
The Lead
That’s right. And the Canadian Soccer Association agrees apparently, as they’re planning to play all third round home matches of Canada’s CONCACAF World Cup Qualifiers in the city, in addition to the June 3rd friendly against America Senior. From the CBC:
Canadian men’s team head coach Stephen Hart was on hand at the event and said the decision to play in Toronto was heavily influenced by travel, training grounds proximity and grass field conditions at BMO.
“We felt when we looked at everything, the travel, crossing of time zones, we tended to look at the travel issues and then how comfortable we were with the facility,” said Hart.
The same voices will make the same complaints about how Toronto fails to support the national team as fervently as other parts of the country, in addition to arguing the national team shouldn’t belong to any one Canadian city. Except in the rest of the world, national teams do tend to play WCQs in a single capital or heavily-populated urban centre. There are notable exceptions to this rule, as in the very regionally-partisan Spain, and in the United States.
But Canada is geographically enormous, and travel costs for CMNT supporters are prohibitively high. There is also resentment over the fact BMO Field doubles as the home of a regional club—Toronto FC. Yes, federal funding for BMO was secured partly through its designation as Canada’s national soccer stadium, but it’s really the home of TFC. England’s Wembley stadium, while located in London, is a stand alone venue for the three lions.
The better comparison perhaps would be Russia’s Luzhniki Stadium, which houses Spartak Moscow and is the permanent home of the Russian national team. There are some caveats; Spartak shares the stadium with First Division club Torpedo Moscow. It was also the former home of CSKA Moscow as well. But generally it does double duty for club and country in a geographically enormous country.
But there is another issue at play here in Canada; the rest of the country dislikes Toronto. A lot. Few will admit it, but associating Toronto with anything “national” leaves a bad taste in the mouths of a great number of Canadians, even within Ontario. It’s hard, for example, to think there would be anywhere near the level of animosity to the CSA if they decided to host all three WCQs in geographically central Winnipeg.
Despite its “hell on earth” rep, roughly 16% of the country lives in the GTA. Yet the CSA has to play nice with the rest of the country on this…it’s getting a little tired.
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