Canada Soccer’s interim general secretary Earl Cochrane looked down upon a sparsely populated ballroom in the foundations of Vancouver’s BC Place Stadium and tried to sum up the past two weeks for the national association.
“What I think it says to the international community,” he observed, “is that we have an unbelievable ability to punch above our weight in everything that we do.”
Everything? Not if everything includes successfully organizing a single friendly. It was 5.15pm, a time at which Canada should have been into the second half of their World Cup warm-up date with Panama, itself a hastily arranged encounter after the association had originally booked Iran and kicked off a firestorm. But the towering BC Place was deathly silent.
John Herdman’s side, who bridged a 36-year gap to qualify for the Qatar World Cup and light a wildfire of interest in the team, had taken a protest against their own governing body to its most drastic point. Having initially refused to train on both Friday and Saturday, on Sunday they refused to play the match itself. Canada Soccer had managed to lose not one but two friendlies in less than a week and a whole lot more besides. Millions of dollars in ticket revenue, oceans of goodwill and positivity that Alphonso Davies and co had brought to the sport here. All of it.
A statement from the players two hours before kickoff made clear that a standoff over World Cup bonuses has now morphed into something much bigger. They blasted the association, saying: “Canada Soccer has disrespected our team and jeopardized our efforts to raise the standards and effectively advance the game in Canada.” They made five significant demands which included Qatar 2022 payments, but also aimed to reshape how the game is run here.
As dismayed fans milled around outside the venue in Vancouver, dozens in Davies No 19 jerseys, some digested the players’ lengthy statement and lamented that a team who had become just the second Canadian men’s side ever to qualify for a World Cup were now being forced to perhaps prove why success has been such a rare feeling here. Canada Soccer, an association for whom dysfunction has been a much more frequent visitor, don’t appear nearly ready to meet this moment.
Cochrane’s bizarre boast wasn’t the only head-scratching moment in a delayed press conference where he was joined by Canada Soccer president Nick Bontis. The pair provided plenty of overly earnest generalities and apologies to the fans but little in concrete detail and, as a result, not a lot of promise that this latest mess will come to a clean end any time soon.
The players’ demands called for changes in leadership of Canada Soccer, an equitable pay and bonus structure with the country’s women’s team, a 40% cut of Qatar prize money, better perks for the tournament and, most significantly, called for clarity on a 2019 agreement the association made with an entity called Canada Soccer Business, closely tied to the country’s upstart domestic competition, the Canadian Premier League. The 10-year deal sees CSB guarantee Canada Soccer $3m in annual revenue, but CSB get to capitalize on both the men’s and women’s national teams by handling all sponsorship and broadcast deals. In these unprecedented times of success and interest in the game here, the deal looks particularly flawed.
“We want to know who signed this deal that has hand cuffed our association,” the player statement read. “Why have Canada Soccer given up autonomy of the greatest opportunity to grow our program in years?”
Bontis defended the CSB agreement and said it had been “pivotal” to growing the game here. He also claimed that the men’s demands related to World Cup finances were “untenable”.
“If we as an association only had the men’s team and the women’s team to take care of and nothing else … we still could not afford this proposal,” he said pointing to programs like futsal, para sport, underage teams and referees. But that immediately begged the question as to why World Cup revenue should be needed to find such areas. If Herdman’s side had fallen short in qualification, would those programs have simply been wound up?
There were a few more answers from the pair but each begged more questions. The most pressing one, of course, is what next? Curacao is the literal answer. The minnows are due to pitch up in Vancouver this Thursday for Concacaf Nations League action. Whether they will get a game or, like Panama, merely fly all the way for a private training session at BC Place remains to be seen.
The leadership were headed straight back to the team hotel and said they were ready to talk to the players again. But given how the initial conversations went, things weren’t looking good. One source told the Toronto Star that Bontis had got on his knees and begged players to take Canada Soccer’s deal ahead of the Panama game.
To add yet another layer, the country’s women’s team later released a statement that took a more positive tone to Canada Soccer’s most recent offer while also apparently taking issue with the wording of the men’s statement around equitable pay. All of this on the back of the US Soccer Federation reaching a groundbreaking deal with its men’s and women’s national teams.
The men’s team agreed to return to training on Monday while negotiations continue. “The players have met with senior leaders at Canada Soccer … and will continue the negotiation process, but questions have yet to be answered and actions have yet to be taken,” said a statement. “We move forward in hopes that Canada Soccer will work with us to resolve the situation.”
What’s clear is that time is neither on the association’s side nor on Herdman’s. Before Friday, the Englishman had just 16 training days and a handful of games with his squad before they face Belgium, Croatia and Morocco in Qatar. They lost two training sessions and their most meaningful game of this window. As Canada Soccer dither and cry poor with their convoluted finances, the manager is left counting the cost.
