Canada Soccer gave players middle finger with Earl Cochrane move


Someone at Canada Soccer HQ hit send. Maybe the hierarchy hoped that the blessing of a chaotic sports day would do the rest. NHL free agency was in its first hour and the Toronto Blue Jays had just sacked their manager. Good window to bury some news about a new general secretary who wasn’t new at all.

But the days of Canada Soccer sliding their business under the radar are, thankfully, gone. The bulk of those thanks of course go to the women’s and men’s national teams, whose unprecedented success over the past 12 months ensured the national federation no longer operates in the half light but under the full glare of the spotlight that comes with making it to the grandest stages of the world’s most popular sport.

That new light has shown up plenty these past few months, almost none of it good. A pre-World Cup window for John Herdman’s effervescent men’s team last month lurched from one mortifying disaster to the next, political firestorm to players’ strike to a match cancelled at the last minute as fans gathered outside. All of which sparked widespread demands for change at the top.

Other dark corners have since been lit up. The dogged reporting of TSN’s Rick Westhead this week illuminated new, uglier truths about how the game has been run here, with the nature of the relationship between Canada Soccer and Canada Soccer Business, a ridiculously named enterprise but one at the centre of the players’ initial protest in Vancouver, particularly troubling. Now was surely the time for some semblance of transparency, some signs that reality was dawning on CSA President Nick Bontis and the rest of the board.

Then came Wednesday afternoon’s email alert: Earl Cochrane was being appointed Canada Soccer general secretary. The promotion of a man who has spent 14 of the past 21 years over two stints with the organization and was already acting in the role since January had for a time been expected. And yet you thought that maybe there would be a pause, a rethink of the message it would send to appoint such an inside man to this pivotal role at this pivotal time with none of the pressing issues resolved.

Nothing of the sort. Canada Soccer business … as usual. Cochrane was crowned and in the process Bontis and co. flashed a big middle finger at the players calling for accountability, transparency, modernity.

The announcement crowed about Cochrane’s credentials. For an organization under such intense scrutiny over its financial aptitude, boasting of an “extensive global recruitment process” which spent six months scanning and spanning the globe with over 70 candidates reportedly interviewed, only to settle on that guy two doors down the hallway was maybe not the boast Canada Soccer thought it was.

On the early June afternoon the friendly against Panama had been scrapped shortly before kickoff, the culmination of all of the chaos that preceded it, Cochrane as acting general secretary had joined Bontis at the top table of a hastily arranged press conference in Vancouver. He was asked what message the myriad mess has sent to the world about Canada Soccer.

“What I think it says to the international community …” Cochrane said, “is that we have an unbelievable ability to punch above our weight in everything that we do.”

That he did so with a straight face certainly burnished his acting credentials, if not his general secretary ones. No matter. The job would indeed be his.

Earl Cochrane was crowned general secretary and in the process Nick Bontis and co. flashed a big middle finger at the players calling for accountability, transparency, modernity, writes Joe Callaghan.

From the very top of the sport on down, soccer governance the world over is rife with mismanagement, national federations that become fiefdoms with nodding dog board members propping up a handful at the top who ultimately make all of the decisions and expect to face none of the consequences. In recent years, the implosion of Ireland’s Football Association may be the most starkly perfect example of how these regimes can run and run — all the way to ruin. It almost bankrupted the game there.

Wednesday’s announcement immediately struck as the CSA sending a message that, as far as they were concerned, they were going to keep on keeping on. It resonated for less than three hours.

At 4 p.m., a joint statement on behalf of both the women’s and men’s teams doubled down on earlier calls from Herdman’s side in June demanding cold, clear answers on how the deal to hand so much of the financial control and power over to CSB had been agreed. It referenced the revelations in Westhead’s reporting that the decision to sell off sponsorship and broadcasting rights to the national teams “were made … without proper disclosure to” or “authorization by” the CSA board.

The players slammed Canada Soccer’s response to the revelations (one of which, it could be argued, was the doubling down and appointment of Cochrane). The players said there were now “serious concerns about whether Canada Soccer can be a proper steward of our sport under the current leadership and governance structure” and called for Sport Canada to act.

That final point bears repeating for full, clear realization: the women’s and men’s national teams, who have brought so much glory and joy and sporting heritage moments to this country in the past year alone are calling on the Canadian government to immediately investigate their own federation, one which they say is not nearly fit for purpose. That they do so while the women are smack bang in the middle of the CONCACAF Championship and men are finalizing plans for their final warm-up window ahead of November’s World Cup in Qatar only makes it more striking.

“It’s finally time that a team with enough clout and gumption to be able to make a stand, makes that stand,” Canada defender Alistair Johnston, a rock on the road to qualifying to Qatar and a rock of sense, told TSN Wednesday. “Right now, with where our men’s team is and our women’s team is, we have that position where … 1`we have enough power and leverage right now to make a difference and make a change. We want to push this country into a new frontier.”

Cochrane, a man who the announcement said was responsible for ‘Canada Soccer’s last three Strategic Plans,’ has a new job but he does not represent a new frontier. Not close. Just Canada Soccer, business as usual. More’s the shame.

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