaps,impact,and TFC youth program as well…a road to MLS where Canadians are treated as International players and Americans as domestic players…MSL isn’t helping…Domestic league is needed badly… ie. copy Australia.