Israeli sport site, One is reporting that Toronto F.C. Has offered Maccabi Tel Aviv midfielder Julian de Guzman in exchange for Roberto Colautti. Take this with a grain of salt as Colautti recently stated his desire to stay in Israel after Banfield was reportedly closing in on him. Additionally, a player like de Guzman may command a big salary from Maccabi which I don't see them paying. Maccabi Tel Aviv is owner by Canadian businessman, Mitch Goldhar.
Here's a link on JDG that tells another story. And by the way, it's in English. http://www.canadiansoccernews.com/content.php?2002-Chances-of-de-Guzman-staying-improving
Interesting move. Colautti is Italian, but was born in Argentina and now is an Israeli citizen, very interesting background. Clearly is a decent talent, as he suits up for the Israel national team, which isn't world class, but I would say is a better side than Canada. They take de Guzman off our hands, would be best for all parties involved. JDG, like I have stated before, isn't suited for the MLS. He is a low risk offensive player, but with TFC we pressure him to do high risk things and create, which isn't what he is good at. Also defensively, he isn't as useful as he can be, as he is very good at defending skilled guys, where he reads plays very well. MLS guys who just run it up field with no creativity for JDG to shut down. Its like if you get a tank to help run security at BMO to sit beside all the cops around the field. People will fear it, but when something actually happens, like a fan running onto the field, something that harmless its easy for a cop to just go grab them, a tank is just overkill, might be big and get in the way of people and such, but all its weaponry power cannot be put to use at BMO. If it were put into a more hostile place like say the middle east , might be more useful. (teehee- for the slow ones out there israel is geographically in the middle east..... hold your applause)
I assume this is for political reasons, due to the tension between Israel and nations that would be playing in other FIFA regions. The risk is that individuals might use the soccer match as an agenda for other things and that the match would have more meaning than, say just a qualification. When in reality, soccer is just soccer and having countries that do not recognize each other as nations square of in what is suppose to be "friendly competition", has the potential to turn out very badly...
Though, it is a shame for Israel, as they are forced to compete in an unquestionably harder qualification in Europe, rather than the possible Asian qualification where, even with less spots available in the World Cup, competition is way thinner. I could see them as legitimate contenders in Asia, as last world cup qualifying, they had respectable results.
.... and considering that "technically", Syria (doh, I almost wrote Serie A) and Israel are still in a state of war, it would probably be best to avoid the eventuality of playing each other. Same with Palestine. Again, considering that the current government of Palestine doesn't recognize Israel's right to exist, probably good to pass on that potentially problematic fixture too. It's sad that politics makes a mess of these things but moving Israel into a European group was not a bad move by FIFA.
Not so far fetched a rumour. If it's completely fabricated, it seems odd for the Israeli media to start it. Plus it makes sense of the International spot, TFC recently picked up as well as the Dunfield trade.
Australia did the same thing as Israel. They got sanctioning to be part of the AFC, rather than compete in the OFC.
Canada should see about getting into the OFC so that we can actually be one of the top teams for once.
New Zealand would beat us in soccer basketball and baseball then smash our nuts with cricket bats and steal our canadian football jerseys just to have rugby players haka on em. we;ll beat em in hockey and curling..woo
Lol. And how about a supporters group called "the Intafada" On a serious note, though, there has been some connection with the Israeli league (whatever its called) and MLS players. There was a guy from the Fire, Conde IIRC who went from Chicago to Israel. This rumor is so random coming from Israel that it probably has a decent amount of truth to it.