Soccer in Canada | Canada Hosting the 2026 World Cup - Page 78

Acajack · #**1541** Posted **Dec 2, 2022, 8:54 PM**

If Brazil loses (or draws) today not a single team will have made it to the second round wth a perfect record of three wins.

Coldrsx · #**1542** Posted **Dec 2, 2022, 9:31 PM**

Cameroooooooooooooon!

What a celebration hahaha.

megadude · #**1543** Posted **Dec 2, 2022, 11:28 PM**

I really do hope tiki taka goes away. I'm sick of watching passing just for the sake of passing. I want to see passing with purpose. Fans don't care about a team's pass completion percentage.

I do suspect in the future we'll see the big teams restore order again, on and off, simply due to the cyclical nature of things. But yeah, the ROW has closed the gap. This is the case in basketball, hockey (M & W), cricket and rugby and more team sports I'm sure.

Uruguay shouldn't be as good as they have been in the past. And I'm not just talking about winning two early WC's when it wasn't all that professional. But they've won the most Copa Americas at 15, same as Argentina. Brazil only at 9. Uruguay's population is 3.5m. They have no business producing Forlan, Cavani, Suarez, etc. over the past couple decades. It's remarkable. Same like how NED, based on population, shouldn't be so good for the past 50+ years, churning out star after star. They missed two tournaments in a row a few years ago. Surprising, but not shocking.

All the big teams, including BRA and ARG, don't have the star power of recent times. England probably has a better team than they had in the past with many top notch creative players, but not with the same star power (some of that is just hype and overrating). But no other big team can come close to their peak teams since the turn of the century if looking at their sqauds. Now, "on paper" isn't everything, see Italy last year at Euro. Sometimes you need a balance of world class players with lower tier players who don't need the spotlight.

Africa has had 7 wins this tournament. Previous best was 4! Japan, Korea and Australia, from the same federation, all going through to the knockout. Amazing. Can you imagine if all those Africa born players playing for European nations actually played for their country of birth? An African team would be added to the list of contenders.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Jammon

This tournament has highlighted a bunch of developments in my mind:

1) Europe is no longer the hotbed for football talent. The rest of the world has caught up and now can more than compete with European giants. If they are going with additional teams for the 2026 WC, I would hope it is mostly allotted to Asia, Africa, CONMEBOL and CONCACAF.
2) An organized defense can definitely win games. You can have all the possession you want, but a quick counterattack with some talent up front can destroy a team; i.e. Japan, South Korea as examples. They don't maintain possession but play hard and are well organized.
3) Elegant football is a thing of the past.
4) South America is no longer as dominant as they once were. Only 4 teams made it in after Peru was defeated by the Aussies. In years past, the South American teams would have demolished an Asian or CONCACAF team. Outside of Brazil and Argentina, I would classify the South American teams as quite "meh."

elly63 · #**1544** Posted **Dec 3, 2022, 3:59 PM**

elly63 · #**1545** Posted **Dec 3, 2022, 4:54 PM**

elly63 · #**1546** Posted **Dec 4, 2022, 7:53 PM**

Coldrsx · #**1547** Posted **Dec 4, 2022, 8:08 PM**

England (passing errors aside) controlling.

elly63 · #**1548** Posted **Dec 4, 2022, 8:15 PM**

Add to that, FIFA will be compensating teams for their player's appearance at the World Cup. Teams will receive $10,000 per player per day while the player is involved in the Qatar-based tournament.

Montreal had six players at the WC at approximately $120k per player. Now for some details: I am not sure how many days count in this total, some other teams will get some of the money as some players haven't been with Montreal for the total length of their involvement and I believe MLS gets the money, how they dole it out to Montreal is beyond me.

elly63 · #**1549** Posted **Dec 4, 2022, 8:21 PM**

Can somebody create a separate World Cup thread. As this is the Canadian soccer thread wouldn't want to see the news that has been happening to Canadian players of late get lost in a generic WC shuffle.

