BEHIND THE PLAY #17

^{When I decided I wanted to get in the habit of writing my first inclination, about a year ago, was to do a more general newsletter that was going to be called Papers. I had been cleaning up some stuff and realized the steel tin I’d been using to store old game and concert tickets was full and needed a bigger home so I merged it with a load of other memorabilia, almost all which was also in paper form, into a wooden box. In doing so I did that mental exercise, “What would you save if the house was on fire?” That box was pretty near the top of the list.}

^{I never acted on the Papers idea for a newsletter but I’m going to bring it in to this one as an occasional guest when the nostalgia whim strikes.}

^{All tickets seem to be digital now. There’s a convenience factor there that’s nice but I’d happily go back to paper in a second. Not all the ‘Papers’ will be game tickets but most will including both of today’s.}

Whitecaps at Empire in 1979

There’s nothing particularly amazing about this game. I have no specific memories of it. We’d had season tickets for several seasons by this point but this would’ve been about the time when I was able to go to games with friends without adult supervision. You hear the term ‘rink rats’ around kids who were always going to ice rinks to hang out whether it was to play or watch games. There’s no Canadian equivalent expression for kids who went to see those NASL games but there were quite a few of us who, in our pre and early teens, would go and scamper about Empire.

This was the heyday of the NASL. There were 24 teams, the Cosmos would get up to 76,000 fans per game and Caps were about to become NASL champions three months after this game against Houston. The league was wacky, what with shootouts in the event game were tied and a bonus point scheme that saw almost all teams end up with over 100pts by the end of the season.

Giorgio Chinalgia led the league in scoring while Cruyff was the MVP. Bruce Wilson, still years from captaining Canada at the 1986 World Cup, joined a who’s who on the First Team all-stars. Somehow, Gerd Muller only made the second team.

What this all builds towards is an ideal environment for a kid from North Van who could easily bus over Second Narrows Bridge to Empire stadium with friends to watch the Caps play. It fed my love and knowledge of the game as well as my sense of independence.

The Caps lost this game to Houston 1-0 but ended up beating the Cosmos 4-1 at Empire two weeks later. I would surely have been at that game as I would have been when they lost 1-0 to Cruyff’s Los Angeles Aztecs on July 11 (he scored the goal). Do I remember those games? No. And though I would’ve known those players were among the best in the world from Soccer Made in Germany and the weekly Shoot magazines my dad would bring home from the European news agent on Robson (or Robsonstrasse as it was called then due to the strong European flavour of its stores) the excitement then was more based around an evolving love the game fuelled by increasing youthful freedom.

Canada v Brazil (Seattle, 2008)

I still can’t understand why the game was played in Seattle and not Vancouver but I do remember we really did give Brazil a game as the extended highlights clearly show. The confidence we showed in attack was staggering given where we were at as a national team around this time*.

The memory that makes me smile the most though is when my former UBC teammate, Pat Onstad, received a pass back from a teammate in a wide position about 6-8 yards from the byline. A Brazilian player anticipated it and quickly moved to press Pat knowing he had limited options. What did he do? Well if you knew Pat you weren’t super surprised but it was still audacious given the scenario. He calmly chipped the on-rushing player, likely Robinho, and dropped it back on the foot of his left back.

Here’s the lineups for that game.

CANADA
18.Pat Onstad; 19.Mike Klukowski, 20.Adrian Serioux, 11.Richard Hastings, 7.Paul Stalteri; 12.Issey Nakajima-Farran, 13.Atiba Hutchinson (15.Patrice Bernier 82'), 6.Julian de Guzman (8.Tam Nsaliwa 78'), 14.Dwayne de Rosario (17.Jaime Peters 80'); 16.Rob Friend, 9.Tomasz Radzinski (2.Marcel de Jong 74')
BRAZIL
1.Julio Cesar; 6.Gilberto, 2.Maicon (13.Daniel Alves 74'), 4.Juan, 3.Lucio (14.Luisao 64'); 5.Josue, 10.Diego (19.Alexandre Pato 70'), 7.Julio Baptista (17.Elano 64'), 8.Mineiro; 9.Luis Fabiano (20.Adriano 64'), 11.Robinho (18.Rafael Sobis 87')

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*^{We played 12 games in 2008. Besides this one against Brazil, the only other non-Concacaf team we played was Estonia who beat us 2-0. We won three of the twelve games (Martinique and two against the mighty St Vincent and the Grenadines), tied three and lost six overall.}

_{A song you may not know but just might like. Almost Crimes by Broken Social Scene. Totally fell for these guys at Coachella in 2004. Been listening to this song for the twenty years since then. (Apple Music) (Spotify)(YouTube)}