BEHIND THE PLAY #34

A few weeks ago I created a form and invited readers of BTP to submit any questions they’d like me to answer. There’s been a bunch so far but this one had me thinking and re-thinking the issue. Here’s where I landed.

Here’s the question:

Q: I wonder what you think of this thread by someone that used to work in the CPL’s technical side?

https://x.com/g4gey/status/1811417090445959291?s=61

I was surprised at how many people supported the author, whether it’s the CPL or NSL I think development should be secondary to what should be the priority of creating a sustainable soccer economy. I can also understand why CPL didn’t want to become vassal clubs too.

First off, I don’t know Oliver Gage but he is clearly well placed to have a very relevant opinion on the topic of how CPL relates to the national team and what their role in developing young players can and should be. I disagree with his argument but respectfully.

Just to be upfront, I was asked by Jim Easton, along with others I believe, to write positions or arguments for or against specific topics they were considering. Jim and I were teammates and he is now a big deal at the CONCACAF level (and with several national federations) as a consultant. The CPL hired him to figure out the best way to ensure the CPL would work. I was tasked with ideas around initial player dispersal which is arguably adjacent to how CPL should make their rosters and what obligations they have to play younger players. This was early 2018.

The statement from Marsch captured in the Tweet linked to above is what it all boils down to.

The argument then becomes: is it the job and/or duty of a private business, one that is supposed to be a pure meritocracy with incredibly transparent and public sight lines around success (standings, trophies) to prioritize developing a particular type of player (young, Canadian) for another organization where benefits may accrue that they will not enjoy.

I have several issues around the North American professional sports model that I have mentioned in past newsletters and repeatedly on Twitter. Drafts should not exist. Cartel leagues that limit competition through a lack of promotion/ relegation are counter-intuitive for an industry, sport, that is entirely about competition.

That said, this is a business where large sums or money are being invested and careers are notoriously short-term whether you are a coach or a player. It is a results based business where your performance is seen and judged by thousands of people 24-7. There aren’t many office environments where people face this kind of pressure.

Let’s look at relevant parts of the thread.

Imagine being an experienced professional player in the CPL and you’re making a liveable wage but nothing great. You have aspirations to further develop your career here in the CPL or move to another league where you can make more money. You are, it goes without saying, an inherently competitive person who wants to play and win.

I totally understand players (and team staff) finding it ridiculous that in this environment they may see less time on the field because the league has mandated that a 17 year old has to get minutes.

As Gage says there has been a rule along these lines in place since the league started. Marsch may or may not know that but what he’s calling for is a full step more than what the current rule states. He doesn’t just want U21’s playing more, he wants 17-19 year olds getting significant play.

There’s always been strong support for the “if you’re good enough, you’re old enough” sentiment in professional sport and I largely agree with that. The corollary to that though is “if you aren’t good enough, you may not be old enough.”

There’s an interesting phenomenon in Canadian online soccer supporter culture that makes me scratch my head. A large portion of us are experts on how other people should spend their money in the game. And when I say money I mean they feel other people should spend very large amounts of money of things that they as a supporter either feel are important or would make them happy. The CPL is a tenuous business. After six years of play I’m sure a lot of owners, players and staff were hoping that attendance and general interest would be higher. To load them up with an expectation that they shouldn’t necessarily field their strongest eleven for a substantial number of games in the season is asking some strong players to sit on the bench, some coaches to jeopardize their jobs if the results and standard of play drop and some owners to lose considerable amounts of money.

The numbers don’t lie. Clubs are resistant to a policy that they have seen over time limits their ability to compete. Again, while there may be a philosophical argument to be made that they should develop younger players through mandated playing time, it’s not us, as supporters, that have to deal with the consequences of those decisions.

There are several tweets that follow in the thread that try to make the case that mandating a minimum amount of playing time for young players in the CPL is a good and necessary idea. I would question if the “five indisputable truths” really are and while I don’t doubt the playing minute comparisons for U23 players vs Honduras, Mexico and the US, it omits the fact that Mexico has an Liga MX U23 league with eighteen clubs playing a 34 game season. We do not have that. There is also no mention of examples in other countries where the top domestic professional league have a similar mandate vis a vis playing minutes for young players.

The EPL has no mandate of playing minutes by age group. Here’s how many teenagers at each club received last season.

You can argue “but the EPL is the best league in the world so it’s much harder to get playing time there.” That is true but it’s also the league, along with La Liga, that is able to attract the best teenagers in the world so I think it’s still a fair comparison.

38 league games times 95 minutes (assuming an average of five minutes of injury time) times 11 available playing slots means each club has 39,710 minutes to allocate to its players. That’s 9.4% at the high end. If you exclude the top four, the remaining 16 teams combined offered 3277 minutes to teenagers over the entire season. That’s .5% of all playing time available to 16 EPL clubs combined going to teenagers. That’s a very compelling statistic.

I would assume that most people who bother to read this newsletter would like to see the game progress here. They would like to see domestic leagues, the CPL and the incoming NSL, succeed and prosper. To do so these leagues need to have autonomy to form rosters and select who will play when. It’s a business and the business of operating a professional soccer club here is very difficult to sustain. Yes, I would like to see a pipeline of young Canadian players able to help the men’s and women’s national teams. Their pathway though is not limited to the CPL.

Here’s the current Argentinian national team squad. Of the 28 players only two are playing in Argentina and they are both in their 30’s.

Prescriptive solutions that require privately owned clubs to make what are essentially business decisions that benefit the men’s national team are not tenable, practical or proven to actually work.

For me, compelling CPL clubs to allocate a minimum amount of playing time to young players is more likely to erode support in their own league rather than bolster the national team.

If you’d like to submit a question for me to answer, click here.