Gresto · #**1550** Posted **Dec 4, 2022, 11:21 PM**

I'm sort of rooting for the Netherlands, which has never won the Cup. An African country winning would perhaps be even better. Teams I dislike due to obnoxiously bellicose fans are England, Portugal, and Italy (didn't qualify). As a Germany supporter, I would prefer Brazil didn't notch up another Cup, but I can't help but like the disarming exuberance of the players and fans.

elly63 · #**1551** Posted **Dec 4, 2022, 11:35 PM**

Quote:

Originally Posted by Gresto

I'm sort of rooting for the Netherlands, which has never won the Cup. An African country winning would perhaps be even better. Teams I dislike due to obnoxiously bellicose fans are England, Portugal, and Italy (didn't qualify). As a Germany supporter, I would prefer Brazil didn't notch up another Cup, but I can't help but like the disarming exuberance of the players and fans.

Thanks #$%&&

elly63 · #**1552** Posted **Dec 5, 2022, 5:23 PM**

Quote:

Originally Posted by elly63

Fenerbahçe first in the very early unsubstantiated rumour mill for CF Montreal's Joel Waterman.

thenoflyzone · #**1553** Posted **Dec 6, 2022, 12:51 AM**

Quote:

Originally Posted by elly63

Add to that, FIFA will be compensating teams for their player's appearance at the World Cup. Teams will receive $10,000 per player per day while the player is involved in the Qatar-based tournament.

Montreal had six players at the WC at approximately $120k per player. Now for some details: I am not sure how many days count in this total, some other teams will get some of the money as some players haven't been with Montreal for the total length of their involvement and I believe MLS gets the money, how they dole it out to Montreal is beyond me.

Nashville has a 10% sell-on clause on Johnston’s trade, on the money above $1 million. So that’s about $400,000 going to them. Plus Johnston keeps 10% of the transfer fee.

Mihailovic had a similar deal between Chicago and Montreal. Chicago keeps 10% of the transfer fee, plus Mihailovic the other 10%.

Kone will be different, as Montreal FC was his first professional contract.

So it’s not totally true that Montreal will earn close to 20 million, but yes, overall, Saputo is getting a lot of cash for these 3 players.

Coldrsx · #**1554** Posted **Dec 6, 2022, 2:28 AM**

What a Croatia Japan finish.

Brazil Brazilling

thenoflyzone · #**1555** Posted **Dec 6, 2022, 1:32 PM**

Yesterday morning, before the 2 matches, I was telling a friend that Japan will beat Croatia on penalties for the first upset of the round of 16. In the end, it was close, but no cigar. Those were some poor penalty kicks from Japan.

Brazil is the first team to play all of their bench this tournament. Talk about depth. Clearly the favourites for the Cup.

As for upsets in the round of 16, maybe today, with the Swiss beating Portugal 2-1.

Hawrylyshyn · #**1556** Posted **Dec 6, 2022, 4:12 PM**

First Canadian women’s pro soccer league set to kick off in 2025 (link)

"A women’s professional soccer league is coming to Canada.

Former Canadian international Diana Matheson, along with her business partner, Thomas Gilbert, announced on Monday night the launch of Project 8 and the creation of a Canadian women’s domestic league, which is set to kick off its inaugural season in 2025.

CIBC and Air Canada are on board as founding partners. The Vancouver Whitecaps FC and Calgary Foothills are confirmed to be the first two clubs in a planned eight-team league. The remaining six teams are expected to be confirmed in 2023."

...

svlt · #**1557** Posted **Dec 6, 2022, 5:09 PM**

Quote:

Originally Posted by Hawrylyshyn

First Canadian women’s pro soccer league set to kick off in 2025 (link)

"A women’s professional soccer league is coming to Canada.

Former Canadian international Diana Matheson, along with her business partner, Thomas Gilbert, announced on Monday night the launch of Project 8 and the creation of a Canadian women’s domestic league, which is set to kick off its inaugural season in 2025.

CIBC and Air Canada are on board as founding partners. The Vancouver Whitecaps FC and Calgary Foothills are confirmed to be the first two clubs in a planned eight-team league. The remaining six teams are expected to be confirmed in 2023."

...

This is positive news for the game but I'm very, very worried about the long term financial viability of this when we do not have a strong established Men's league yet

megadude · #**1558** Posted **Dec 6, 2022, 6:23 PM**

I’m glad Spain is out. I really dislike all the meaningless passing. And I hope that with certain losing results that teams and players start trending more toward more direct football so it’s more enjoyable to watch. I don’t mind passing, as long as it not constantly backwards. There’s been a tremendous number of teams so far that dominated possession but have lost.

