I have come up with a new moto for Toronto FC. It is that if you can't be good you should at least be exciting. They lived up to that moto against DC United in what had to be one of the most exciting games in recent memory. The game was a 3-3 draw in the end but along the way to that final scoreline there were talking points left right and centre.
The game kicked off with DC United's keeper being sent off in the 7th minute thanks to a nasty two legged tackle that sent Avila flipping through the air. After chatting with his assistant the ref decided that the right move was to send Hamid for a very early shower, if he even needed one after only 7 minutes played, and I think it was the correct move. Watching the game I knew that things were only going to get more lively from there. The stage was set for TFC to go on and get their first road win of the season but we all knew it was never going to be straight forward like that. TFC found a way to commit three major mistakes, one by Frei and two by Iro that allowed Dwayne De Rosario to net one of the easiest hat tricks you will ever see. TFC answered back with goals from Marosevic, Koevermans, and even one from Julian De Guzman.
If you want a nice summary of the match then you came to the wrong place. Instead I want to focus on the emotional roller coaster that TFC took me on last night. Coming in to the game I just had that feeling that DeRo was going to put in a performance and i guess he did just that last night even though one of his goals was a penalty, one was misplayed by the keeper, and the other was basically gifted to him by Iro. I will give credit where credit is due and say that DeRo did well to take advantage of the gifts that were being given to him by his former side. I do not agree with the sentiment that I am coming across today that this game shows why TFC should have paid up and kept DeRo. Instead I still think that letting him leave was the right move for a club that is looking to rebuild. He is a very good MLS player and a proven goal scorer but Toronto needed to take that one step backwards so that they might one day to able to move a lot further forward. The fact that DeRo scored a hattrick left me with a bad taste in my mouth but the one positive that I can take from it would be the fact that if DeRo is on form come the fall it will be a massive boost for the CMNT. So I guess we can thank Andy Iro and the rest of TFC for giving him a confidence boost.
At the exact other end of the emotional roller coaster that was this match was watching Julian DeGuzman score a screamer of a long range goal. The only thing wrong with his first goal for TFC was the fact that the ref should have never allowed it to happen since DCU were in the midst of making a change when JDG decided to take a quick freekick. Again if you look at this from a Canadian perspective it is great news. JDG will be a key member of the team and if he discovers any sort of his form from before he joined TFC then Canada will be in much better shape. The end result of JDG's goal was DCU coach Ben Olsen being dismissed from the sidelines having just flipped his lid in reaction to the goal being allowed to stand.
The last part of the game that I want to cover is how I felt about Iro and his performance. He was complete shit but I do not give him the entire blame for that. TFC played much of the second half with basically only 2 actual defenders on the field and Iro was not getting much help at all. He is a decent MLS defender but he needs to have a stronger partner in centre back. He is not strong enough or confident enough to control the middle of the pitch without somewhere better there to help him. He needs to play better then he did last night as the second goal was all his fault with him failing to clear the ball but the penalty he conceded was a real team effort. He was not the only one in the box that was failing to clear the ball, just happened to be the one who got caught bringing the man down. So blame him for one goal if you will but blame the entire team for the lack of defending that was going on in this game.
So like I said if you can't be good at least you should be exciting and at the moment TFC seem to have that covered. I like the fact that they are scoring more goals, I have been impressed by some of the new additions to the side, not just Frings and Koevermans either and I think that even if the results are not coming in yet the team is going to be better once things settle down. Games like this are giving me lots of reasons to be excited for 2012 and the chances of the team being in a position to be more competitive but before that I am just pleased that TFC are going to be a more entertaining team to watch down the stretch even if the playoffs are quickly fading from reach.
Sunday, August 07, 2011
Friday, August 05, 2011
Let there be no Excuses!
