For a long time in this country, the people who ran the national soccer set-up were widely viewed as incompetent amateurs.
The national teams were somewhere between mediocre and disgraceful. Infrastructure anywhere beneath that level was well below standard. There was no pro league to boost awareness. The few Canadians who did follow the sport did so exclusively through the old country. It was thankless work done by anonymous drones running a program that was a global punchline.
Those must seem like halcyon days of youth to the people who run Canada Soccer now.
On Wednesday, the long-running financial struggle between the Canadian senior women’s team and Canada Soccer entered its knife-fighting phase. The union representing the women’s players’ association is suing 15 current and former Canada Soccer board members who signed the deal with Canadian Soccer Business in 2018.
Their suit accuses 15 individuals of “willful neglect or default and/or a breach of the fiduciary duties they owed as directors of Canada Soccer” when they signed an epically terrible marketing deal. The suit seeks $40-million in damages.
Allegations in the statement of claim have not been proved in court.
The deal, with CSB, causing all this upset is atrocious. In return for all broadcast and sponsorship rights to both national teams, Canada Soccer gets a little more than $3-million a year. (The deal does not include the broadcasts of any World Cup or Olympic events.)
The deal may be extended until 2037. Those terms are already agreed. By then, Canada Soccer will be making $4-million a year.
Four million bucks a year is what you pay a backup second baseman’s backup. It’s what you pay for the broadcast rights in some imaginary country where they still prefer transistor radio.
The women are set to defend gold in Paris this summer. The men will host a home World Cup game in two years’ time. With that in mind, I feel fairly confident that I could go up and down Bay Street with a tip cup this very afternoon and scrape up $4-million in sponsorship.
We’ve grown so used to seeing eight-, nine-, 10-figure sports deals that when we see one like this – a miserly seven figures – our first instinct is to suspect chicanery.
Let’s say for the sake of argument that the heads of Canada Soccer were willfully neglectful. Then what?
You bankrupt all of them. You take whatever they’ve got and pour it back into Canada Soccer. After it’s been picked over by all involved parties, that won’t be enough to matter. You’re still stuck with a bad deal that pays peanuts.
So the complaining about money starts all over again? Who are you going to sue next time?
There won’t be anybody with any chops left at Canada Soccer (if there ever were). A smart person would need a personal financial death wish or a long streak of masochism to work there now.
The fact that it hired a new general secretary in December, who then quit the day she was supposed to start in January, looks a certain way after this week.
The search for her … is ‘successor’ the right word if someone never actually came to work? … the search for Canada Soccer’s next leader is continuing.
Maybe they should stop recruiting in C-suites and start checking in on hostage-negotiation teams and bomb squads. Failing that, maybe Hockey Canada has some tips. However this turns out, I’m sure it will do wonders for new sponsorship deals. Nothing makes a Big Five bank want to whip out its cheque book like the prospect of flying subpoenas. Maybe they can serve a few at the next charity soiree at the Four Seasons.
This is where we say something about how Canadian soccer is tearing itself apart. But it’s not. We may not be used to this sort of thing and it may be embarrassing to watch, but it’s pretty de rigueur in the soccer world.
The U.S. women’s team sued its federation a few years ago. It’s still pretty good.
Half the Brazil women’s team once quit when the federation fired the coach. Then they got better.
Spain famously left half its women’s team at home for the most recent World Cup because everyone was fighting with everyone and the replacement players won anyway.
Fighting is what happens in soccer. It seems to be good for the blood.
Here’s what will happen after the most recent local bust-up – nothing.
The players will sue, and they will complain, and they will protest, and they will protest even harder. This is all fine. It reminds the rest of us that work can always be terrible, even when you have a job that’s not even a job.
But the national teams will still play. There is enough money to get them to the Olympics and the World Cup. If there isn’t enough money, someone will find some. That’s how sports works. There may not be enough money for nursing homes or new bus routes, but there is always a little fun money for sports stashed away somewhere.
Will Canada still be able to win? Who knows? Maybe this will bind one or both national teams together in shared purpose. Maybe it will tear them apart. Either way, it’s a good story.
Here’s the only thing anyone can promise – it doesn’t matter.
People like these teams whether they are good or bad. They are enamoured with the idea of them. They don’t expect them to constantly win. They also don’t care if the players have access to 24-hour-a-day spa treatments or get to fly First Class.
That’s the players’ business. If they don’t like the amenities they can afford on this crap deal, they can quit. It’s not like playing for Canada is their job. It’s their hobby.
Our hobby is watching soccer if we choose to do so. That will not change. Someone will be out on a grass field wearing red and white lip syncing the national anthem at many major tournaments from here until doomsday.
The people who run Canada Soccer in the future will be better than the ones who did before because it can’t get worse. Nobody who is able to read a contract could negotiate a worse contract than the one they’ve got.
If it turns out there was some shady business going down here, then that’s a different conversation. But I find it helps to apply Hanlon’s razor to most disputes – never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity.
If there’s one thing there has never been a shortage of in the Canadian soccer set-up, it’s stupidity.
Cathal Kelly