Canadian Domestic Content Before and In the MLS Era

Last week, Don Garber broke from his usual policy of pretending Canada doesn’t exist to talk up Major League Soccer’s impact on the country at his press conference to announce David Beckham’s new franchise in Miami. He hoped Canada would qualify for its first World Cup since 1986 (so do I!) and that he thought MLS would get us there. Which is optimistic, given that the MLS era has coincided with the all-time nadir of Canada’s men’s national team, but of course that’s not all MLS’s fault.

Still, it’s worth evaluating the big picture, and if Garber is right that Canada is getting something out of its association with his league hopefully we can rustle up some evidence besides all those goals we haven’t scored. So let’s see what the Major League Soccer era has done in one area clubs can control on their own: the number of Canadians getting minutes every season on Canadian clubs.

Many of you will be familiar with Out of Touch‘s traditional Canadian content report, where Jono looks at what proportion of its minutes each Canadian professional team gives domestic players[1]. It’s a great way to see how the Canadian teams are doing relative to each other. But Jono’s tables are set up to show the percentage of minutes, rather than the mass of them, which is fair when you’re trying to ask which team is doing better (since some teams play more games), but unfair when you’re trying to figure out the bulk benefit to Canadian players as a whole. More importantly, his archives only go back to 2008 while the Canadian MLS era began in 2007. So, to get a clearer look at where we’ve gone in the MLS era, I decided to re-invent the wheel.

I have compiled the Canadian content numbers in domestic professional soccer (defined as USL A-League, USL First Division, USSF Pro D-2, NASL, and MLS) since 2004. This was the last year, prior to the upcoming 2014 season, where five professional teams operated in Canada (Calgary Mustangs, Edmonton Aviators, Montreal Impact, Toronto Lynx, and Vancouver Whitecaps, all of the USL A-League) and may be taken as a high-water mark since the demise of the Canadian Soccer League. It was also the earliest season for which player-by-player numbers were easily available. My figures do not agree with Jono’s at many points: I suspect his are the more accurate because many of mine are taken from season totals rather than game-by-game summaries, but it’s small change either way[2]. I also list players who appeared to have been in match-day eighteens but gotten no minutes, but who then later appeared in a senior international training camp, for the sake of completeness.

If you like, my spreadsheet listing each of the players is available online, so you can use the numbers for your own purposes. I’ll also give the full figures for a few major seasons in-line with the article, and a summary at the end.

2004 USL A-League Calgary Mustangs Edmonton Aviators Montreal Impact Toronto Lynx Vancouver Whitecaps Name Mins Name Mins Name Mins Name Mins Name Mins Auvigne, Jaime 2264 Akok, Freddy 1354 Biello, Mauro 1723 Arango, Andres 1131 Clarke, Jeff 2017 Castrillon, John Jr. 462 Bosch, Kurt 1833 Braz, Adam 1510 Ashton, Brian 38 Corazzin, Carlo 1211 Chala, Conrad 306 Chin, Gordon 2379 Budalic, Niki 304 Bartolomeu, Edgar 1528 Craveiro, Nico 1040 Frazao, Steven 237 Da Silva, Liam 2054 Cann, Adrian 256 Connor, Matthew 45 Cucca, Tino 33 Gillespie, Jordan 1650 Devlin, Chris 1296 DiTullio, Jason 844 Diplacido, David 1805 Dasovic, Nick 2143 Holdt, Steffen 1969 Dhaliwal, Paul 1417 Fronimadis, David 217 Dodds, Jamie 1940 Franks, Chris 984 Jesic, Damir 1580 Drummond, Daniel 470 Gervais, Gabriel 2386 Faria, Shawn 1231 Franks, Mike 895 Kooy, Chris 1048 Fraser, Sean 2401 Grande, Sandro 1902 Gbeke, Charles 657 Gomes, Mark 250 Mert, Mesut 2202 Handsor, Chris 950 Hainault, Andre 17 Gerba, Ali 2083 Harmse, Kevin 510 Pavicic, Mike 1353 Kassaye, Simon 604 Leduc, Pat 2074 Handsor, Chris 202 Heald, Ollie 1427 Peszneker, Charles 1773 Kaushal, Vikram 506 Lemire, Chris 383 Hughes, Tyler 1703 Jordan, Jason 1359 Reyes, Nic 744 Lemire, Chris 1049 Olivieri, Andrew 281 Mattacchione, Joe 2546 Kindel, Steve 2307 Richer, Aaron 754 Molina, Cesar 32 Pizzolitto, Nevio 1653 Munthali, Rumbani 1353 Lyall, Geordie 1090 Sestito, Angelo 1667 Munoz, Eric 668 Ribeiro, Antonio 1737 O’Connor, Matthew 329 Morris, David 1800 Slade, Mark 99 Sibiya, Sipho 1248 Selaidopoulos, Kyriakos 148 Prostran, Igor 519 Nash, Martin 1752 Zuniga, Nicolas 1051 Stankov, Nick 1208 Sutton, Greg 2366 Rowland, Brian 90 Sulentic, Johnny 1676 Stankov, Robert 2 Williams, Chris 976 Serioux, Adrian 1184 Thompson, Justin 1301 Stephens, Wesley 21 Valente, Alfredo 1633 Tachie, Desmond 654 Xausa, Davide 1796 Vignjevic, Nikki 1989 Subtotal 19159 22135 18777 18384 25224 Total Canadian domestic minutes: 103707