So yesterday I posted about how supporters tickets are going on sale now and that regular ticket sales for Canada's home games will begin sometime early next week. With tickets about to go on sale it is time for the people who care about the Canadian men's national team to stand up and do there part. The CSA has done there part by promising that they will be turning all of their spare focus to contacting clubs and other organizations to try and market the game. This move seems to come as a direct response to the calls that came out from a lot of Canadian fans, including the guys over at Canadian Soccer News, following the friendly against Ecuador. At that match, also in Toronto, there was a clear lack of youth soccer teams at the game. Personally I only noticed one team and they came from Oakville which is a club where Jason DeVos is heavily involved so the fact that they were at the forefront was no surprise at all. This time around there should be no excuse for more clubs not coming out. Yes only one of the three games is going to be on a weekend night with that being a Friday so there will still be the excuse of being unable to make it.
So the CSA has promised to do there part, they even tweeted me saying: "No worries, we got that covered! we'll be turning our office into call central so that we can reach as many cubs as humanly possible!" This tweet came in response to my slightly cynical remarks about the CSA announcing that it would be offering discounts and group packages for clubs. I for one might have felt well that is nice but the problem is that who is going to tell that clubs about this since last time many of them claimed to know nothing about the match and their options. This time the CSA has gone on the record and promised that they will do everything in their power to promote this game and I am ready to applaud them for that but will wait until September 2nd when we get to see the fruits of this labour.
The commitment of the CSA is nice and that is a great start but lets face it at the end of the day a lot of pressure is still coming to be on the people who call themselves supporters of the national team. I am not just referring to the normal names and faces who do their best to promote the games any time they happen since that is not where new fans are going to come from. They are all ready fans and in a lot of cases they have already exhausted their friends and family with attempts to win them over. I trust that despite that though they will all once again do their best to fill up at least the south end of BMO for each game. The pressure now will actually fall on the more casual fans. The ones that say they support the team, or want to support it, but have yet to do anything really tangible about that. These are the fans that we need to get on board if we are going to fill the rest of the stadium, at least part of the way. I am not going to be the first or the last person to make a plea to these fans and I acknowledge that most of them will not be reading this post since my audience is generally the more hardcore fans. So I hope that people with a much bigger audience and reach then I have will also echo what I am saying. Today i was glad to hear that on Tim and Sid Uncut (A Score program) Sid Seixeiro
gave a very impassioned plea to fans to get out and support the team. If you want to check it out head over to:
http://blogs.thescore.com/timandsid/2011/08/04/tim-and-sid-uncut-august-4/
The podcast is basically an hour long and talks about all kinds of sports but the important part is how fired up Sid gets about this issue. The thing is though that The Score is already among the leaders in promoting CMNT and the sport of soccer in general around this country so I am not sure how much more they can do. They worked hard to increase the profile of the Gold Cup and the friendly leading up to it. So maybe this plea from Sid is just going to end up reaching people who have already heard it all before and decided not to respond. I hope though that it does reach at least few people and gets just a couple more butts in the seats.
Let me add to what Tim had to say and stress that if you have the chance to get to Toronto for at least 1 game, can afford a 20 or 30 dollar ticket, and care about sports in the country over even just like soccer then you have no excuse here. You can spend all day trying to reason with me about why you wont be at these games but I will be hearing none of it. I have no excuse for not trying to bring the people that I know to the game and promoting it where I can so you have no excuse to not try your best to be there. If I get to BMO on September 2nd and the crowd is as disheartening as it was earlier this summer I will be more then a little disappointed. I know that people who really care about the CMNT are putting in the effort and now I just want to see some sort of reward for that! So please get out and do something real to support your national soccer team. We won't be in the World Cup with out it!
So the CSA has promised to do there part, they even tweeted me saying: "No worries, we got that covered! we'll be turning our office into call central so that we can reach as many cubs as humanly possible!" This tweet came in response to my slightly cynical remarks about the CSA announcing that it would be offering discounts and group packages for clubs. I for one might have felt well that is nice but the problem is that who is going to tell that clubs about this since last time many of them claimed to know nothing about the match and their options. This time the CSA has gone on the record and promised that they will do everything in their power to promote this game and I am ready to applaud them for that but will wait until September 2nd when we get to see the fruits of this labour.
