A Canadian Mindset: I Cheer For [insert European Nation]

Part Three of "A Canadian Mindset", a series looking at the problems with Canadian soccer outside the CSA.

How often do you hear people in Canada ask each other who their favourite international hockey team is. Never, the answer is obvious as it should be, Canada their home country. Now flip that around, how many times do you hear people ask each other who their favourite international soccer team is. This is a question thrown around all the time, and the despite these people all being Canadian the answer is rarely Canada.

There is little more to say here than you are Canadian support your fucking national team. Of course that would achieve very little and usually earns you a "Canada sucks" response which you will argue, but you inevitably feel a little guilty knowing that deep down at the moment our national team does suck.

This should be the target audience for Canadian soccer, not the soccer-snobs out there, but the eurosnobs. The people who watch soccer but only watch European leagues/teams and think that MLS is a pub league as well as the Canadian bloggers who dedicate way too much time to already over covered European teams like Manchester United.

The easiest way to solve the problem in the short term is for supporters to bring friends to national team matches (which is difficult due to the lack of matches, but I promised not to talk about the CSA). As a piece of general advice to those out there reading, soccer-ignorant, sports fans tend to love supporters sections just because they are so different from any other North American sports experiences.

The second way to get these supporters in is through media attention. People will counter this by saying the media won't cover soccer in this country. That is not true at all the World Cup and European Championships are hyped up in Canada just like they are across the rest of the world.

World Cup qualifying should be a massive event, that is built up to for months. Even if it is only an article or a two a week covering the Canadian national team leading up to the event. A Canadian World Cup qualifier should get the same coverage that a Leafs game gets in Canada. Complete with multiple previews and front page match recaps. World Cup qualifiers don't come very often for this country and they should be treated as prestigious events.

At the moment the best media coverage come from the supporters, two of the best soccer writers in this country do it for nothing (Ben Knight and Duane Rollins). The best coverage we got for the Gold Cup came from the Voyageurs youtube feed. The point is there are knowledge and talented people out there who are willing to provide this coverage for free so the "there aren't enough people excuse" has no truth to it.

The rebuttal to this may be that people say we can't just throw amateurs in there. Despite the quality of these sources, this is a view that many may view as a legitimate concern. But again there is no basis to this argument since the best sports writer in Canada (I'm not even putting this one up for debate) Steven Brunt has written several lengthy articles about Canadian soccer and is passionate about the sport.

Tapping into this audience is key for the development of Canadian soccer.