Naturally the five-team 2004 season had the most Canadian minutes I have recorded, but not always with the best results. Edmonton and Calgary were legendary disasters, the two worst teams in the league, and their Canadian content was mostly picked for price rather than quality. The large majority of those Canadian players were out of professional soccer when their teams folded; a lucky few got a season or two elsewhere, but very few did much. Edmonton’s Chris Lemire and Calgary’s Mesut Mert became the answers to trivia questions when they were the only players in their teams’ history to be called up for a senior Canadian men’s national team training camp under Frank Yallop for non-official friendlies in July 2004[3] (Mert got another camp in 2007 after his final year with the Montreal Impact[4] but never received a full cap). A few other Aviators and Mustangs surfaced for odds-and-ends seasons here and there; Edmonton’s Gordon Chin had runs with Toronto Lynx and Vancouver, Calgary’s Chris Kooy and Edmonton’s Lemire returned for the first season of FC Edmonton in 2011, and for reasons best known to themselves the Toronto Lynx scooped a handful of ex-Aviators for 2005, but by and by large it was a sorry group.

But the Vancouver Whitecaps, who recorded more Canadian minutes in 2004 than any professional team since, were second in the Western Conference and made the conference semi-finals. Montreal, whose 18,777 Canadian minutes would have been considered very good in any other season, won the whole thing. Even Toronto was less bad than usual[5]. Giving big minutes to Canadians was no guarantee of success but nor was it any impediment. Counting Mert and Lemire, twenty-five Canadians on a Canadian A-League team in 2004 would at least be called up to a senior men’s national team camp over their careers. Twenty-five! And those weren’t bad teams by today’s standards; they put up a credible fight for 2006 World Cup qualification and made a strong run in the 2007 Gold Cup.

2004 was the high water mark for Canadian domestic professionals in more ways than one. In 2005, with fewer Canadian teams naturally total minutes declined, but so did the domestic minutes in (very good) Vancouver and (regular season champion) Montreal. The Toronto Lynx increased to 20,257 minutes but were a nightmare on the field; with a bunch of old Aviators so I don’t know what they thought was going to happen. Long-retired legend Lyndon Hooper hit the pitch on August 21 and September 5. But it wasn’t all 38-year-olds, scrubs, and Robbie Aristodemo: Charles Gbeke, Ali Gerba, Dave Simpson, and Chris Williams were all on that team and had their best years ahead of them. Toronto FC today would consider that a decent haul.

