Canadian Women's National Team: Lessons the Men Should Learn

I have recently come to the conclusion that there are many things that the Canadian Men's National team could benefit to learning from their Women's equivalent.  Having monitored the women in the run up to their World Cup competition later this month I have noticed that the team does a lot more to create a greater public image.  Just a quick search of twitter shows that many of the ladies are on there and often are willing to reply to fans and present themselves as very nice girls.  They do not have the issues that many other pro athletes have come across while using twitter, at least not in what I have seen, they don't send out inflamatory and offensive tweets like Rashard Medenhall of the NFL's Pittsburgh Steelers nor do they send out tweets that are barely in the English language like Rio Ferdinand.  They all do well to come across as nice ladies who truly appreciate their fans.  This is sort of effort by the team, even if it is informal, makes them seem more human and you can connect with them better.  The men's team on the other hand does have a maybe a handful of players on twitter but most of them rarely tweet and when they do they are often quite useless and just updating us on the games that they are playing soon or their teams results a few days late, thanks for those ones De Ro.  The players on the men's team do not put that effort in to connect with their fans and as such i think they are less popular than the Ladies team in many circle.

I am just using twitter as one illustration of the difference between the two teams.  For me the ladies do many things that help them relate to Canadians and they do more to connect with people at the grass roots level.  You are more likely to see the Women's team members going to their local soccer club where they used to play and being well known in their community then the men.  I will attribute a lot of this to the fact that the men have a more rigorous professional schedule throughout much of the year which requires them to spend more time away from home and several of the players play over seas.  So the women do have a bit more time to spend at home and being connecting to their communities but a part of it is also a conscious effort on their parts.

Another illustration of how the Ladies team does more to relate is their efforts to raise funds for breast cancer research.  If you follow a number of them on twitter then I am sure that you have seen earlier today a lot of them tweeted pictures of sports bras which they have added their own unique designs to and made available for auction following the women's World Cup.  This is the kind of initiative that can only improve the popularity of the team and to be honest it was probably fun bonding that did not take that much time or effort on their parts.  In the end they will have done good by raising some funds for research and also done good for their perception throughout the country.

This is a lesson that the men's team needs to learn.  These small little things may not win them loads of new fans but it can help to make them more popular and well liked and at this stage every little bit is going to help to grow the program.  The men's team is not very well connected to its fans and does not do much in the community so they feel distant and like they do not really belong to us as a country in the same way that the Women's team does.  It is not often that you hear of Canada's top male players staying connected to the clubs where they grew up and being hugely supported by them but you hear that about almost every female player.  They are not going to be able to change this perception over night, and like I said due to restraints I do not expect them to do as much as the Women do, but there is a lot of room for improvement and any little bit would help.

There are other areas that the men could learn from the women but I am not going to really get into the idea of searching for a coach overseas in hopes of getting the best possible candidate or the idea of holding training camps to help the player build a better connection because those things just are not really possible.  But let me just wrap up by pointing out that there is a reason that the women are ranked 6 in the world and arguably better supported.