[Acajack]

Originally Posted by CorbeauNoir

Development of talent comes from growing interest in the sport to convince younger players to stick with the game instead of moving over to something different. That's not going to happen when you have teams of players who are barely good enough to avoid tripping over their own cleats being paid so little they need to take up second jobs playing in front of a few dozen people a night. You grow interest in the sport by having a reasonable level of talent and above all recognizable figures to promote as a major draw. You also do it by marketing it in the areas where there's the greatest potential to develop interest - that is to say, large cosmopolitan (and I stress cosmopolitan) urban centers like Vancouver, Montreal, or Toronto. If nobody in Calgary or Saskatoon cares enough about soccer to make any kind of grassroots effort to acquire a team, what's the point of trying to force a soccer team onto them? People aren't just going to magically tune in because the content happens to be Canadian, if it worked that way the CBC would be the most successful station in the country right now.

We should talk in 20 years (when Canada will certainly still have just the three MLS clubs in the three largest cities) and see how many World Cups Canada has taken part in by then.