if the CSA really wanted to ensure that the top team represented Canada in the CCL, the best way to do it woud be to have a panel of sportswriters pick the top team - like how they rank college football teams. The panel would hopefully take the schedule bias and strength of opponents into account. You'd get the true top team chosen, but let's fact it, it would be pretty boring and you'd miss all the excitement of the Canadian teams playing against each other. Plus, another argument is that this method assumes that the top Canadian team actually WANTS to play in the CCL. I'm not suggesting that some of the teams have been intentionally throwing the matches, but what if a particular team wanted to put more of an emphasis on their MLS season and wasn't interested in the CCL? WIth the tournament they could put out a B squad for the tournament, but if you use some other means of picking the top team, they don't get a choice.
That would do the trick. Do the same with Vancouver and Montreal, and the tournament would be fair enough. As I have said elsewhere, I would add a single-game playoff: Semifinal: #3 @ #2 Final: Winner SF @ #1 It would be 7 dates, but a team would play a maximum of six games. The games could be schedule in the same days of the USOC.
It's a cup competition, sometimes the best team doesn't win it which is the nature of those type of games and it is what gives any team hope to win it when they compete no matter how poor your league is going.
Of course the best team doesn't always win. However, when selecting a team for a tournament made up of champions and the team that qualifies is in last place in the league, not only does this make the Canadian championship look bush league, it tarnishes the whole Champions League tournament. When we're trying to convince the Euro soccer snobs to at least give MLS a try and watch it once or twice and they hear that TFC is in something called a Champions League, it makes it kind of challenging to be taken seriously. The winner doesn't have to be the best team but they should be at least a respectable team.
It is indeed bush league right now, but you can't just go from nothing to top notch. Give it time and it will get better. As for the snobs who think that it's not good enough for them, then fine. Stay at home glued to Setanata for all I care. I don't particuarly care to have their company at BMO anyway.
I understand where you are coming from but without a domestic league there really isn't many other options to determine the best club team in the country besides a cup competition. I don't believe with did the CSA any harm with our performances in the CCL the past couple of year.
If we can get this to 8 teams, it would be a lot more respectable regardless of format. Will Ottawa be included in the near future? Are they still getting an NASL team to play in the football stadium? Even at 6 teams, if we had two round-robin tournaments with the eastern champion of Toronto-Ottawa-Montreal taking on the western champion of Vancouver-Edmonton-hypothetical third team, it would be a far better tournament.
I'm not sure what is bush league about it. Yes, it is very small because we only have four legitimately professional teams. It is well organized and executed, however. I think we can all agree as soccer fans that it would be a lot of fun to see a larger, more involved tournament. The fact is, however, that we only have four professional teams. I'm not sure the tournament would be more respectable just because we let, say, the CSL champion get slaughtered by a pro team's reserve squad. I'd rather have a small number of meaningful games.
I think that the idea is to grow it by growing the number of NASL clubs in this country. Once Ottawa is in, we have a five team tournament. Three more NASL clubs in Canada is definitely a possibility. Not easy, but a possibility. There are three cities in Canada that could do it: Calgary, Winnipeg and Hamilton. The only real hurdle is finding investors.
If/when we get more NASL teams then they should certainly be admitted. NASL is the entry bar that has been set. I think that we soccer fans also have mixed goals for this tournament which clouds our discussions. Many of us would love the see Canada with a tournament more along the lines of a traditional open cup. That is not, however, what the NCC is for - the NCC is an event designed solely to determine Canada's representative in the CCL. This doesn't mean that Canada can't create a proper open cup nor does it mean that the open cup couldn't be used to pick our CCL rep. Such a switch would require an entire tournament rethink, however, because, among other things, we'd have to move to a model where last year's open cup winner plays in this year's CCL. All this could be done but not by simply tweaking the NCC as we now know it. I believe our discussions would be more productive if we clearly differentiated between open cup talk and NCC talk.