WHITECAPS-CANADIAN PLAYERS v INTERNATIONAL PLAYERS

[WTF]

I go to the odd Whitecaps game and it seems to be a United Nations team with players from Africa, South America ,Europe etc .
Don,t see hardly any Canadian born players .
Whats the reason for this ? Canadian talent not good enough ? Int players better value for the $$$ ?

 

[easoccer]

MLS rules state that Canadian teams must have a minimum of 3 Canadians for a total of 8 Domestic (Can/US) on them. The MLS has a toal number of internation spots available for the league (Whitecaps had 8 initially) but those spots can be traded and were a few times in recent Whitecaps history. They now have 11.

The goal of any professional team is to build the strongest team possible with the eligible players within the league. I'm not saying that we dont have great players or players coming up in the system, but to answer your question, from the players available at the time of the selection or scouting staff/management decided the players they wanted were of better quality and unfortunately not Canadian.

Also, there are several players playing in Europe so we do have some, but I think our country could do better.

 

[Regs]

The rules and the way the MLS is set-up really works against a young talented Canadian.

My observation is that the road to a professional MLS contract for an aspiring Canadian kid is to go through the NCAA college route and enter the league through the draft.