What August means...an ode to football

The start of a new European club season always brings about a sense of renewal and excitement that is rarely rivialed in world sport. Fans forget the bickering over match fixing allegations, the wild and ridiculous transfer rumors, the long some time painful to watch overseas tours and just get down to watching their club for the next 9 months. The glitter than comes with watching the big new signing at your club shine on their debut, or finally seeing your club make the top flight is something that has always intrigued me. It's one of the few times that everyone has the small, if even slightly out to lunch hope that this is truly "Our year".

For the football junkies like myself this time of year means synchronizing watches and re-learning the different world time zones. It means no more sleeping in on the weekends, no quiet Saturday and Sundays, and no more "hey what you doing" calls during normal game time (Sorry ladies).  The weekends in August bring us the delights of French football, the pace and power from England, the beauty of the Spanish game and the tactical brilliant of Italy and Germany.At times it means that a football supporter has to make difficult decisions like which game to leave behind, which games to put your faith in and how much Arabic you know so you can watch your favorite match online if you can't get it on T.V where you are.

From a North American perspective, August is football dream land. Not only are the European Leagues getting started, but MLS is going into the playoff stretch drive. All the games in April and May no one though important, now become huge as team scrap for every last point to get themselves a shot at a league championship. At any given time one can watch football on a Saturday from 7:30 am -10 pm at night. And that does not include if you want to watch a west coast game which could be done at 1am the next morning!

To Man U, Arsenal and hell even Man City too. Lazio, Parma, Roma and Inter. From Wolfsburg to Bayern, PSG to Barca, from the 85,000 at the Santiago Bernabeu to the 2,500 in Frisco, Texas who watch FC Dallas. Enjoy, revel the best football months are back! and not a moment too soon.

Cheers,
Mike

Another one flies the coup

So It's official, the long rumored decision has been made...and it's not good for Canadian soccer. Kansas City Wizards forward Teal Bunbury Has chosen to play his international football with the U.S.A. I've blogged in the past about other Canadian born players like Owen Hargreaves, Johnathan DeGuzman, Asmir Begovic etc choosing other nations to play for ahead of Canada. I was disappointed then and I'm extremely disappointed now. Teal's father Alex was a great player for Canada, he score 16 international goals for the Red and White during his international career. Although I'm not super surprised by the 20 year olds decision, it seemed as though he was leaning towards Canada back in January.

"I was born in Canada, I have a lot of family members there, and it would feel wrong for me to play for the U.S. I feel a connection with Canada."

Well apparently that connection wasn't strong enough to turn down the potential of World Cup football in 2014. As he said today in his decision.

"Just really my heart, I guess. Ultimately, I want to play in a World Cup. That's one of my goals I've set," Bunbury said. "And just speaking with Bob Bradley, I really wanted to get on board with what he was coaching and what his philosophies were."

Though we could all stand back and be completely angry with Bunbury for the rest of his career like some are with Hargreaves, I believe this is yet another indictment on Soccer Canada, and how the men's program has been run. Clearly the CSA does not have the same kind of money to compete with the United States, however it does not excuse a lack of a development plan to get the senior squad to the World Cup. This in the end is what Teal saw.

Now the argument could be made that if Canada could keep the quality of players that have turned their backs on the team they could have made a World Cup by now. However the reality is we cannot deal in the maybes when it comes to international results, the CSA must come up with a plan to train and retain these players beyond the U-20 level and into the senior set up. Granted Teal received most of his football training in the U.S, but this did not stop him from representing us at the various junior levels.

A another frustrating day for the men's program, another lost Canadian to bolster some other country's options!

Bitter,
Mike