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2022 WC Qualifying

mtkb

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If they're asking for the men and women to get the same percentages of their WC winnings then that makes perfect sense.... the idea of "correcting" a legal contract, and the requirement that more former players be put on the CSA board (take a look at their current board - I count fully half already that are former national team players) are pushing it, but you'd think that players talk and would have an idea what the norm is for how much of the WC money players from national teams actually see.

What I can't figure out is why the CSA signed the 10 year deal with the CPL owners and gave up control over the purse strings (assuming that's true)... like were they that hard up for money, or were they just that desperate for CPL owners to put their own money up to get that league off the ground in the first place?
 

akslop

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This is gonna be ugly. The doctor was very prepared for this. Came off well spoken. Hopefully they find some middle ground
 

Gurps

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Bontis avoiding questions wasnt a good look....

As a Chartered Accountant and a CFO I come prepared to meetings with respect to numbers and to answer questions with numbers and facts. Very simple.

One reporter point blanked asked a simple financial question which was deflected.

He then tried to avoid the question of whether they had sat down. He was implying they hadnt untill the reporter asked him and didnt answer. Reporter asked him again then he answered yes which was at odds with his earlier comments which implied the players didnt want to sit down.
 
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Gurps

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Looking at those statements first glance...

Lots of things that pop up from quick glance..Ill post my thoughts shortly.
 

Gurps

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A trial balance provides much more detail but here are some quick points...

1. CSA right now has over 14 million dollars cash. Does this include the fifa world cup grant? Does not appear so as the grant would come in 2022.


2. CSA currently only has 3 million Liabilities and that is it leaving 11 million dollars cash.

3. Revenues have doubled since 2020 mainly due to player fees and a huge increase in commercial fees which I am not sure the breakdown of that increase and why commercial fees increased so much.

4. Expenses have increased substantially in 2021. Again without a trial balance its hard to break down where this money went. Comparing to covid 202 statements isnt helpful.


Now given all the above.


1. CSA is sitting on a lot of cash and low liabilities.


2. CSA president was harping on how they spend so much money on competitions in the presser yet that only was a measly 114,000 in 2021. Appears to be a really small part of the budget even factoring in covid and little surprised he hyped that up so much. Bit of a red flag comment to me.

3. CSA has almost 13 million in unrestricted assets. What this means is that 13 million in assets they are free to use however they like. There is no restriction on that amount. A example of a restricted asset would be if the govt gave them 1 million and told them they had to spend on youth coaching. They do not have ang external restrictions on where they can use that 13 million in assets.

Interesting tidbit is note 8 which shows that CSA gives the cpl 350,00 cash a year to run its operations.


Overall anyone looking at those financials can see what I see and not super complicated. A trial balance would really help us see more detail and the inner workings of the organization but we wont see that.

Having said what pops out is the almost 14 million dollars in cash BEFORE the world cup bonus of 10 million. To me that is a very large amount and I am really curious where that amount is budgeted to going forward.

One expense that for sure went up in 2022 was the mens fees and travel fees. As well some of the money has to beput aside for the world cup bids and costs. This also would be countered with ticket fee revenue from the games and merchandise and concession fees.

Based on this i dont see a organization in financial trouble But i am not privy to what they are planning going forward. Either way 14 million cash plus another 10 million is a lot of money in the bank...

Further what if Canada did not qualify? They would never get the 10 million bonus. Surely they didnt create budgets and forecasts assuming they would get the ten million? Especially when they have 14 million in the bank...
 
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Gurps

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Here is a intersting clue from the toronto star of where that money banked up may be going..



The letter included one big clue. In 2018, Canada Soccer signed a deal with an organization called Canadian Soccer Business, which is tied to the owners of the five-year-old Canadian Premier League. The deal guaranteed Canada Soccer a baseline level of revenue of $3 million a year, and the vast majority of everything after that — chiefly sponsorship deals and broadcast revenues — goes to CSB. The deal was spearheaded by then Canada Soccer president Victor Montagliani, who has since ascended to the presidency of CONCACAF; it was designed to benefit the CPL, partly because FIFA apparently prefers that World Cup host nations have their own domestic leagues. The CSB deal is for 10 years, and apparently has an option to extend it to 20.

The CSA may have signed a contract that it is now responsible for a long time and worth a lot of money...
 

Canucks4Ever

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This whole thing is a proper tire fire now...

