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!
Showing posts with label World Cup Qualifies. Show all posts
Showing posts with label World Cup Qualifies. Show all posts
Friday, August 05, 2011
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.
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