2006 USL First Division Montreal Impact Toronto Lynx Vancouver Whitecaps Name Mins Name Mins Name Mins Biello, Mauro 2192 Antsey, Ryan 42 Cann, Adrian 1902 Braz, Adam 1914 Arango, Andres 2430 Clarke, Jeff 2316 Di Ioia, Massimo 516 Aristodemo, Robbie 2051 Djekanovic, Srdjan 0 DiTullio, Jason 262 Bartolomeu, Edgar 496 Harmse, Kevin 0 Fronimadis, David 210 Bedenikovic, Marco 1761 Jordan, Jason 373 Gatti, Simon 157 Chin, Gordon 1283 Kambere, Diaz 146 Gervais, Gabriel 1988 Dekker, Niels 834 Kindel, Steve 2053 Leduc, Pat 1570 Diplacido, David 1719 Lyall, Geordie 1628 Mert, Mesut 919 Dodds, Jamie 2154 Matondo, Sita-Taty 510 Pizzolitto, Nevio 1980 Eja-Tabe, Huffman 84 Morris, David 1438 Ribeiro, Antonio 994 Faria, Shawn 151 Nash, Martin 2220 Sutton, Greg 1260 Mattacchione, Joe 1184 Valente, Alfredo 664 Medwin, Cameron 546 Menezes, Tony 339 Palleschi, Matthew 1326 Pottinger, Damien 1016 Shepherd, Jeremy 340 Williams, Chris 2114 Zagar, Theo 1834 Subtotal 13962 21704 13250 Total Canadian domestic minutes: 48944

In 2006 the decline in Canadian content continued, again apart from Toronto, but three Canadian teams still totaled 48,944 domestic minutes. The Whitecaps were hurt by several key Canadian departures: Kevin Harmse went overseas to Slovakia, Mike Franks got a cameo in England, Carlo Corazzin, Nick Dasovic, Mark Watson, Davide Xausa, Chris Franks, and Liam Da Silva left professional soccer. Most of the remaining players were older, although Adrian Cann was a young bright spot. It was a tough season in terms of Canadian content, if in no other sense: Vancouver won the championship and recorded 13,250 domestic minutes in spite of the serious losses; a poor number by the standards of the day, but 3,000 minutes better than any of our (unsuccessful) MLS teams have ever recorded and in fewer games.

The regular season champion Impact also had good Canadian content led by the eternal Biello, Braz, and Gervais, and got a first-rate season out of their 13,962 Canadian minutes (this would also be a Canadian MLS record by about 33%). The Toronto Lynx were also present and as focused on mediocre Canadian players everybody’s already forgotten as always. Hey, it’s Tony Menezes! He would have been well into his thriving beach soccer career by 2006. What a random lot that was. It was hard not to love the Toronto Lynx, they were so earnestly mediocre. Only the Impact came off as villains, and that was because they ran out a lineup with Braz, Biello, and Nevio Pizzolitto and more often than not finished with eleven men rather than eleven years in prison. The mid-2000s Montreal Impact were the soccer version of the Charleston Chiefs, right now to the Canadian lads and championship appearances. I didn’t love them so much.

Man, the little things we thought were problems back in the mid-2000s, with Vancouver barely getting 13,000 minutes out of its Canadians, and Montreal not winning the right way, and Toronto being dedicated and low-budget but steadfastly incompetent like a college film. In fact things were about to get worse, much worse, beginning with the very next season when Toronto FC came into Major League Soccer, the Lynx went down to USL PDL, and the age of the Canadian playing at home began to end.

2007 USL First Division/Major League Soccer Montreal Impact Toronto FC Vancouver Whitecaps Name Mins Name Mins Name Mins Arango, Andres 1725 Attakora, Nana 0 Cann, Adrian 2430 Biello, Mauro 992 Braz, Adam 771 Clarke, Jeff 2069 Fronimadis, David 923 Brennan, Jim 2430 Jordan, Jason 350 Gatti, Simon 2046 Chencinski, Tomer 0 Kambere, Diaz 905 Gbeke, Charles 1884 Djekanovic, Srdjan 635 Kindel, Steve 1855 Gervais, Gabriel 1505 Gala, Gabe 222 Leslie, Stefan 106 Leduc, Pat 2328 Hemming, Tyler 239 Lyall, Geordie 907 Marcina, Alen 411 Lombardo, Andrea 726 Marcina, Alen 343 Matondo, Sita-Taty 349 Melo, Joey 110 Marples, Nigel 74 Pizzolitto, Nevio 102 Monsalve, David 90 Morris, David 654 Ribeiro, Antonio 856 Pozniak, Chris 1497 Nash, Martin 1999 Reda, Marco 573 Smith, Graham 85 Stamatopoulos, Kenny 1080 Valente, Alfredo 1170 Sutton, Greg 720 Subtotal 13121 9093 12748 Total Canadian domestic minutes: 35020