What I am getting from reading between the lines is that, essentially, CSA is crying poor and looks to be blaming it on this deal with the private for-profit company Canadian Soccer Business ("CSB") which is controlled by the owners of the CanPL clubs.

Decent layout of it here in the Toronto Star article @Gurps referenced:


What it looks to me like is that the players basically had the same opinion as the John Molinaro tweet - ie CSA has been surviving on its current budget forever and now their is "new money", so to speak, from WC qualification, so it seems reasonable that CSA should have some cash to throw around to the players and to treat the program as a top tier international team.

CSA looks to be saying...uh actually our budget is either remaining the same or not increasing that drastically.

So that begs the question, as the players literally put in there letter, where is the money going?

And the specter lurking in the shadows that might be able to answer that seems to be this contract with CSB.

Now I may be filling in too many blanks here, but it appears to me that CSA perhaps mortgaged its future in a way back in 2018/2019 with the CSB deal. The Toronto Star article points to the driving force behind that deal being the creation of the CanPL which was the Tier 1 domestic league that was a tenet of the 2026 World Cup bid.

From business perspective, it would seem the deal provided CSA with guaranteed revenues from CSB for 10 years, while the CanPL owners relied on their own sources to keep the CanPL and their teams afloat. In exchange, with Canada being locked in to 2026, on the back end of this agreement CSB and the CanPL owners would net back a potentially lucrative profit from marketing and broadcast deals pertaining to the expected growth of the national program in the build up to 2026 and the aftermath.

It is a classic gamble of giving up something short term and hoping to win it all back plus more long term. To be honest, this CSB deal probably worked out fairly good for CSA when Covid hit roughly a year into the agreement. Especially when it was looking back then like Canada, because it was outside the top six in CONCACAF at the time, would have to run an incredible gauntlet just to have a shot to qualify for the Intercontinental Playoff spot for Qatar 2022. There was no possibility for Canada to qualify directly for Qatar back then.

Of course Covid changed the qualification process and Canada rolled the Octo to a spot in Qatar. Now the program is four years ahead of schedule and CSB are surely giddy that their gamble is already set to pay dividends. Meanwhile, CSA, who were banking on a home World Cup and, probably, a variety of other revenue streams to fund the team at that tournament in 2026, look to be caught out for 2022 in having to send the team to the other side of the world.

The team claims they are looking for something in line with what other countries going to Qatar are getting. Evidently, after apparently stalling since qualification in March, what CSA presented to the players last Thursday was not that. Not sure who put together the counterproposal from the players (presumably they would be getting legal advice...), but CSA says it is "untenable". Decent odds that some of the items included in that proposal were just the players "anchoring high" for the negotiations so they had room to make concessions.

Muddying the waters further now is the Women's National team aspect. Given the fact that the women have been in negotiations with CSA on their contract since January, and were seemingly if not pleased, then at least not upset, with how things were progressing behind closed doors, it does not seem as though they are too thrilled about being dragged into this. That said, with the landmark pay equity deal signed by the US teams and their federation, I don't think that the men were in a position not to include a demand for pay equity between the men's and women's teams.

However, I am willing to bet the men likely do not have a thorough grasp of exactly what this pay equity might look like and I doubt they consulted in any meaningful way with the women given how fast everything moved today. This is evidenced by the women's statement quickly clarifying that what the men are asking for is not what they would consider "pay equity". This is, of course, a very important issue, but it just expands the parties now required to be on song before the team gets back on the field.

Look, CSA is long overdue for a reckoning. The presser with Bontis was something else. I don't think the players can come out of this unscathed from a PR standpoint, but their goodwill with the public is at an all time high and if they ever had a match to burn, it was this Panama one.

From a public perspective, I want to see an unredacted version of this CSA/CSB contract. I feel like that may hold several of the answers. Clearly the players had no knowledge of its existence and now CSA seems to be holding it up and saying this is why we cannot give you what you want.

At the end of the day though, I just feel for all the kids who were downtown with their Davies and David jerseys and all their signs. How do you explain to them that their heroes decided not to play because CSA is a broken machine and needs a complete overhaul?
 

Canucks4Ever

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Side note - watching that idiot Wheeler spout off on OneSoccer and on Twitter coming just this side of openly taking the opposite side to the players is just maddening.

Yes, this is a complex situation - but don't act like you're unbiased. CSB is by far the main benefactor to OneSoccer and the only reason you have a job pretending to have anything valuable to add to the soccer landscape in this country.

If somehow this whole thing led to him being ousted, that might be one tiny, tiny sliver of a silver lining.
 

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