According to TFC, Doneil Henry is off to West Ham of the EPL. http://www.torontofc.ca/news/2015/01/doneil-henry-officially-signs-west-ham Obviously a great move for him and I hope he does very well and eventually sees lots of playing time. For those of us who have been watching the development of the talent pool for the NT, this is a special moment. In the two WC cycles following the start of MLS, the USNT contained a large number of MLS players. For the next set of WC cycles, the USNT contained fewer MLS players but a lot of MLS alumni who had moved on to playing in Europe. The impact of this talent stream on the USNT has been obvious, both in qualifying repeatedly for the WC and in doing useful things once they get there. In Canada it took some time for our MLS sides to establish their academy programs. We are now seeing a stream of young players enter the NT talent pool from these programs. This process began with Ashtone Morgan signed the first pro contract for a Canadian academy grad. In fact our NT is moving from assembling its players from whomever they can find scattered across the globe to featuring large numbers of MLS players along with selected veterans from elsewhere. Obviously we will always want European based players on the NT but I believe our NT roster will become more MLS-heavy over the next few years. Henry's move is now the first step where a Canadian academy player graduated to the first team, established himself as a solid MLS starter, and then graduated on to Europe. Others will now start to follow. Our NT roster is still filling up on MLS players but I suspect that, like the US before us, in five years or so we'll see a switch toward Europe-based MLS alumni. Whether Henry ultimately sticks in Europe is not the point. Morgan didn't really pan out as an MLS starter but many more people followed behind him. Now more will follow behind Henry and in a few years our NT will be much stronger for it.
That's been the promise and it certainly looks like it is being fulfilled. Imagine what players like DeRo and Hutch would have been like if they'd had MLS level development. If you watched the U20s a few months ago during their short road trip in Europe (and I mean watched the actual play and not just the results) you'd see how much of a step up we've made. Confident and co-ordinated football, unlike anything I've ever seen on a Canadian National Team. Most of the players on that squad are MLS academy products, and couple were FC Edmonton players as well, so I think it shows that NASL also has a contribution to make. Hopefully Fury will have more to add to the mix in the next few years. The guy I'm watching now is Russel Teibert who in my opinion is our most promising young player currently in MLS. I don't think we'll ever really be on par with the US, but we could reach a compatible level with Australia who underwent basically the same story when they began the A-League.
Putting the cart way in front of the horse, the question of on par with the US (and Mexico) is an interesting one in the long term. Ultimately, they will always have a much larger population and deeper talent pool. That said, by the time all three nations have, say, 50 legitimate top level players it starts to matter less. (It's no advantage to be able to say that our guys who narrowly missed out being selected for our team are better than the guys who narrowly missed being selected for your team.) More directly, the greater the flow of talent from our club teams, the quicker we will advance up the ranks. As many of us have noted before, we only have to finish third in qualifying to get to the World Cup. Finally, Teibert is definitely worth watching. Personally I prefer Jonathan Osorio who was also born in 1992 and has, in my opinion, accomplished more. That said, the fact that we can even have this sort of debate about up and coming Canadian talent puts us light years ahead of where we were even five years ago.
I see what you're saying, but I think to have 50 of what I'll call CONCACAF calibre players going at any given time is a big stretch for us to achieve. For that, our academy system would have to churn out an average of 4 such players every year which I don't really think is doable. Still, only need a squad of 23 at any given time, a few of which will not even play in a given tournament... so if we can average 2-3 quality players a year we'll still be in a good spot. We'll know were "there" when the CMNT manager is struggling more to figure out who to cut than he is figuring who to use.
Just an update for those who are not aware, Doneil has finally seen action in England, but not with Hammers. He has been loaned out to Blackburn Rovers (Championship), and saw his first action last week starting against Sheffield Wednesday in a 2-1 win for Rovers, and got high praise for his performance. He joined the team only 3 hours before the match. He was an unused sub in yesterday's 0-0 FA Cup draw with Liverpool.
He kept doing well....getting this reaction to his play against local rival Bolton http://hereisthecity.com/en-gb/2015...-on-twitter-to-west-ham-loanee-doneil-henrys/ then this happened http://www.sportsmole.co.uk/footbal.../injury-ends-doneil-henrys-season_211846.html That said, staying in Lancashire, seems midfielder Scott Arfield of Burnley is getting tired of being snubbed by Gordon Strachan for a call up to the Scotland team and he has some connection to Canada and the CMNT is interested.
It's a real shame. Just as he was making a name for himself in England this happened. He probably won't see much time for the first team at West Ham next season either, but he did well enough with Rovers that West Ham should have little trouble loaning him out to a good quality team when he gets better. Cross our fingers that he's available for the Gold Cup.