The Rachel Quon Quandry

Today, the Canadian women’s national team announced it was calling up American defender/midfielder Rachel Quon of the NWSL’s Chicago Red Stars[1]. Jeff Kassouf, a respected American women’s soccer reporter, first tweeted the “shocker” this morning[2].

Quon is 22 years old and has played for the American national team at every level from U-14 to U-20[3]; the Americans list her as part of their U-23 player pool but she has not played a match at that level. Her early career was derailed by ACL injuries and she hasn’t quite reached the heights that were hoped for but she is still young and still a quality player: Quon made her professional debut April 14 against Seattle[4] and has since started all of the Red Stars’ first five NWSL games in defense. She has mostly played next to Canadian international Carmelina Moscato, recording no statistics of note but appearing in every minute of every game to date.

A thread on the Vancouver Southsiders board calls Quon the “anti-Leroux”[5]. If you’re unfamiliar with women’s soccer, the reference is to Surrey-born and raised forward Sydney Leroux, who accepted a call-up to the Canadian youth national team and was considered an absolutely sterling prospect, but abandoned the Canadian program in favour of the Americans (eligible through her father) and is currently one of their more important young players. Leroux is Canadian, she was wanted by Canada, she accepted Canada’s time and money when it was convenient for her, and she bolted south of the border. I do not like Sydney Leroux. I boo her even harder than I boo all other American players. I shout horrible chants at her from the stands, things that would make her knock me out if I ever said them to her in person.

I don’t see much of a difference between her and Rachel Quon.

There are two devils in the details. First, Leroux needed only to snap her fingers and the Canadians would have called her up, whereas Quon is not in the senior American picture at the moment. She also hasn’t played with their U-23s, but since the U-23s have played three games since June 2012 I wouldn’t take much away from that. At 22 years old, she is omnipresent in a Chicago defense that is among the weaker in the league but is hardly disgracing itself. While she might not make the senior American team today, it is far too early for her to start throwing in the towel. Ali Krieger was 23 when she got her first cap. Shannon Boxx was 26. Even Carli Lloyd, one of the world’s ten best female players, was a week shy of her 23rd birthday when she made her senior international debut. It’s unusual for any defender/midfielder to break into the senior American team at Quon’s age unless they are absolutely elite.

Second, Leroux made one Canadian appearance with the U-20 team as a 14-year-old in 2004. Apart from that one digression before she was old enough to drive Leroux has been steadily committed to the Americans, appearing for them from 2008 to the present. Quon has ridden American resources as far as they will take her. It’s beyond my ability to calculate how much money the United States Soccer Federation has spent developing Quon but it must run into the tens of thousands of dollars, without considering the players deprived of an opportunity because Quon took their spots. The product of that time and money will now wear le rouge et blanc for a country in which she was not born, in which she has never played, and to which her eligibility came as a shock to even the most die-hard soccer observer.

I’m sorry, I can’t cheer for her and I can’t applaud this. It’s crossing a line which Canada had not previously crossed: the open recruitment of players who, if the situation was reversed, we would deride as traitors and slander to the skies.

When Lauren Sesselmann flipped to Canada from the United States she wasn’t a USWNT prospect, was never part of any of their youth national teams, and had only just broken into WPS with Atlanta after a disappointing time as a forward with Sky Blue. She was in a Marc Bircham situation: it looked like she was never going to play for the Americans so she and Canada took a chance on each other. (Happily, it worked out for both parties: Sesselmann is an Olympic medalist and important to her national team, and one can’t help but think that if the Americans had the chance today they’d take Sesselmann in a heartbeat.)

By all accounts Quon is intelligent and likable. Herdman surely would have asked Erin McLeod and Carmelina Moscato about her and presumably their reports were good. There’s no reason to believe any of the Canadian players would have a problem with Quon. But she is stabbing the United States in the back. She’s doing the exact thing for which I have hated and condemned the likes of Leroux, Jacob Lensky, and Asmir Begovic. The fact that she’s doing so in our favour in no way alters that. If Shaun Saiko had an American father and he accepted a call to the American national team I’d damned well be pissed. And Quon is in an almost identical situation: same age, same youth national pedigree, not yet ready for senior international play but certainly in the conversation looking forward, and playing in the country she’s betraying. How can I possibly support that?

I don’t cheer for the Canadian women’s national team because they’re good. I cheer for them because they represent my country honourably. It’s not like a club where you cheer for whomever’s wearing the laundry; with international competition it’s the national connection that matters. I can bite my tongue for the occasional Sesselmann, representing Canada with verve because she just wants to play in the Olympics. But this Quon thing is too cynical for my blood. I won’t boo her, I can’t boo anybody on my own team however much I hate them. I’ll take the approach I did with Jacob Lensky on the Whitecaps. I won’t cheer for Quon, I won’t applaud when she does well, and I’ll hope with all my heart she just goes away, sooner rather than later. She’s a talented player, no doubt. But in international soccer, that’s not all that matters.

I think I see a few Canadian fans already trying to rationalize Quon, saying “this is different” somehow; that the Quon flip-flop isn’t as sleazy as Leroux’s (or whichever player you like). We have to resist the urge to let our partisanship blind our honesty. It’s not okay because the Americans did it first, or because “everyone else does it”. It’s not okay because “that’s modern soccer”. Such proclamations are moral surrender, a sycophantic willingness to lower the bar as long as it helps us. If you never cared about which country Leroux, Begovic, Lensky, etc. played for then by all means welcome Quon with open arms. If you did, then look in the mirror. Intellectual honesty and moral behaviour is as important in sports as anywhere.

Whenever Canada loses a player like this, we demand better, we gnash our teeth and curse to the heavens. There’s no difference when Canada gains a player like this. It’s throwing aside what makes international sports worth anything in favour of pure short-term expediency.

Some may call it naïveté. I prefer to say some things are more important than winning.