The commitment of the CSA is nice and that is a great start but lets face it at the end of the day a lot of pressure is still coming to be on the people who call themselves supporters of the national team. I am not just referring to the normal names and faces who do their best to promote the games any time they happen since that is not where new fans are going to come from. They are all ready fans and in a lot of cases they have already exhausted their friends and family with attempts to win them over. I trust that despite that though they will all once again do their best to fill up at least the south end of BMO for each game. The pressure now will actually fall on the more casual fans. The ones that say they support the team, or want to support it, but have yet to do anything really tangible about that. These are the fans that we need to get on board if we are going to fill the rest of the stadium, at least part of the way. I am not going to be the first or the last person to make a plea to these fans and I acknowledge that most of them will not be reading this post since my audience is generally the more hardcore fans. So I hope that people with a much bigger audience and reach then I have will also echo what I am saying. Today i was glad to hear that on Tim and Sid Uncut (A Score program) Sid Seixeiro
gave a very impassioned plea to fans to get out and support the team. If you want to check it out head over to:
http://blogs.thescore.com/timandsid/2011/08/04/tim-and-sid-uncut-august-4/
The podcast is basically an hour long and talks about all kinds of sports but the important part is how fired up Sid gets about this issue. The thing is though that The Score is already among the leaders in promoting CMNT and the sport of soccer in general around this country so I am not sure how much more they can do. They worked hard to increase the profile of the Gold Cup and the friendly leading up to it. So maybe this plea from Sid is just going to end up reaching people who have already heard it all before and decided not to respond. I hope though that it does reach at least few people and gets just a couple more butts in the seats.
Let me add to what Tim had to say and stress that if you have the chance to get to Toronto for at least 1 game, can afford a 20 or 30 dollar ticket, and care about sports in the country over even just like soccer then you have no excuse here. You can spend all day trying to reason with me about why you wont be at these games but I will be hearing none of it. I have no excuse for not trying to bring the people that I know to the game and promoting it where I can so you have no excuse to not try your best to be there. If I get to BMO on September 2nd and the crowd is as disheartening as it was earlier this summer I will be more then a little disappointed. I know that people who really care about the CMNT are putting in the effort and now I just want to see some sort of reward for that! So please get out and do something real to support your national soccer team. We won't be in the World Cup with out it!
Tuesday, August 02, 2011
CSA confims WCQ Schedule
Earlier today the Canadian Soccer Association confirm what most of us were already assuming to be true. That is that all 3 home games in the second round of CONCACAF World Cup qualifying will be played at Toronto's BMO field. The games are St. Lucia on Sept. 2, Puerto Rico on Oct. 11 and St. Kitts and Nevis on Nov. 15. These dates and locations come as no real surprise since it had been speculated for weeks that the games would all be at BMO and following the drawing of the groups the dates had been released on the CSA site. Now there is no speculation left and we all know how the road to Brazil is going to look for at least the first round of matches.
This news was greeted by a very mixed reaction by loyal fans across the country. The fans in Toronto were of course very pleased by the news that all 3 games will be taking place in our back yard. The issues came from the fans across the rest of the country who felt that this was some sort of snub to them and favoritism towards the GTA area. I am not going to get in to the wild debates that were taking place on my twitter feed throughout the afternoon but instead I will try to lay out why I think that this is the best move for the national team and will actually help the team in the long run as well as the CSA.
1. BMO field is the only stadium in Canada that is good enough to host these matches. It is up to date, has over 20 K seats, and most importantly it has a grass surface. That along with the fact that having the games in Toronto puts it in the middle of Canada's largest population area increases the chances of getting a large pro-Canadian field. Cities like Montreal, Edmonton, and Vancouver would also be more then capable of hosting a game but they do not have grass fields and at this stage putting down a temporary surface for one match is not worth the hassle that it brings, just ask Whitecap fans.
2. It is what the players want. A lot of them are from the GTA area, they like spending time in the city of Toronto and again it comes back to the issue of playing surfaces. If you did a survey of the players I guarantee that they would all say that playing on a grass surface is one of the most important factors. The players are the ones who go out and play the game, not the fans, so it is key to keep the players happy since last I checked that helps them to play better.
