Toronto Keeper Sutton Berates CSA

• The Canadian Press, Friday, December 5, 2008 1:15 PM

Toronto FC goalkeeper Greg Sutton has joined Canadian national team colleagues Jim Brennan and Dwayne De Rosario in criticizing the way that Canadian soccer runs its men's national team program, and demanded change after Canada's failure to make the Concacaf final qualifying round for the 2010 World Cup.

Sutton told Neil Davidson that the Canadian Soccer Association must ask, "Why did we not qualify for this round with the potential that we had, because by far we had the best group of players that we've had in a long time." It wasn't just that the team didn't have the right momentum, but "we didn't have the right support going into it."

Canada has "some very good talent," Sutton said, "but we just can't bring them all together at times just because of budget reasons." He pointed to the size of U.S. training camps with 30 players, compared with Canada's, "where we'll have 20 if we're lucky." Until things improve, players like Brennan are more likely to put their club sides first and shun national team call-ups.

De Rosario and Brennan "are guys who want to play for their country and we love our country. But there needs to be some things that need to be taken care of before we can really go forward in the right direction." He refused to blame Coach Dale Mitchell for the poor results, rather "the people that are in charge of setting ourselves in the right direction and making sure that we were well-prepared going into that campaign and obviously we weren't."

 

 

Read the whole story at The Canadian Press »