soccerINK

Soccer suffering, report says

Canada's training facilities 'not suitable' to prepare national teams

NEIL DAVIDSON

Canadian Press

Wednesday, September 8, 1999

Toronto --

Canada's soccer training centres are inadequate and both the sport and its national teams are suffering as a result.

That's the conclusion of Canadian men's head coach Holger Osieck, wearing his other hat as the Canadian Soccer Association's technical director, and association vice-president Andy Sharpe in a brutally honest report released yesterday.

"Freezing temperatures, rain-soaked shale, gravel fields, gymnasium-type playing areas are not suitable to prepare our national teams to compete against our CONCACAF neighbours such as Mexico, U.S.A., Costa Rica, El Salvador, Jamaica, and Guatemala," the report states bluntly.

"In addition, the lack of a professional infrastructure further handicaps our young Canadian players. We found the CSA staff feeling helpless due to the lack of facilities available and proper funding."

The review makes several recommendations, from imposing a common framework and national standards on the existing centres to starting from the ground up and rebuilding the program one centre at a time.

The report comes almost a year after Osieck was hired and it reflects his dissatisfaction -- and the frustration of others -- with the state of soccer's framework in Canada. The damning document also reflects Osieck's forthright approach.

"At the end of the day, that's what we need and we want," Canadian under-20 coach Paul James said of Osieck's blunt

assessment. "I'm fully supportive of what he says and I would definitely be lying if I said the last year he hasn't been frustrated. He definitely has."

James shares that frustration, knowing he does not have the resources to give talented young players "what they deserve," from consistent competition to proper training.

The report concludes:

Budget restraints have taken their toll on the centres in Vancouver, Edmonton, Toronto, Montreal and Halifax;

Current programs are inadequate and often irrelevant;

The existing facilities are inadequate and often unavailable;

There is no consistency in teaching from centre to centre;

Indoor programs over the winter are "artificial and of no relevance to the outdoor game."; Many training-camp decisions are made by individuals "operating under their own personal agendas and who have lost the abiity to carefully weigh what others have to say or what objective analysis reveals";

The centres have become increasingly less effective in supporting national teams.

The report now goes to the CSA's board of directors. Attempts to reach CSA chief executive officer Kevan Pipe were

unsuccessful yesterday afternoon.

Osieck has high standards, having spent 12 years with the German soccer federation -- a country where soccer is king. The state sports facility in Duisburg, where he held a national team camp in March, is one of 21 in Germany and draws top national and club teams from around the world.

The Duisburg facility has six playing fields for soccer and one for field hockey, a judo hall, six squash and three tennis courts, a roller-blading area and venues for rowing, canoeing and water skiing.

Contrast that with Canada, where over the winter James had to stage a game between Ontario and Quebec provincial all-star teams at 6 a.m. two days in a row because the indoor surface at the Toronto training centre was rented out.

In fact, national training centre is actually a misnomer here.

In Ontario, the CSA is essentially a tenant of the Ontario Soccer Association, from which it rents training time. In Edmonton, the centre is part of the University of Alberta and in Burnaby, B.C., it's part of Simon Fraser University.

James says renting the indoor facility at the training centre in Vaughan, Ont., north of Toronto, is essentially out of his price range. Rather than use up his budget on only four weekends during the winter, he has his players train on the cheaper artificial turf of Ivor Wynne Stadium in Hamilton.

"Which means in January and February, you're training in -8 or -10 weather conditions," James said. "The positive of that, if there is a positive, is that you are on a field outdoors and we can select our times."

The Osieck-Sharpe document cites a report to the CSA board of directors from a western training centre that spending on the training centre is 40-per-cent less than in 1985 when inflation is factored in.

"The training centres have been neglected in terms of funding," the western report continues. "I believe there is a direct correlation with insufficient funding and the poor overall performances of national teams over the last 12 years."

The Osieck-Sharpe review makes several conclusions for reviving the Toronto centres:

Give the centres over to the provinces to run, with CSA national coaches providing advice and standardized training programs.