Teema: Senior National Team Update

Hi guys, I thought I would give an update on the progress of the Canadian Senior National Soccer Team.

It's my 2nd year as Senior National Team coach, and I got some guidance from Bobby Jay in the transition as the new manager.

For the 1st season, I'll start off by saying it was a challenging learning experience. I took a bit of long term approach and felt the need to add some new blood and let go of some of the aging veterans. Looking for suitable replacements was a huge challenge as I had to go through every division of every league to find Canadian players capable enough to be selected. This exercise is a necessary step, but provides little value as most of the potential candidates are playing for 1 of 7 teams within Canada 1.1.

I also made some rookie mistakes with my starting lineup as I was playing too many inexperienced players. I've learned the importance of the experience rating. This was a tough lesson, as I was playing inexperienced players with higher overall ratings, when I should have played the more experienced player in those situations.

My goal was to build up the chemistry for the middle half of the roster so as to have at least 2 options on the depth chart capable enough to contribute when placed in the starting lineup. The strategy would be to compete with some of the better teams by having more energy in World Championship qualification matches. This is a really slow process, and I continued on this path to start the 2nd season. Unfortunately, the chemistry build up has cost us some winnable exhibition matches.

Entering the WC qualification match stage this season, I felt like I had a better sense of what I was doing, and my plan might bring better results. We started off well with wins against Uruguay and Montenegro. However, we lost in a road match against Ireland. I took a chance by starting a couple of inexperienced players, and this haunts me as Ireland was an easily winnable game. Oh well, you live and you learn. We put up a good fight against a daunting Russia team, but lost 2-0. A crucial home match is upcoming against a solid Portugal squad, and I'm hoping we steal one or both games against Germany and Sweden. Its a tough task, but I'm looking for wins and going to play the best players.

Overall, I feel like 2 years is too short of timespan to execute my plan as it took way too long to build up chemistry and experience on those depth pieces. Moving forward, I have created a shortlist of approximately 75 players that could get enter the conversation for national team selection over the next 5-7 years. Not all will get in, but none of the worthy ones will get missed.

In the meantime, I hope managers place some emphasize in development of Canadian players within their rosters. Building up the experience rating is very important factor that I overlooked with my team. For newer managers, I will recommend paying for construction projects over buying players on the market. I learned the hard way that a dollar spent on building up your facilities and stadium is worth $1000 spent acquiring players. The sooner you do it, the faster your team gets good. Building up the facilities and stadiums will also go a long way in providing success for our National Teams.

I'm really enjoying the experience and I'm hoping you guys give me another 2 years. I promise the Canadian team will enter top 30 ranking with a realistic goal of getting into the top 20, and who knows, hopefully we win the World Championship.

Cheers

Niven