TFC Thoughts

I'm currently watching TFC play DC United. You can tell it's the end of another TFC season, the stands are empty, you can't hear the fans, you can hear the coaches yelling. It's a little grey outside too. Overcast, possibly some rain to come in off of the lake.
It honestly is kind of cliche to be honest.

As I watch the game I'm enjoying the commentary from Jason DeVos and Luke Wileman, as I always do (Jason DeVos is just an amazing soccer mind), and they bring up a really great point.

In 2010 DC United was a horrible team, they were last place overall and over the course of the season they brought in 17 new players and had 18 players leave the team. In a nutshell, it was a mess!

But as of today, they are sitting at 4th in the East and are most likely playoff bound. How did they do this? Simple. They accepted that they needed to stop just bringing players in from around the league and other out of contract pros. They took their draft picks, signed players out of their academy, acquired a star MLS player in Canadian Dwayne DeRosario and, signed Ben Olsen (a retired American star player who understands the game in North America very well) as the head coach all the while keeping Chris Pontius in fold for the experience.

When I compare the evolution of DC United to the.....whatever you call what TFC has done with their roster it makes me very sad. There seems to be no direction, just sign who you can and then drive them out of town when the signing doesn't work out. Yes, 2012 did have injuries to the key players for TFC, Danny Kovermans, Eric Hassli and, Torsten Frings are all injured and the likelyhood is none of them will come back next season. Both Adrian Cann and Stephan Frei were injured for all of last season and both got injured again with season ending injuries this season. It's just a mess!

We do know 1 thing, Paul Mariner will be the coach next year. That's it. So here's is the chance for TFC to just finish last, draft the best player available no matter what position he plays and just build from within the academy. I don't even want to see TFC try to sign a designated player, wait till the club is ready to compete and then look to add a player that would bring the team over the top as a contender for the MLS cup. Oh, and it's time to use the Canadian Championship and CONCAF Champion's League as a way to get playing time for young players and that's it. TFC isn't deep enough to compete seriously in both competitions. Let's start doing this right. It's enough already.

EDIT: Now that DC United has won the game they sit in 2nd in the east.

Sometimes I get way too excited about things.
I'll admit it. I roll that way.

Last night, it kind of happened again. The summer hockey league wrapped up last night.
It was our team, the Angry Dragons vs the Halton Hosiers...for last place!
We won and for our efforts we scored some sweet towels.

Ok.

They weren't all that sweet.

They are too big to be hand towels and too small to be a bath towel, but you know I'm gonna use the shit out of it.

Go Angry Dragons!

WWE Raw

DX Invades Nitro
Bubba Ray's single run at the start of the brand split
Rock tossing the Stone Cold belt over the bridge
Triple H steals Stephanie McMahon and gets married at a drive thru wedding chapel
Shane McMahon shows up on WCW Nitro
"This is your life, Rock"
Eric Bishoff shows up on Raw and hugs Vince McMahon.
Jericho's WWF debut.
The Stone Cold beer bath.
The famous CM Punk "shoot" promo.
The Montreal screw job.
Ric Flair's retirement.
HHH makes Shawn Micheals think the DX reunion is going to happen and pedigrees HBK.
Trish's retirement match VS Lita.
And on a sadder note, the Owen Hart and Eddie Guerrero tribute show.

These are some of my most fond memories of WWE Raw going into the 1000th show.

Canadian Men's Soccer

Canada needs to finish.
Yesterday had they kept the ball down on a couple chances they might have won 2 - nil. I think it's time that we stop looking for the little victories with Canada. We've been getting the chances and we've been able to (in competitive games, not friendlies) hold the opposition to 1 goal over the past 8 games. Admittedly, none of those games have been against Mexico, USA or, Jamaica (again, not talking friendlies) but Canada can hang with some of the best of them in CONCACAF.
Between that and the fact that people are finally showing up to the games (16 thousand or so last night, predominantly Canadian fans) I think it's time that we should expect more from Canada and stop having an empathetic "let's take our victories when we get them" attitude and start expecting more from this team.
This team is good enough and players who were born here need to start taking some fucking pride in their country and start playing for Canada (Jonathan DeGuzman and Junior Hoilette: I'm looking at you. You can come to watch but you can't play?)  and if they won't, fuck 'em, we'll still win without them.
I'll stop my rant there.

Canada's Centennial Kit

So Canada unveiled their 1 time wear limited edition kit. The men will wear it June 30th at BMO Field against the USA in a friendly. While the women will be in the USA on the same date playing at Rio Tinto. If you ask me, this is a beauty! It's a replica of the jersey Canada's men wore in June of 1925 for the first recorded home win on record, beating the USA 1 - nil.

ARRRRRRGOOOOOOOOOOSSSSSSSSSSSSSS

Yeah, they look awesome now.

Still Can't Wait