Toronto FC brought many good things (three previously-little-known goalkeepers in David Monsalve, Kenny Stamatopoulos, and Tomer Chencinski; didn’t keep any of them, of course, didn’t even play Tomer) and some bad (the careers of Andrea Lombardo, Joey Melo, Gabe Gala, and Tyler Hemming). They won many fans, which is of course a good thing, but not many games, in a plain but charming stadium for which I still have a soft spot. They hired Jim Brennan back from England for a few years of replacement-level left back before he knifed Dale Mitchell in the spine and became irrelevant to the national picture. What they didn’t bring was Canadian content. The 9,093 Canadian minutes from Toronto that year, though very good by later MLS standards thanks to a then-higher Canadian quota, represented a fall of over 12,000 from the now-departed Lynx. To absolutely no effect, as first-year TFC finished dead last. Small wonder the jump from 2006 to 2007 represents the largest recorded plunge in Canadian domestic minutes per game.

The two USL First Division teams did fine. Montreal lost minutes due to Mauro Biello and Nevio Pizzolitto missing significant time (so what; they were third in the league). Vancouver lost a few hundred minutes because of niggling injuries knocking time off the likes of Morris, Lyall, and Nash (more significant; the Whitecaps had a mediocre year). The changes in Montreal and Vancouver amounted to a rounding error; the damage was done in Toronto.

Yet even as I rag on TFC let’s set the historical record straight in their favour. There was a time when second-division fans like me hammered Toronto FC for their policy of giving minutes to imports over Canadians. Little did we suspect the problem had little to do with the team and everything to do with the league and the era: TFC never got as good as the USL teams we were used to but they were, and remain, far more Canadian than the MLS Whitecaps and Impact. I say “and” for a reason: in both years of three-team MLS play Toronto has out-Canadianed Montreal and Vancouver combined.

Looking back Toronto FC almost look like national heroes. Sure, their 9,000+ minute seasons (when the quota was high) and 5,800+ minute seasons (when the quota was lowered) are despicable compared to the second-division teams but among the Canadian MLS teams Toronto has each of the seven best seasons for domestic Canadian content, with Montreal and Vancouver never coming close. Montreal and Vancouver have given Canadians a combined 9,162 minutes in their MLS histories, which is below two individual Toronto FC seasons. See if I say a bad word about the FCs dedication to Canada for a while; even if Michael Bradley eats Kyle Bekker for lunch Toronto’s first team will have done better by Canada than either of their rivals.

But during the second division Vancouver, especially, continued to do well. A healthier Whitecaps team had a more Canadian 2008 and helped themselves to another championship for their patriotism. 2009 was less good, caught in transition as Jason Jordan, Jeff Clarke, and Steve Kindel retired with a title while the likes of Luca Bellisomo, Philippe Davies, Randy Edwini-Bonsu, and Ethan Gage began to make their names, but still an improvement over 2007 and good enough for a USL-1 finals appearance. Montreal lost domestic minutes as Biello and Leduc got old and hopefuls like Felix Brillant and Alex Surprenant didn’t work out. They were 2009 league champions and had a famous CONCACAF Champions League run, so it’s not like they were struggling, but they suffered the indignity of becoming the first second-division team ever to have fewer Canadian minutes than an MLS side (Montreal, in its worst year to date, had 10,244; Toronto, in its best year ever, 10,736).

In spite of the Impact’s decline, which was temporarily halted in 2010, Montreal and Vancouver exceeded 10,000 Canadian domestic minutes every year until they began preparing for MLS. They won games with those Canadians: Vancouver took the 2008 championship, the two teams met in the 2009 final with Montreal prevailing, and in 2010 neither team was elite but the Impact were unlucky to lose as early as they did. The 2010 Montreal Impact did something that would almost be unthinkable today: stuck in a surprising slump when they’d expected to be contenders, Montreal loaded up mid-season… with domestic players, adding among others Ali Gerba and Antonio Ribeiro. It worked, too: I forget how many goals Gerba scored down the stretch in 2010 but it was around a million while Ribeiro looked very lively. The Canadian-reinforced Impact went on to thump probably the league’s best overall team, Austin, 5-2 in the first playoff round before losing a highly unlucky two-legger to Carolina.

