Globe And Mail Dept: It is fair to say that this hard sell has finally taken at some modest level. Toronto FC has a concentrated, rabid following and is being joined by Montreal, Vancouver and perhaps Ottawa in the continent’s top tier of soccer. Statistics suggest that seemingly every child in Canada plays the game. Sportsnet, The Score and Setanta are blanketed with professional soccer, according to Globe And Mail. This is not to diminish the World Cup. Its spectacle is undeniable. The world outside North American will literally hang upon the results of the games telecast from South Africa. There will be moments of fabulous drama. The skill level will be superb. The bribing will be covert. Usual Suspects will watch all we can. We like soccer. We just don’t like it being administered like castor oil and for all its earnest patrons, it’s still been a rough ride for the TV folk selling the game on this continent. From the North American Soccer League in the ’60s through Indoor Soccer in the ’80s to Major League Soccer in the ’90s to today’s embrace of the World Cup by broadcasters, the sport has had more false starts than Linford Christie at the ’96 Olympics. Through it all, supporters of the sport in Canada have kept up a non-stop barrage, demanding more respect and attention for soccer – even as they let the sport die professionally here. Now, broadcasters have decided that soccer is the Being John Malkovich portal into the brain of a country that operates as much like a hotel as a nation. Witness the CBC’s fervent embrace of the World Cup tournament that starts this week in South Africa. An Old World game played in a Third World country by everyone except Canada, the country that subsidizes the CBC. It doesn’t hurt that the CBC has a few shekels hanging around to do this after losing the Olympics to CTV-TSN-Rogers. As
reported in the news.
Related Webpage
@t being john malkovich, north american soccer league
8.6.10