3. It is the easiest thing for the CSA to do. By having all the games in one city they have less to do in terms of making arrangements for player travel, training grounds, and promoting the games. At this stage I think that anything that makes the CSA's job easier is a good thing since they have proven to struggle when they try and do to much.
4. Having all the games in one place will allow the Canadian players to develop a comfort level on the field and in the stadium which is a big part of a home field advantage. That advantage might not be as crucial in this first round but if Canada is going to push far into qualifications then it will eventually be crucial.
5. This debate is not about what we want as fans. It is about what is going to give the team the best chance of advancing to the next round and eventually moving on to the World Cup. That means that we have to accept that it might not be convenient for some of the fans, it might not help to grow the fan base, and it may even make Toronto a bit more hated but at the end of the day none of that matters when this is a World Cup qualifying campaign. At the end of the day this is not a fan making campaign and the best way for the CMNT to make new fans will be having success. Who knows where the games will be in the third round but for now this is the best move.
For all those reasons I think that the CSA has done the right thing by placing all the games in Toronto. IT is all about making the World Cup and this gives us the best chance to do that. I will though admit that if the shoe had been on the other foot and all the games were in other places I would have been very annoyed so I understand how fans around the rest of the country are feeling. All in how you look at it at the end of the day.
This news was greeted by a very mixed reaction by loyal fans across the country. The fans in Toronto were of course very pleased by the news that all 3 games will be taking place in our back yard. The issues came from the fans across the rest of the country who felt that this was some sort of snub to them and favoritism towards the GTA area. I am not going to get in to the wild debates that were taking place on my twitter feed throughout the afternoon but instead I will try to lay out why I think that this is the best move for the national team and will actually help the team in the long run as well as the CSA.
1. BMO field is the only stadium in Canada that is good enough to host these matches. It is up to date, has over 20 K seats, and most importantly it has a grass surface. That along with the fact that having the games in Toronto puts it in the middle of Canada's largest population area increases the chances of getting a large pro-Canadian field. Cities like Montreal, Edmonton, and Vancouver would also be more then capable of hosting a game but they do not have grass fields and at this stage putting down a temporary surface for one match is not worth the hassle that it brings, just ask Whitecap fans.
2. It is what the players want. A lot of them are from the GTA area, they like spending time in the city of Toronto and again it comes back to the issue of playing surfaces. If you did a survey of the players I guarantee that they would all say that playing on a grass surface is one of the most important factors. The players are the ones who go out and play the game, not the fans, so it is key to keep the players happy since last I checked that helps them to play better.
3. It is the easiest thing for the CSA to do. By having all the games in one city they have less to do in terms of making arrangements for player travel, training grounds, and promoting the games. At this stage I think that anything that makes the CSA's job easier is a good thing since they have proven to struggle when they try and do to much.
4. Having all the games in one place will allow the Canadian players to develop a comfort level on the field and in the stadium which is a big part of a home field advantage. That advantage might not be as crucial in this first round but if Canada is going to push far into qualifications then it will eventually be crucial.
5. This debate is not about what we want as fans. It is about what is going to give the team the best chance of advancing to the next round and eventually moving on to the World Cup. That means that we have to accept that it might not be convenient for some of the fans, it might not help to grow the fan base, and it may even make Toronto a bit more hated but at the end of the day none of that matters when this is a World Cup qualifying campaign. At the end of the day this is not a fan making campaign and the best way for the CMNT to make new fans will be having success. Who knows where the games will be in the third round but for now this is the best move.
For all those reasons I think that the CSA has done the right thing by placing all the games in Toronto. IT is all about making the World Cup and this gives us the best chance to do that. I will though admit that if the shoe had been on the other foot and all the games were in other places I would have been very annoyed so I understand how fans around the rest of the country are feeling. All in how you look at it at the end of the day.