The Whitecaps also had a mediocre 2010. Like Montreal, they tried to reinforce midseason, and like Montreal they brought in a few Canadians to do it: Kyle Porter, Alex Elliott, and Terry Dunfield. But that season also saw the team “preparing for MLS”, and they did it by giving minutes that would normally have gone to Canadians over to almost-invariably-disappointing imports. Porter’s playing time amounted to half an hour. Edwini-Bonsu was benched in favour of the likes of Cody Arnoux and Jonathan McDonald, which would be funny if it hadn’t cost us games then and today. Journeyman defender Chris Williams sat with his thumb up his butt while Willis Forko bungled every ball that came towards him. Ethan Gage, once promising, got only a few hundred minutes, including a playoff run where he showed what had gotten people so excited, and was promptly shipped out. The one import worth a scintilla of a damn was Davide Chiumiento, who was useless in his few competitive minutes because he was a perfect sphere and seemed to think USSF D2 was a beer league. For all that there were still Canadian regulars: Bellisomo, Davies, and Martin Nash. But 9,603 Canadian minutes was an all-time low, and 877 of those came from an on-loan Marcus Haber. And none of those three regulars I named would ever play MLS minute one.

The disease had spread to Vancouver.

2011 North American Soccer League/Major League Soccer FC Edmonton Montreal Impact Toronto FC Vancouver Whitecaps Name Mins Name Mins Name Mins Name Mins Cox, Michael 743 Agourram, Reda 379 Attakora, Nana 373 Davies, Philippe 0 Craig, Paul 544 Gatti, Simon 1953 Cann, Adrian 988 Dunfield, Terry 928 Duberry, Andre 151 Gerba, Ali 833 Cordon, Oscar 144 Harmse, Kevin 126 Hamilton, Paul 2414 Ilcu, Mircea 317 de Guzman, Julian 1325 Teibert, Russell 503 Jonke, John 1478 Mayard, Pierre-Rudolph 305 De Rosario, Dwayne 180 Kooy, Chris 2430 Pizzolitto, Nevio 1261 Dunfield, Terry 263 Lam, Sam 376 Ribeiro, Antonio 758 Henry, Doneil 503 Lemire, Chris 825 Terminesi, Marco 64 Makubuya, Keith 45 Monsalve, David 90 Morgan, Ashtone 903 Oppong, Dominic 1723 Stinson, Matt 675 Porter, Kyle 1699 Zavarise, Gianluca 569 Rago, Antonio 2318 Saiko, Shaun 2168 Saler, Niko 450 Semenets, Alex 377 Sidra, Eddy 515 Suprenant, Alex 1603 Yamada, Kyle 1417 Subtotal 21321 5870 5968 1557 Total Canadian domestic minutes: 34778

In 2011 FC Edmonton joined the competition and as a result we saw the number of Canadian domestic minutes rise to 34,778, the best since 2007. Since Edmonton accounted for 21,321, or 61.3%, of those minutes, I don’t think the other teams get any credit for that. Vancouver, in its first MLS season, gave Canadians a total of 1,557 minutes. 1,557?! From a team that took almost ten times as many to championships in 2006 and 2008? What the hell is this? But of course the 2011 Whitecaps were probably the worst team in the league so at least it was worth it. Sure, Edwini-Bonsu got cut without a serious opportunity (Joe Cannon tweeted his surprise that the Whitecaps had cut a player he’d never heard of before hastily deleting it[6]), Kyle Porter was nickel-and-dimed out of town, Terry Dunfield was traded mid-season for nothing, no Residency guys apart from Russell Teibert got a chance, and Philippe Davies got zero minutes, even in the nothing games at the end of the year, but at least the Whitecaps gave valuable development to Peter Vagenas, John Thorrington, I can’t even keep talking about this it still makes me so furious. Teibert was unlucky, starting off gangbusters then showing everybody why you shouldn’t bike in flip-flops, but for the rest there was no excuse Tom Soehn could have offered that would be sufficient.

