It has been a disastrous few weeks for Canadian football which continued on Sunday. Just hours after the men’s national team’s friendly with Panama at the BC Place Stadium in Vancouver was rescheduled, their preparations for this year’s Qatar World Cup suffered yet another massive setback as the team went on a de-facto strike.
The Canada national team have gone on a strike as player protests continue over compensation demands and player perks for Qatar World Cup 2022. They refused to train on both Friday and Saturday to drive the point across after months of fruitless conversations and back and forth finally seemed to have reached a dead end.
The timing of the decision was also crucial as less than two hours before they were supposed to take the field in a World Cup warm-up friendly against Panama at the BC Place Stadium in Vancouver, the friendly had to be cancelled. Besides skipping training sessions on Friday and Saturday, the players chose not to avail themselves to media interactions surrounding the international friendly and finally decided not to take any part in Sunday’s match.
On Saturday night, the players apparently met the federation top brass following the very public nature of the protest. Both parties remained in deadlock, and despite a ‘very transparent’ conversation during the meeting, as reported by some outlets, the players haven’t yet sent a counter offer to Canada Soccer.
It is believed that the Canadian national team players and the head body Canada Soccer are still quite far apart on demands. An initial report from TSN suggested the players had asked for a 40% cut of World Cup revenues, with the association offering just 10% of a FIFA windfall that is likely in the 10-15 million dollars range.
The players also released a letter via an eminent TSN journalist Rick Westhead which called for greater transparency from Canada Soccer’s broadcast rights deal which is said to have ‘handcuffed’ the association, leaders who can create more sponsorship revenue and equal pay for the women’s and men’s players with the formation of a women’s domestic league along with 40% of the World Cup windfalls.
The highest governing body for football in Canada is expected to receive at the very least a sum of 10 million, potentially as much as 15 million, from FIFA for its participation in the World Cup in Qatar. Usually, federations pay bonuses to the national teams from this particular pool of money.
This is far from the only controversy that had grasped Canadian football recently, with Canada Soccer facing tremendous backlash after initially arranging a friendly with Iran, two years after 85 Canadian citizens and permanent residents were killed when a passenger plane was shot down by Iranian forces shortly after leaving Tehran, the weekend’s startling developments brought further ignominy on an association long blighted by dysfunction and underperformance.
The Canadian football team managed by John Herdman surpassed all expectations to guide the country into a World Cup finals appearance for the first time in 36 years. This exciting crop of young players led by the likes of Alphonso Davies and Jonathan David topped the CONCACAF qualification table and attracted plenty of fans.
Also read 👉 Canada’s Herdman becomes first coach to lead men’s and women’s team to World Cup
