Canadas mens national team lost its opening game of the 2013 Concacaf Gold Cup on Sunday, after they were blanked 1-0 by Martinique. Thats right. Martinique. You can add this result to the growing list of international embarrassments for Canadian soccer. Weve had our fair share of suffering in Canadian soccer over the years. An 8-1 loss to Honduras that eliminated us from World Cup contention back in October; failure to reach the World Cup finals since 1986, our one and only appearance; a 2-0 loss to Cuba in the 2003 Gold Cup that saw us crash out at the group stage. If you think our embarrassments are unique to the mens program, think again. Twelve months before coming home with a bronze medal from the 2012 Olympic Games, Canadas womens team finished dead last in the 2011 womens World Cup, losing all three group games. Critics can blame the players, the coaches, the weather, the field conditions or any combination of other factors. They are nothing more than excuses. The brutally honest truth is this: we are simply not good enough. That criticism is not leveled at the players, the coaches or staff, who represent our country. They do their very best when wearing the red jersey, and on some occasions - like during last years Olympic Games - they pull off the impossible. The criticism applies to us - you, me and anyone else who is involved in Canadian soccer at any level. We are not good enough. We have stood idly by and allowed soccer to become nothing more than a recreational sport in our country. We have allowed the game to sink to the lowest common denominator, and we have done nothing - absolutely nothing - to put in place an effective development system for players, coaches and referees in Canada. While there are over 850,000 registered soccer players across the country, the vast majority of them are recreational players. Very, very few of them go through what can even loosely be described as an effective development program. Our youth soccer system emphasizes winning over development. The result is a pool of players who fail to master the fundamental skills required to compete at the elite levels of the game. The players - both male and female - who do manage to go on to represent Canada do so by chance, rather than by design. They reach the national team through their own will and determination, not because they have followed a well-researched, well-designed development pathway. It is time for that to change. It is time for the Canadian Soccer Association to put its money where its mouth is and to mandate change in soccer across the country. Thats right. Mandate. Asking for clubs to implement the principles of LTPD is not good enough. Asking for coaches to educate themselves is not good enough. Asking for leagues to implement minimum standards for coaching qualifications, training-to-game ratios and competition formats (including the removal of promotion and relegation) is not good enough. All of these things must be mandated. Because if the CSA leaves it up to the clubs, districts or leagues - if they make compliance with these things "opt-in" or optional - they simply wont happen. Because there is nothing stopping these things from being done voluntarily right now - other than the fact that we, as a nation, sink to the lowest common denominator. How can these changes be mandated? Easy. Create two streams of soccer in Canada - recreational and high-performance. Most clubs across the country do an excellent job of offering recreational soccer programs. The evidence is right there in the numbers - over 850,000 players from coast to coast. Leave the recreational programs as they are, and offer those clubs access to coach and referee education, as well as to a national development curriculum for recreational players. Then create a high-performance stream and mandate that organizations must meet the technical standards required to be involved in that stream. Both non-profit clubs and for-profit academies should be allowed to enter the high-performance stream - provided that they all meet the required standards. This isnt difficult to do, but it requires the CSA to flex its muscles a little bit. Given that there are high-performance leagues either already in existence (BC, Quebec) or about to get underway (Ontario), the CSA might be surprised just how little resistance there would be to such a plan. And heres another important component of pulling this off - the CSA needs to sing it from the rooftops. The CSA needs to go on national television and lay it all out on the table. Tell anyone and everyone what the plan is and why it is being implemented. Go across the country and hold open-mike town hall meetings where Tony Fonseca, the CSAs Technical Director, answers questions about the CSAs plan until all the questions have been answered. That is Fonsecas job; he needs to be able to sell the game from coast to coast. He needs to be able to win over skeptics, to convince the many likeminded people who truly care about the game in our country to start pulling in the same direction and start working to fix the broken mess that weve tolerated for decades in Canada. If he cant do that, then he is wrong man for the job. How many embarrassments must we suffer before we say enough is enough? How many more failed qualifying campaigns must we endure before we realize that the time to change is now? The time for change is now. Wholesale Soccer Jerseys China . -- Adam Snyder returned to the San Francisco 49ers this season because the offensive lineman thought it was his best opportunity to win a championship. Replica Soccer Jerseys . -- Ty Montgomery had 290 all-purpose yards and two touchdowns, and fifth-ranked Stanford held on to beat No. https://www.soccerjerseyschina.us/ . 