Edmonton also stank, but they made the playoffs (briefly) because pretty much everyone in the NASL did that year. They loaded up on Canadians to a degree unheard of these days and reminiscent of the old Toronto Lynx, and for pretty much the same reason: they were cheap. Look at all those AMSL guys! Actually, many of them were okay, which is why the Eddies managed respectability (and Edmonton Scottish today terrifies the amateur ranks). I still have fond memories of Chris Kooy, John Jonke had his uses at centre back, and Dominic Oppong was a decent tough-as-nails motherfucker of a central player as long as you didn’t ask him to do too much. In the old days, with a few other second division teams kicking around, those players would have landed somewhere. Instead, when Edmonton moved them on they had nowhere to go.

As for Toronto, they get some credit for a poor Canadian season: Dwayne De Rosario set fires in lockers until the FCs finally traded him, Julian de Guzman was hurt much of the time and lousy for the rest of it, Nicholas Lindsay was allowed access to a snowmobile, and Adrian Cann was physically falling apart like a counterfeit Chinese Frankenstein’s monster. Still, they did so little with the decent Oscar Cordon and the never-even-got-a-chance-to-find-out-if-he-was-decent Keith Makubuya, preferring to drag in Americans because this is MLS and this is what you do dammit.

But oh, Montreal. Wave the carrot of MLS and they’re throwing out Canadians left, right, and centre. Placentino retired. Gerba, only partially for health reasons, played fewer than 900 minutes. Young players like Mircea Ilcu, Pierre-Rudolph Mayard, and Reda Agourram got short stints but nothing more than that. All told Montreal lost almost 5,000 Canadian minutes, the biggest drop for a Canadian team in half a decade. The Impact loaded up with every foreigner on whom they could physically lay hands, and the pre-season title favourites were rewarded for this sell-out by missing the NASL playoffs altogether, an astonishing achievement in a league where six of eight teams qualified and one of the others was the 2011 Atlanta Silverbacks. But it’s a good thing Montreal dumped half their Canadians from 2010 to 2011, and then dumped every single one of the rest from 2011 to 2012, because they didn’t make the playoffs either of those seasons. Imports win you games? Really? After the examples of Vancouver and Toronto FC that’s what the Impact were going with? Of course it was, they were heading into MLS, and if you haven’t figured out the pattern by now you’re not going to.

2012 North American Soccer League/Major League Soccer FC Edmonton Montreal Impact Toronto FC Vancouver Whitecaps Name Mins Name Mins Name Mins Name Mins Caceros, Kenny 1422 Bernier, Patrice 2194 Cann, Adrian 735 Clarke, Caleb 15 Cox, Michael 919 Ouimette, Karl 66 de Guzman, Julian 1028 Teibert, Russell 117 Craig, Paul 668 Sutton, Greg 24 Dunfield, Terry 2493 Gardner, Dino 10 Henry, Doneil 1139 Gigolaj, Elvir 172 Makubuya, Keith 10 Hamilton, Paul 2024 Morgan, Ashtone 2528 Kooy, Chris 1816 Stinson, Matt 89 Lam, Matt 1215 Lassonde, Fabrice 555 Misiewicz, Michel 360 Monsalve, David 90 Porter, Kyle 1772 Rago, Antonio 1942 Saiko, Shaun 1816 Sememets, Alex 17 Smits, John 630 Subtotal 16276 2284 8022 132 Total Canadian domestic minutes: 26776

In 2012 the Whitecaps wrote their names in the pages of infamy forever by giving Canadians one hundred and thirty-two regular season minutes, a record I pray on bended knee will never, ever be bested. For that sell-out of their entire country they managed to sneak into the playoffs by a fluke and go out to the Los Angeles Galaxy with a bit of dignity while losing yet another Voyageurs Cup final, coming up short in the Cascadia Cup, and generally gassing a season without even player development to show for it. I don’t even have anything to say about that anymore; it is beyond comment, it is the nadir of everything this alleged “promotion” to Major League Soccer has meant for the Canadian game.

