2018 Canadian Championship

Anyone find an attendance for the match? I don't see a box score or numerical game report on the CSA website.

 

Leg two, Blainville at Ottawa tonight. Being up 1-0, Ottawa will want to score quickly to put this one away.

 

And Ottawa is through 2-0 on aggregate. No D3 upset this year.

 

But if he wants to remain in charge of CCF he has to proceed without alienating it's smaller members. Right now there are a number of Carribean and some Central American sides without direct access to the CCL and to give a startup Canadian side a second berth without considering upping the berths for countries like Costa Rica, Honduras or giving auto slots to Carribean sides who may arguably be better than any CPL side in the short term is a good way to make oneself an ex-CONCACAF president. So I do think that if Canada does get a second spot, it will likely require an overall re-expansion of the CCL as a whole, perhaps adding another knockout round prior to the round that the current automatic sides enter on. That would allow Canada's second spot to be accompanied by second spots for CR, Honduras and perhaps other CA sides as well as maybe one or two automatic spots for the most deserving Carribean sides.

 

I don't like 15 clubs starting in the CCL and 16 clubs starting in the CL 4 rounds earlier. What I would like is a 32 club tournament with Round 1 having 16 clubs, Round 2 having 8 Round 1 winners and 8 new clubs, and Round 3 having 8 Round 2 winners and 8 new clubs. The total would be 6 rounds. There could be 3 rounds in the fall and 3 rounds in the following winter and spring. The increase from 31 clubs in the CL and CCL combined to 32 could be the CPL champion. I don't think there are enough good clubs to make the tournament(s) need more than 32.

 

How do Whitecaps fans put up with Robinson? The dude is braindead.

 

Great game by Osorio. He controlled the middle of the pitch for TFC and clearly stood out (even aside from the goal). With some better finishing by others TFC could have had a second or even a third goal.

I was impressed with the athleticism of several of the Ottawa players. They were overmatched by what was largely a TFC B squad by not by much and could have gotten a better result if they'd caught a couple of breaks. Irwin finished strong but was a bit spotty earlier in not coming out for some balls and thereby giving Ottawa better chances than they should have had.

I'd comment on the TFC supporter's group but that would only draw attention to their idiocy.

I am disappointed that, like the rest of the Canadian Championship games this year, no attendance figure was given. I was at the game and they didn't even announce it there. By eyeball I'd say there were the same or very slightly more fans than last year's Ottawa-TFC game which would mean an attendance of 7500 to 8000.

 

So 2-2 in the opening leg of the final.

As a TFC fan, I'm disappointed that (once again) TFC wasn't able to bury a team that was down a man. I'm starting to think TFC should just decline the penalty when offered a red card as they seem to play worse under those conditions. Nice goal by Osorio, though, and coming home with two away goals is useful.

For Vancouver, if TFC does win the Voyageurs Cup again, that veeery late own goal will go down with weather restarts, Montreal coughing up 6 at home, Will Johnson's broken-leg stoppage time goal, and other craziness in the Curse of the Canadian Championship.

 

I'm curious what the final format will be. With 13 teams (two D3, 8 CPL, 3 MLS) maybe they do a knock out among the D3 and CPL teams to get down to five and then add the MLS teams to get to eight? Potentially a lot more games for a given team unless they go to single elimination.

We'll have to see what Canadian content rules ultimately apply. It would make it easier for the CPL teams to compete if the MLS teams had to play more Canadians. It would also be silly for the CSA to handicap our best teams going into a continental tournament. Personally, I'm more interested in seeing Canada do well in the CCL than I am in whether the CPL teams can win the Voyageurs Cup.

 

If concacaf allows the participation of two Canadian clubs for the year 2019-2020. The format of the 2019 Canadian Championship would be different .

It's just matter of time that Canada has two clubs participating in the Concacaf Champion League

 

This would work. (As would a number of different options.) Seeding may still be useful, however, both to help limit the number of games as the tournament continues to grow and because there isn't much point in games between D3 teams and MLS teams.

CPL teams are required to play six Canadians in their league games. The Canadian Championship can have whatever rules it wants.

Put another way, the D3 teams are only allowed three foreign players per team. Should we say that the CSA should increase the Voyageurs Cup roster requirement to practically all Canadian as well for CPL and MLS? Or should the D3 teams be entitled to bring in foreigners for the Voyageurs Cup to level the playing field?

Setting the content requirement to a level that "just happens" to match that required by one league, thereby disadvantaging teams from the other leagues, would totally be pandering to the CPL. Let's not pretend otherwise.

Personally, I think the MLS teams would win the Canadian Championship with the teams they have, even with an increased Canadian content requirement. That aside, I don't think there are very many Canadians playing outside of Europe who could step on to the MLS teams without causing a drop in the level of play. As a fan of Canadian soccer, I don't necessarily want Europe-based Canadian players coming to MLS. I'd rather see more going in the Alphonso Davies direction.