Soccer development: a hypothesis

Soccer in Canada has been on a steady rise since the world’s most prestigious soccer tournament was just south of the boarder for World Cup '94. More and more Canadian teams are travelling to larger, international soccer tournaments and placing, and sometimes winning, outplaying the academies of professional teams from Europe and South America. Canadian soccer identity has been called into question for a number of years, however. Winning the Gold Cup in 2000 was thought to be the resurgence of soccer in a country where hockey has so obviously dominated for years. Certainly if there was ever a time for Canadian soccer to emerge from the darkness, it was winning the CONCACAF trophy and capitalizing on the monetary profit for Soccer Canada's development. The opportunity for Canada to progress to soccer's next level sorta just brushed us by. Our world ranking consistently hangs in the mid 50’s and today are wedged between Poland and Bolivia. Because of geographic’s, Poland and Bolivia both have the chance to play more skilful teams more regularly, but the rankings do suggest that these teams are on the same skill level. I wonder then, with the pursuit of international supremacy in mind, why don’t teams like Bolivia, Canada and Poland, ranked 56, 56 and 58 respectively, play each other more regularly? Wouldn’t this allow players to get better by being pushed by opponents of the same calibre? I can see how that theory sounds out of whack, especially if you are of the belief that to be better you have to play against the best, but if you look at this in the sense that these players would have the opportunity to be pushed at a standard level of play and in order to excel, players would have to challenge themselves to be better than the relativity. In essence, to be better, play against people as good as you, and become better. Smaller sized tournaments also are economically more feasible to run, with less planning than say a 32 team tournament. So the chances of running the same 4-team tournament multiple times a year would be both feasible and more importantly, beneficial for the betterment of your national team. Hey if this theory works, then perhaps Canada will be playing in the “ranked in the 40’s” tournament in a few years. Burkina Faso, Scotland, Venezuela and Canada would be a nice little tourney. I would definitely watch that tournament on Toronto's BMO Field with its newly laid grass pitch. Probably very unrealistic, but I like the idea of it and I’m going to roll with it in my head for now, or maybe just play the tournament on PS2!