Edmonton had dumped a bunch of the metro-league players and gone down to 16,276 domestic minutes, still over 60% better (on a per game basis) than any Canadian MLS team has ever done. They missed the playoffs, of course, because they were harder to get into, but that had little to do with their Canadians, most of whom were excellent (Saiko, Hamilton), quite good (Porter, Rago, Smits, Kooy), or not around long enough to make a difference. Matt Lam was a disappointment, but he also got a lot of shots off and his fate was probably determined more by contract problems than actual incompetence. And Toronto actually had a good Canadian year, by MLS standards, thanks to full-timers Dunfield and Morgan and semi-regulars de Guzman and Henry.

No, it’s the Montreal Impact who were charming the nation in 2011, signing Patrice Bernier out of Norway and giving a total of 90 minutes to any other Canadian, 24 of which were a farewell to Greg Sutton. Better than Vancouver, obviously, at least Montreal had a local lad they were willing to show some loyalty to, but still a shocking disappointment, even considering that Montreal had long been the least domestically-focused of the second division Canadian teams. I say “disappointment”; in fact I think we all saw it coming.

Most recently, in 2013, the Whitecaps disgraced themselves a bit less than usual with 1,865 minutes (all but 90 to Teibert, and those 90 forced by a suspension to Jordan Harvey). Montreal did better with 3,324 minutes (2,474 to Bernier). And Toronto, of course, ran out six Canadians, with three breaking 1,500 minutes, and ruled the Canadian roost once again. Sure, the FCs weren’t very good, but neither were the Whitecaps and the Impact were plunging so fast when the playoffs started NASA counted it as a re-entry. So at least this near-abandonment of Canadian players is all worthwhile because now our MLS teams are so competitive.

Even FC Edmonton lost momentum, with only 9,011 minutes going to Canadians. Not all of it was their fault (an injury to Michael Cox and intermittent hurts and suspensions for Eddie Edward) but a lot of it was (the summary execution of the excellent Paul Hamilton and Shaun Saiko). They did at least try to load up on Canadians in the second half of the season, though Gagandeep Dosanjh got injured and Anthony Adur remained Anthony Adur, but this did not stop the team, and its Canadian coaching team led by Colin Miller, from facing criticism from fans for overly favouring foreign players. That said, as they played fewer games than any other team in our spreadsheet Edmonton’s 346.6 Canadian minutes per game, while extremely poor for the second division, is not far behind the best season ever in MLS (2009 Toronto FC, 357.9 Canadian minutes per game). The hope is that, with Ottawa Fury moving up to the NASL for 2014, Edmonton and Ottawa can bounce Canadian reclamation projects off each other in the way that the Impact, Lynx, and Whitecaps once did to some success.

The following table will summarize the decade in Canadian domestic players better than my thousands of grief-stricken words ever could.

USL A-League/First Division/USSF D2/NASL Major League Soccer Games Calgary Edmonton Montreal Toronto Vancouver Games Montreal Toronto Vancouver Total 2004 28 19159 22135 18777 18384 25224 103707 2005 28 17182 20257 21591 59058 2006 28 13962 21704 13250 48944 2007 28 13121 12748 30 9093 35020 2008 30 11984 14195 30 6606 32845 2009 30 10244 12996 30 10736 34036 2010 30 10614 9603 30 9236 29513 2011 28 21321 5870 34 5968 1557 34778 2012 28 16276 34 2284 8022 132 26776 2013 26 9011 34 3324 5804 1865 20064

To illustrate the decline in a different way, here is a graph showing the number of Canadian domestic minutes per game. This is just the total number of Canadian minutes from each team in a given season, divided by the total number of games played by the teams that season. The straight line is a linear illustration of the horrific fall.

The number of Canadian domestic minutes per game has been declining, almost without exception, since 2004. This is fair enough, as the silver generation which brought us the 2000 Gold Cup retired and the quality of Canadian players at home deteriorated. But the biggest drops correlated with MLS. When Toronto FC entered MLS and sent the Lynx to PDL in 2007, almost 180 Canadian domestic minutes per game (two full-time players!) was lost. If you count Vancouver’s 2010, where they were signing the likes of Cody Arnoux and Willis Forko thinking that would in some way help, or 2011 when Montreal was pulling the same tricks to an even greater degree, you can see what a debacle the self-appointed “first” division has made of Canadian content. In fact, so calamitous was the impending arrival of Montreal and the continued deterioration of Vancouver in MLS that in spite of adding over 21,000 Canadian domestic minutes with the arrival of FC Edmonton 2011 still saw a decline in Canadian domestic minutes per game (from 327.9 to 280.5). Only in 2009, buoyed by Toronto FC’s best season ever for Canadian content combined with a still-strong Montreal and Vancouver, did the number of Canadian domestic minutes per game slightly, and temporarily, rise from the season before.

