Canadian National Team: Hopeless

Despite the recent strides made by club football in Canada: the admission of Toronto FC to MLS, the sharp play of the Montreal Impact in the CONCACAF Champions League and the Vancouver Whitecaps continued semi-domination of USL-1, Canada’s national team continues to be hopeless.

Why is this? From a pure talent standpoint, looking at the starting XI Canada can rival anyone in CONCACAF other than Mexico. In fact it can be strongly argued that the Canadians have more talent in their starting XI than the US or Costa Rica, and yet those two nations are much more successful than Canada in every way possible.

Canada has since 2000 fared very well in the CONCACAF Gold Cup, winning once and reaching the semifinals twice. After all that is short event that requires no long term preperation or planning. Canada is one of three nations that does not have to qualify for the Gold Cup, along with the US and Mexico. However when Canada is thrown into a situation where matches are spread over a long period of time they are almost always hopeless. That’s why despite my belief of the high quality of Canada’s current talent, I did not believe the side had a snowball’s chance of getting out of CONCACAF’s group of death featuring Honduras, Mexico and Jamaica. In this group Canada has one point through four matches despite under Dale Mitchell playing attractive and honestly entertaining football.

The Canadian Soccer Association (CSA) is a dysfunctional entity no doubt. But that alone cannot account for Canada’s poor performances and early elimination in three consecutive World Cup qualifying campaigns, or can it? I’d love to hear from Canadian listeners and readers as to why this situation continues to get worse and worse: