Once upon a time, Josh Doughty was a big prospect from our academy who signed with Manchester United, about the same time Lennon went to Liverpool. He couldn't hack it there and then totally dropped off the radar. But it looks like he's resurfaced. First Cascadia goal of the game goes to Josh Doughty - who has scored the 2 of 2 goals of the CONIFA tournament thus far.— Cascadia Association Football Federation (@CascadiaSoccer) June 2, 2018
Yeah, I don't even know what that team is. Just a regional Cascadian team playing some friendlies? Doughty was born in Vancouver so I guess that makes some sense... He left Man U a year and a half ago, and I think this might be his first organized game since then. Maybe the Monarchs can help him restart his career?
you don't know what that is? I stumbled on it this last week, it's a doozy. Some info on the tournament
I agree it is pretty cool, though I am not sure the Cascadia team really belongs. But who knows, maybe they really don't feel they are part of the US. I just think they are an unfortunate addition, that kind of devalues what the tournament is about. Some of these teams represent people that are actually completely ignored in their country or in some cases, much worse. It is good that they have somewhere they can play and represent who they are.
Cascadia isn't alone. In order to expand the footprint and perhaps impact of the tournament, they added several odd groups (to me - I teach this stuff so I am a bit nerdy about it). Click through this link and explore if you wish. Three of them could be members of FIFA if they wanted as they are UN Member States. which really seems to disfavor the original intent of the organization.
I thought the same thing. From a position of ignorance, I wondered about the Korean Peoples in Japan team, for similar reasons.
The host of this show posed a similar question about Yorkshire which just joined ConIFA. ConIFA's answer is that you and the host have a common misunderstanding that that is all that the tournament is about. Teams from those situations don't want to just play each other but test themselves in a broader context: Regarding Cascadia, it's about cultural identity. There have been several academic papers written about Cascadian identity. It's one of the reasons we're club over country and region over club. We tend to identify more with each other as Cascadians more so than with US or Canada as a whole. While there are some who would like independence or autonomy, the football team as no official stance on that and ConIFA is not a political organization. After Cascadia applied to join an previous organization which handled non-FIFA football, a non-FIFA football observer from Europe came here back in 2013 and toured the region after having previously been to many parts of the US and Canada and concluded that the Cascadia bioregion was responsible for a unique culture with historic roots going back to the time when Cascadia was an independent territory with borders with the US to the East and Mexico to the south (today's California). Going back even deeper in history, our reverence for the environment is something which all peoples who have lived here have shared. As for how the team did we got knocked out of the Quarterfinals by the eventual champion, Karpatalya and went on to play two placement matches against other teams which didn't advance to see how we finished. We finished 6th out of 16 having taken the #1 ranked team to penalties in the 5th/6th place match. We lost to Panjab 4-3 on penalties but were considered at one point favorites to win the tournament after we made the quarterfinals. Not bad for a team put together by the coach via WhatsApp and who had never met each other or trained together until a day before their first group stage match against the Isle of Man. Additionally, Cascadia's Max Oldham was named player of the tournament by this site. And other regions in North America are wondering whether they could form a team. There's also talk that Cascadia may be the hosts of the next one in 2020:
The nations which are UN members which could be FIFA members, Tuvalu and Kiribati have tried to join FIFA and were denied due to FIFA's requirements that countries have to have a suitable stadium. By that they mean one which is suitable to FIFA's standards. ConIFA is actively helping them in their pursuit of FIFA membership. If you thought some of the members were odd (ie: Padania, Monaco, Isle of Man) According to ITV another British island, may soon be joining ConIFA.
Typical hipster BS. If we want to talk about regions of the US that have more of a shared cultural identity than Cascadia, why not the proposed state of Deseret? There are more people the State of Deseret who share a cultural identity and religion (Latter-Day Saint) than some group of Starbucks-swilling hipsters.
We have better coffeehouses than Starbucks so I'll let that swipe at us slide. On to more productive matters... I'm sure ConIFA would welcome a State of Deseret team. Time for you guys to form an FA. Cascadia could use a nearby rival. Closest one in ConIFA is Quebec and they aren't exactly active. Other possible teams.. As for religion, funny you should mention that. You see our lack of religion comparatively speaking, is one of the often cited cultural ties that binds us together and sets us apart from most the US and Canada in demographics. See also Ecotopia in the Nine Nations of North America book: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Nine_Nations_of_North_America
I still don't think that I buy this Cascadia idea. A litmus test for this could be how much athletes would want to represent the organisation. For USMNT games, it is very rare that a player be invited to camp and turn it down. They want to represent their country. How many players born and raised in Cascadia, would leave an MLS team, or any top division team in Europe, miss a couple of club games, in order to play and represent Cascadia? I just don't think you would see it... and we didn't. Maybe you can argue that the club teams wouldn't let their players leave for such an event that isn't FIFA sanctioned... but I would argue that the players themselves likely wouldn't try hard to go. Do you think Clint Erwin would leave Toronto FC right now in the middle of the season for a couple of weeks in order to represent a Carolina team as mentioned in an article you posted? Not a chance. I still think that these types of teams devalue what the organization is about, and devalues what some people are actually going through. If these teams exist in order to 'make up the numbers' then I guess it is what it is. Outside of Quebec, I cannot really think of an area in North America that really has an argument for being in that competition right now. Even a Texas team (And Texas has been it's own country before) at this point in time doesn't make sense. If we are talking about mid 1800's... sure, have Texas, Cascadia, Deseret, California as teams. But today it just doesn't make sense to me.
Ah, actually, I do think Indian Nations here in North America would have a great argument. I do stand corrected there. They are a perfect more local example of the type of people who should take part in a competition like this. Though, I am not sure how many of them would have any interest, or be large enough to support it.
The Iroquois have a distinct national team in lacrosse, which works out well except for when they try to travel on Iroquois passports. Their membership in FIL is akin to England, Scotland, and Wales in FIFA, and to Hawaii in the international surfing federation: the cultural hearth exception to the independent nation stricture. Invent the sport and you get some consideration, and if your parent national association doesn't object, then you can have your own team.
Maybe I just dislike coming up with more ways to slice and dice our nation. The Ecotopia notion is based on ecological similarities, I guess? A somewhat different slicing and dicing of the nation would occur if it were based on underlying culture.
According reports there were several who were interested. We didn't because Cascadia Football doesn't have the money to pay MLS to get those players according to this report: https://www.newyorker.com/news/sporting-scene/the-world-cup-for-forgotten-nations The final roster, comprised of lower-league players and free agents in the U.S. and the U.K., came together in the past couple of months; the captain, James Riley, played with the Seattle Sounders and New England Revolution. (The team can’t afford the fees required to borrow active M.L.S. players.) Before training on Wednesday, they had never played on the same field together. That wasn't the problem. A bigger problem however might be that such players would be vitally needed by their clubs as our calendar is opposite of most of the footballing world. That said, MLS was still willing to release players for a price. It should also be noted that James Riley while not an active MLS player is a key member of SoundersFC's broadcast team and the Sounders let him go to captain Cascadia. Not only did he go he brought his wife and very young daughter with him. That's how committed and proud to represent Cascadia he is. And you'd be speculating without being able to base it on much. Well speaking of another Canadian team, the Montreal Impact, Patrice Bernier almost did just that for Quebec but he got injured: https://www.mlssoccer.com/post/2013...team-dream-becomes-reality-ex-montreal-impact You can think whatever you want but the teams you think it devalues do not think that at all If they thought that Cascadia WOULD NOT be in ConIFA. While Cascadia was a founding member of ConIFA they are there by merit/ ConIFA has turned down frivolous applications such as from Sealand. The nations and peoples you profess to speak for think it adds value to be in a tournament that is not just made up of those in a similar situation. They want to play football with the rest of the world, not just each other. So contrary to what you believe Cascadia, or Monaco or Yorkshire or the Isle of Man being involved adds value from their standpoint. If you haven't already I'd urge you to hear it from them themselves: We have every historic right to be in it as Quebec does. If all you're looking at is language then I could see where you'd think that but THIS was the map of my part of the world at the same time Quebec was independent. But like I said, CONIFA itself says it's not about lines on a map, its about identity. There's a wealth of economic, sociological, political and yes even linguistic data that shows Cascadia is a distinct culture in North America. Where you guys live, Deseret is too and that is borne out by the same studies. So has Casadia, though not by name, again, see Oregon Territory and google "54-40 or fight". To you. Read the Nine Nations of North America. It was written almost 40 years ago on this very subject and is a well respected work. I don't know why it doesn't make any sense to you today. It makes sense today, yesterday or even the future as this America2050 study points out. The reason it makes sense is it is based on place, the bioregion. Bioregions don't care about political lines, those change on the scale of years, decades, centuries. Geology changes on the scale of millennia. Up here the bioregion influences how we live, what we are passionate about and our outlook on life, not the other way around.
Yes, according to their most recent activity report, there is at least one First Nation that ConIFA's North American director is talking to in the Northwest. If Wondolowski wanted to he could probably do what Riley did at some point in the future if his people put together a team: https://www.usatoday.com/story/spor...i-wants-to-help-native-american-kids/1968007/
Wasn't Oregon Country a trapping department of the Hudson Bay Company? Not so much a 'country' or socio-politico-cultural region as lines on a map to delineate where profits were divided within the HBC.
@GreenRaver Do people living in the Cascadia bioregion actually identify as Cascadian's before they identify as American's (meaning from the United States)? Forget the socio-political-cultural differences in the region. Every country, state and county has people who have different cultures and ideals. But do people from Washington, Oregon and British Columbia actually feel they are part of the Cascadia Nation and not part of the United States? Most all of the representatives in ConIFA are people who simply are not part of the country they are living in. I will accept that outside of visiting the area a couple of times, I am not from the Cascadia Region... but are you telling me that Cascadian's don't feel like they are American's, and feel they should be represented a different way. That is where I am very stuck on your ideas here. Or is ConIFA really just a world wide pick up league that any group of guys can come together and compete in it for fun. I love living in Utah, it has it's own quirks like everywhere else. I cheer on American's at international events, and feel that those teams and athletes represent my country. I don't need a Utah team to do that. I can understand how the Navajo Nation may not feel the same way as me. I can understand how Native Hawaiian's might not feel the same way as me. I am lost as to how people living in the Pacific Northwest are comparable to those groups.