In conclusion: if Don Garber thinks that Major League Soccer is going to steer Canada into a World Cup I’m at a loss to think how. It might not be the league’s fault, but Canadians simply don’t play in this country compared to before MLS came along.

Of course MLS cannot take all the blame. Canadian minutes had been declining, a few thousand at a time, since I was able to begin tracking this. But from 2007 to 2009 Vancouver had found a pretty stable level of about 13,000 Canadian minutes per year, many in young players, until 2010 when they were loading up for MLS and the number plunged. Montreal was averaging almost 11,000 Canadian minutes from 2008 to 2010, generally veterans but with a few kids, until 2011 when they were loading up for MLS and the number plunged. And not to belabour the point but those were good teams, with each side beating Toronto FC head-to-head. Neither has shown any sign of improving, with the Impact getting the large bulk of their Canadian minutes these days through Patrice Bernier and the Whitecaps through Russell Teibert. Squad players are, as a rule, imports: this was not the case in the second division, when you could count on Sita-Taty Matondos, Davey Morrises, and Pat Leducs getting utility minutes.

We’re told that the biggest impact of MLS will be in youth development but there’s nothing stopping a Canadian second division team from running a professional academy of their own (Edmonton does and the Whitecaps did). Indeed, it was the Whitecaps Residency which promised the beginnings of a fine team in the early 2010s, until its elite players were scattered to the five winds for the sake of mediocre, foreign journeymen. The Whitecaps U-18s reached the USL PDL semi-final in 2008, and of the starting eleven in the final match six (Randy Edwini-Bonsu, Ethan Gage, Gagandeep Dosanjh, Philippe Davies, Antonio Rago, Simon Thomas)[7] remain active professionally. These players have a combined zero MLS minutes.

So what’s the solution? Raise the Canadian quota in Major League Soccer? As the example of Toronto FC shows, this would inevitably lead to an increase in Canadian minutes. But setting rules that teams will begrudging follow with a host of Gabe Galas and Tyler Hemmings is no long-term solution: the dud players are signed half-heartedly, they turn out to be duds, they are released equally half-heartedly and replaced with others, it is an old story. This may get more minutes but the minutes wouldn’t be very good.

A good step would be to limit the existing Canadian quota so it applies only to those players who can actually play for the Canadian men’s national team. In this way Canadian-eligible talent would regain their advantage over the likes of Alain Rochat and Gershon Koffie with the right paperwork but no prospect of ever playing for Canada. Both Rochat and Koffie are fine players, that’s not the point; the point is that their excellence will never be relevant to the national team we are hopefully trying to develop.

The only meaningful change can be one of attitude. I hope we are beginning to see this in the Carl Robinson-run Vancouver Whitecaps: Residency players hopefully getting a sincere chance in the first team. Augment them with a few U-23s in the Brett Levis mold and we might be getting somewhere, if only in a few years time. Canada’s MLS teams need to resist the inclination to prioritize the draftee over the homegrown player: the drafted guy is 21 and comes with a big article from south of the border, the homegrown guy is 18 and only the nerds have ever heard of him, the drafted guy gets all the minutes, the homegrown guy is released when he’s 20 years old. It’s an old story, but one resulting from short-sightedness. And when teams are splashing millions upon millions of dollars for designated players whose profile outweighs their ability, why not make them Canadian? There are only a few out there, of course, but I hope Toronto at least called Atiba Hutchinson before ringing Michael Bradley, that Simeon Jackson’s agent heard about the open vault before Jermaine Defoe’s. That sort of thing can make a real difference.

There’s no reason why Canada’s MLS teams couldn’t build Canadian rosters like the old days. They might have to butt heads with the American-oriented MLS front office to do it, but at minimum the effort must be made if we want to return to even the then-seemingly-lowly, now almost idyllic days of 2004.