And like I was saying last year when England brought in Rashford and Saka at the end just for PKs and for them to miss anyway, this was the thinking here and once again backfired. A soccer fan in the lunch room just said the same thing. I don’t believe PKs are a science. If I were coach I wouldn’t even have my team practice them. I’d pick five random guys and say go kick the ball. Don’t give them time to think about it. Just go be instinctive. There’s such a thing as overcoaching. Mind you, it’s impossible to draw the line between that and appropriate level of coaching but it’s evolved to the point where there are practically more coaches than players in pro sports.

And seriously, why don’t more guys just put the ball down the middle? I’ve rarely seen that saved. At this point, there’s not enough guys doing that to make the GK think that’s a real option as you rarely see a GK just stay there and guess the middle. So if I’m a PK taker, the middle is definitely in my repertoire. The problem is that going back several years, before the middle got more popular, if you did try that and it got saved by the GK’s trailing foot, you’d be a pariah. And I think that kind of thinking still seeps into players’ minds. They don’t want to be the guy who gets saved while going down the middle.

Luis Enrique said (from goal.com)

WHAT HAPPENED? Spain were eliminated from the semi-finals of Euro 2020 by eventual winners Italy in a penalty shootout following a 1-1 draw after 120 minutes. Luis Enrique divulged that, following that defeat, he had set his players the "homework" of taking "at least 1000" penalties, as they aim to avoid a similar fate in Qatar.

WHAT THEY SAID: "I imagine that they have done their homework. Over a year ago, in one of the Spain camps, I told them they had to get here with at least 1,000 penalties taken. If you wait until getting here to practise penalties... [it won't be enough]," he told reporters. "It's a moment of maximum tension, a time to show your nerve and that you can shoot the penalty in the way you have decided, if you have trained it a thousand times. It says a lot about each player. It's trainable, manageable, how you manage the tension. It's increasingly less luck - the goalkeepers have more influence. We have a very good goalkeeper, any of the three can do very well in this situation. Every time we finish training, I see a lot of players taking penalties."

Well, so much for wasting time taking a thousand penalties.

And I also hopes this reverses the trend of established national teams thinking they need to hire big name coaches or former legendary players. It does nothing. I like how Canada rotates coaches for the World Juniors. You’re always the deepest team. You don’t need a big name or the same guy to be in charge year after year. See Brent Sutter. Won in 2005 going 6-0 with the deepest roster of all time. Repeated that in 2006. Two years is a good run. I’d be okay with more after a run like that but as soon as you take a dip, onto the next guy. Comes back in 2014 and 4th place. Not necessary.

Below the big teams, I think a NT coach matters more because you’re not so much a caretaker anymore, but more of a CEO. You don’t have oodles of talent at your disposal and evaluation, selection, tactics and motivation matter more when you’re not the most fancied team in your WCQ group. That’s where Herman excelled. He has that charisma to get guys to buy in and motivate guys throughout a campaign. Come tournament time, the margin for error is just so much finer.

For all major sports, I don’t like seeing established coaches getting recycled over and over because they won some games for a couple of years. I’d rather see more lower league or assistants get the HC gig and let them make bank for a while before it’s time for the next guy. That is unless they truly are one of the elites where you basically can’t argue with their track record. Those are very few and far between. The sport where that is most evident would be college football where the coach is basically a CEO and builds and manages dozens of things at once.

Not that long ago I only wanted to see the big dogs play each other in later knockout rounds but I’ve developed more of a liking for underdogs in recent times so good to see Morocco through. Was really pulling for Japan too.

savevp · #**1559** Posted **Dec 6, 2022, 6:29 PM**

Quote:

Originally Posted by svlt

This is positive news for the game but I'm very, very worried about the long term financial viability of this when we do not have a strong established Men's league yet

These women's leagues tend to work financially as sponsors want to be associated with them, burnishing the image of equality for their brands. If the league works, it'll be funded by sponsorship rather than at the gate.

elly63 · #**1560** Posted **Dec 6, 2022, 6:47 PM**

Quote:

Originally Posted by savevp

These women's leagues tend to work financially as sponsors want to be associated with them, burnishing the image of equality for their brands. If the league works, it'll be funded by sponsorship rather than at the gate.

As a long time Canadian NT supporter I can't help but be reminded of a Bill Burr routine pertaining to this subject.