Another Day, Another Deal
So this afternoon Toronto FC made yet another players move. This time it was a trade with FC Dallas that saw TFC swapped Maicon Santos for Eric Avila. At first look many might wonder why TFC have moved Santos as he has basically been the teams top scorer all season but that fact of the matter is that for the most part Santos has failed to live up to his price tag. He was one of Toronto's top paid players and as such the club should have expected an even better return from him than 10 goals in his 32 matches for the club. Avila on the other hand represents another move towards youth and potential for Toronto but he is also capable of jumping right in to the starting lineup.
So let me now introduce you to Eric Avila. He was drafted in the second round of the 2008 MLS Super draft having come out of UC Santa Barbara a year early. He ended up with FC Dallas where he was in his fourth season and made 58 appearances. As an attacking midfielder he scored only 3 goals for the club but what he has to offer goes beyond the stat sheet and his goal tally. Avila is a dynamic player who has the ability to create space in the center of the field as well as being able to create chances for those around him. At only 23 years of age Avila still has some time to mature and develop his game so he may yet reach his scoring potential. Avila showed that potential when he was in college where as a junior he was nominated for the Hermann trophy. While at UC Santa Barbara he played in 66 games scoring 15 goals and collecting 18 assists. That is an impressive scoring record for a midfielder at the college level and it is just that kind of potential that TFC will be hoping he begins to show in the MLS.
Avila is an American born player who comes from California. He played for the US national team at both the U-17 and U-20 levels a total of 30 times. He was also a part of the US residency program that was set up in Bradenton, Florida which he joined in 2003. Avila is very much one of the players who shows the fruits of the US national teams efforts to develop young talent and TFC will now be hoping that he continues to develop and reaches the level where he can play at the senior level.
So Toronto have gotten younger and a bit more potential which is the point of a rebuild. For that reason I think that this is a great deal for them. It continues to develop the team in the way that Winter has said he wants to since Avila is a creative player who is capable of playing something similar to Total Football. The other good part of this deal from a TFC point of view is that they are saving money on salaries as well as adding another international roster spot. All in all it was a good move for TFC and hopefully it sets the stage for a good result tonight.
Interesting facts:
1. The addition of Avila brings TFC within one player of breaking the MLS record of 36 players used in a single season.
2. Aside from home grown players only 5 players are left on TFC from the 2010 squad and two of them are keepers (thanks to Luke Wileman for that one)
So let me now introduce you to Eric Avila. He was drafted in the second round of the 2008 MLS Super draft having come out of UC Santa Barbara a year early. He ended up with FC Dallas where he was in his fourth season and made 58 appearances. As an attacking midfielder he scored only 3 goals for the club but what he has to offer goes beyond the stat sheet and his goal tally. Avila is a dynamic player who has the ability to create space in the center of the field as well as being able to create chances for those around him. At only 23 years of age Avila still has some time to mature and develop his game so he may yet reach his scoring potential. Avila showed that potential when he was in college where as a junior he was nominated for the Hermann trophy. While at UC Santa Barbara he played in 66 games scoring 15 goals and collecting 18 assists. That is an impressive scoring record for a midfielder at the college level and it is just that kind of potential that TFC will be hoping he begins to show in the MLS.
Avila is an American born player who comes from California. He played for the US national team at both the U-17 and U-20 levels a total of 30 times. He was also a part of the US residency program that was set up in Bradenton, Florida which he joined in 2003. Avila is very much one of the players who shows the fruits of the US national teams efforts to develop young talent and TFC will now be hoping that he continues to develop and reaches the level where he can play at the senior level.
So Toronto have gotten younger and a bit more potential which is the point of a rebuild. For that reason I think that this is a great deal for them. It continues to develop the team in the way that Winter has said he wants to since Avila is a creative player who is capable of playing something similar to Total Football. The other good part of this deal from a TFC point of view is that they are saving money on salaries as well as adding another international roster spot. All in all it was a good move for TFC and hopefully it sets the stage for a good result tonight.
Interesting facts:
1. The addition of Avila brings TFC within one player of breaking the MLS record of 36 players used in a single season.
2. Aside from home grown players only 5 players are left on TFC from the 2010 squad and two of them are keepers (thanks to Luke Wileman for that one)
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