I can just faintly recall as a small boy sitting in Sunday school and the guy up front telling how the Lord helps those who have squeaky wheels, or something like that. To a little kid, that didn't seem an unusual assumption considering the physics of the universe and all that. This is not a dump on the CSA commentary. Lets get this right, right off the top. Over the years I have been told by people in the Metcalfe Street mansion my comments were such things as harsh, unfair, unjust – if you can believe that one – and even demeaning.
Through each complete era of Lenarduzzi, Osiek, Miller the interim, Yallop, Hart the interim, Mitchell, and the second coming of Hart the interim, keeping the movement of their employers under a microscope evolved into something resembling a crusade that helped me better understand just how tough a job each of these guys faced.
“When I took the Olympic team job friends asked me if I was stupid.”
That’s how Nick Dasovic put it to me spewing chuckle in a telephone conversation from Vancouver Monday afternoon.
I wanted to talk with Nick because I was curious to know if he, like I, was pleased to see the kind of attention our new improved, fat-free association is giving Canada’s next wave of Olympic hopefuls. Canada put on a more than respectable showing in a match-up with the Honduras full national team in Florida Saturday. This squad is getting the earliest ever preparation for qualifying by a Canadian team. By comparison, Dasovic had about five days and a couple of run-outs against local college teams before facing Mexico at the last Olympic qualifying tournament in California.
Nick Dasovic was vocal in the media after his team’s elimination. “I didn’t speak out in a malicious way. I wanted to make it clear we got exactly what we deserved. Maybe they listened.” Our conversation switched to familiar themes like funding and seemed to come to agreement they are excuses rather than themes.
“We need to start doing like Honduras. There is a country with little in the way of financial resources and poor facilities that qualified teams in every age group, for every FIFA world championship (in the current cycle).” Canada always moans about finances but, “Canada is the only country in the world that was paying their woman’s coach, when Pellerud was here, twice as much as their national team coach.”
“I wanted to protect my players from the kind of press that might label them another bunch of losers. Well, everyone played for the flag. I can tell you that.”
My feeling is that everyone who ever spoke out against the workings of the CSA did it hoping they might listen. Add them all up and it amounts to a lot of listening. Problem is they just had no idea what to do about it. Oops. There you go. Did I just make a demeaning statement?
In 2010 Peter M is sorting it out. As Nick said to me, “If someone walked up to Montopoli with a bunch of papers and said they held the guaranteed, foolproof blueprint to qualifying for World Cup he’d tear it away, your hand included.” And then say, “Let’s implement it.”
It’s early in the decade – we have been baited before – but this is the first glimmer of hope since coming so close to squeezing our way into USA 94. If we – Canada, not my wife and I – close out this year in the fashion it began we - my wife and I not Canada - will be signing up for samba lessons.
Oh, Nick. If the opportunity came up again to coach a Canada team would you take it? “Absolutely.”
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