Jessie Fleming of Canada celebrates scoring their first goal from the penalty spot with teammates during the Tokyo 2020 Olympics at the Ibaraki Kashima Stadium, on Aug. 2, 2021.EDGAR SU/Reuters
You know one thing that everyone in Canadian soccer has become world-class at in the past few years? Releasing statements. Canada is the Argentina of soccer statements.
This past weekend, there were four official proclamations from, variously, Canada Soccer, the Canadian senior women’s team and, because no statement can go without a supporting statement, the Canadian senior men’s team.
The Canadian women’s team is “outraged and deeply concerned” about the amount of money it will be getting this year.
As a result, the Canadian men’s team is “once again, deeply disappointed” by Canada Soccer.
Canada Soccer is “committed to a path.” It knows that “there is still work to do.” (Whenever anyone who’s ever written this line straight-facedly gets to the end of work, they should let me know. I’d like to get there, too.)
The Canadian women’s team doesn’t like Canada Soccer’s path and doesn’t feel like going down it. Canada Soccer’s path is “unacceptable” to it, though the players have for the moment accepted it.
The Canadian women’s team went on strike for a day. Canada Soccer waved lawyers at the players. The Canadian women returned to work. Nothing’s been solved. More statements are inevitable.
“There’s not really words to describe how it feels to be here,” Canadian player Janine Beckie told TSN over the weekend.
Really? Then I’ve got a bunch of statements you need to read.
Canadian soccer’s endless, low-boil civil war over money isn’t new. Players have been grumbling about funding for years. For some reason, it always comes down to plane tickets.
Back in the Aughts, Canada’s European-based men’s players complained that their cheapskate bosses only bought them connecting flights home. Nobody cared, and nothing changed. Canada was bad at soccer, so why shouldn’t Canada’s soccer bosses be bad at it, too?
The Canadian women disrupted this steady state of affairs by becoming good. That caught a lot of people napping. Then, out of nowhere, the men got good, too.
Now people are watching, money is coming in and the resentment has increased proportionally. Actually, exponentially. The one thing Canadian soccer has always produced in abundance is outrage.
This time around, the stickiest concrete example given of how Canada Soccer cheats the women’s team was that Beckie once had to pay for her own airline upgrade to premium economy.
I guess that if you play sports for a living, flying economy sounds about the same as getting into a cardboard box and FedExing yourself to your destination.
But as work abuses go, this isn’t exactly Upton Sinclair territory. Next you’ll tell me they’re capping everyone’s per diems at $150.
Will this ever be fixed? How about, does anyone want this fixed? In the Great Age of Protest, everyone seems to prefer righteous fights over boring solutions.
Ending this might start with a few propositions.
First, that no one cares how much money a soccer player makes. I care about what nurses make. A nurse might save my life one day. I care about what bus drivers make. They take me to work. I can’t live without these people. Soccer, I can live without. So can you.
Second, beyond basic necessities, we are all owed the same thing in our professional lives – whatever we can negotiate.
If the Canadian men’s and women’s soccer teams are able to embarrass Canada Soccer into buying them their own Boeing 7-hundred-and-whatever-they’re-up-to-now, then all power to them. I’ve never experienced the Shangri-la that is business class on a transatlantic flight, but I don’t begrudge anyone else. I may hate them for it. But I won’t begrudge them.
Third, that none of this has anything to do with fairness, a word that gets tossed around a lot whenever this issue arises. This is about money. If the world were fair, every nickel that Canada spends on sport would be redistributed to the non-sports-playing population on the basis of need. This is about getting and/or keeping as much for yourself as you can.
That’s a good headspace from which to start.
The women’s team has the SheBelieves Cup starting on Thursday. Regular people have rearranged their lives to be there and support Canada. The women’s team is right to muscle through that with that commitment.
But once that’s done, how about suspending soccer at both senior national levels. Put representatives of both sides in a room and have them come up with a solution. No solution? No soccer.
What’s the other option? More statements? More “job action”? More working-class cosplay?
This has become one of those fights that has no inciting event. It’s gone on too long for that. It’s a fight about a fight about a fight about money. If this were about finding a good number, they’d have found it.
Canada Soccer is to blame for letting it get to this because its No. 1 job is making sure things never get to this.
Its new position is that it is protecting the women’s team from itself – “Canada Soccer was not prepared to jeopardize the SheBelieves Cup tournament [and] the preparation it would afford the Women’s National team for the upcoming FIFA World Cup.”
As usual for it, not a good look. Worse, an easily avoidable look. Reading two paragraphs of any random Canada Soccer statement gives you a real sense of how it’s got this far.
The players have got used to being the good guys in this struggle. Every time Canada Soccer speaks, the jokes write themselves.
But there is a limit to everyone’s patience. This isn’t 2015. Times are getting tougher for a lot of people who aren’t used to tough times. Raising their voices so that twentysomething athletes have enough leg room on Delta is not high on their budgetary priorities.
By all means, do what you feel you must to get what you believe you deserve. But don’t feel the need to tell us every twist in the story. Call us when it’s all over. Or don’t.
Because you know all those perks you want? The rest of us are kind of busy over here trying to get them for ourselves as well.