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Sulaiman becomes the sixth president of the organization.HARRISBURG, Pa. -- Newly disclosed allegations from men who have accused Jerry Sandusky of sexual abuse raise fresh questions about what his fellow Penn State assistant coaches might have seen or known in the decades before his November 2011 arrest, and why theyve largely stayed silent since.Sanduskys former colleagues found themselves on the defensive this week because of claims in court documents that some of the couple of dozen assistants who spent time in the program while he was there may have witnessed Sandusky abusing children as far back as the 1980s.Aside from blanket denials made through lawyers and spokespeople, the former assistants who worked alongside Sandusky have said little publicly about the scandal.These guys are very sensitive to their employment. Its not easy to go out and replace a half-million-dollar income, said Penn State Trustee Anthony Lubrano, who is close with the family of the late head football coach Joe Paterno. I get why theyre not standing in front of a microphone screaming from the top of their lungs.Three of the four coaches named in newly released depositions given by men who reached settlements with Penn State made statements this week denying claims that they witnessed or were aware of Sanduskys abuse. The fourth coach, Joe Sarra, died four years ago.The Paterno familys lawyer issued a statement last week casting doubt on a bombshell claim in the documents that a boy told Paterno in 1976 that Sandusky had abused him and that Paterno didnt want to hear about it.Paterno told a grand jury in 2011 he first learned of Sanduskys conduct in 2001, when then-assistant coach Mike McQueary went to him after seeing Sandusky assaulting a boy in a team shower.Sandusky coached for Paterno for three decades starting in 1969, leading staunch defenses that helped win two national titles in the 1980s.He founded a charity for at-risk children in 1977 and was often seen around the football facility with young boys, sometimes taking them on the road to big games. Even after his 1999 retirement, Sandusky kept an office on campus and had access to a staff locker room.When we saw the pictures of those kids on the sidelines at bowl games -- I know it was hindsight, but it looked odd, said Duquesne Law professor Wes Oliver, who has followed the case closely. The assistant coaches saw all that and more.But, Oliver added: Suspicious behavior is, of course, one thing. Actual acts are something else. One could imagine a natural reluctance to speak out about merely suspicious behavior.ddddddddddddSandusky is serving 30 to 60 years in prison for his conviction on 45 counts of sexual abuse.His 2012 trial covered abuse dating to the mid-1990s, but Penn State has acknowledged it later settled with a man who said he was abused in 1971. That man is among 32 people who have shared $92 million in civil settlements from the university.McQueary, a key prosecution witness at Sanduskys trial, gave a deposition last year in which he claimed former assistant coach Tom Bradley said he knew of some things about Sandusky dating to the early 1980s.McQueary, who is pursuing a defamation and whistleblower lawsuit against Penn State, said Bradley told him former assistant coach Greg Schiano went to him in the early 1990s white as a ghost and said he just saw Jerry doing something to a boy in the shower.A lawyer for Bradley, now UCLAs defensive coordinator, said he never witnessed any inappropriate behavior, and has no knowledge of alleged incidents in the 1980s and 1990s.The lawyer, Brett Senior, declined to answer questions, saying this things gone on too long and its all been asked and answered.Schiano, now Ohio States defensive coordinator, tweeted that he never saw abuse or had any reason to suspect it while working at Penn State.Lawyer Tom Kline, whose client testified against Sandusky and later settled with Penn State, encouraged former coaches to come forward and clear the air.The passage of time can be convenient for a claim of a failed recollection, but the things that were talking about are not things which escape the recollection, even over decades, Kline said.One former assistant coach who has spoken up since Sanduskys arrest said coaches sometimes showered alongside Sandusky and boys.Dick Anderson, who also played with Sandusky at Penn State in the 1960s, testified at his trial that on occasion, over the years he would see Sandusky showering with boys.Jay Paterno, the coachs son who also was on the Penn State coaching staff, wrote in a column this week that the coaches have been forthcoming in statements to police, lawyers in civil cases and reporters, as well as for the university-commissioned Freeh report.Coaches turned over cellphones, email accounts, computers and iPads, and what did they find to reveal some vast conspiracy spanning decades? he wrote. Nothing.---Sisak reported from Philadelphia. ' ' '