Originally Posted by
Initial B
It's not a matter of being romantic, it's a matter of wanting the league to survive. It's fine if it's a developmental league like the Eredivisie, but you do not want the Canadian Public to look at the league as a minor league because it needs eyeballs on the TVs and bums in the seats if this has any hope of sustaining itself through the first decade. I think in the casual public's mind NASL is just another league at the moment, so if the CSA can get FC Edmonton and Ottawa Fury to jump ship to this new league, that would give it instant credibility. But a Toronto (or York?) team would have to be seen as a seperate club from TFC so it would have to be under MLSE ownership.
I'm really curious if the CSA is making a similar overture to Montreal and Vancouver. It seems like they could live without teams in those cities if they can get Victorian and Quebec City or board, but the GTA seems to be a must-have. I hear the CPL wants to play in stadiums that hold around 10,000 spectators. I think that's really ambitious at first. BMO field would be too big. You could probably put a team in at York University's new stadium, but I think that would be too close to TFC II. It would be better if they put a team out in Scarborough or Oshawa to spread out the footprint of the team, but there are no stadiums in that area that could hold that amount of people.
The league should sell itself as Division 1 in Canada, but act as a development league for mostly Canadian talent with some Central American influence. If I were setting the rules for the CPL, I would put a salary cap of $1.2-1.5 million with teams allowed to take 1 designated player where only $150,000 of his salary counts against the cap. Teams would consist of 24-26 players with the first 20 players being counted under the cap. Team composition would have a maximum of 8 international players (including Americans as internationals) with the rest being Canadians. I would also make it a rule that at least two of the starters must be Canadian U-23s. In an 8 team league, that would mean there would be a minimum 24 canadian players playing each week, with 16 of them being U-23s. I think there is enough quality now that you could find 24 canadians to start and still manage to play decent-looking football. I would encourage getting players from Honduras, Costa Rica, Haiti, Panama, Guatemala and other CA and Carribean countries by enticing them with better salaries than they could get playing in their own country to raise the initial quality of the game.
But I still think the only way this survives is to have a stable 8-10 year TV contract shared between TSN and Sportsnet that will offset low attendence for the first 5 years until the league becomes entrenched in the Canadian consciousness and start coming to the stadiums. It also needs to have a sponsorship with a Canadian Air Carrier to subsidize transportation costs, as that is what will kill teams, especially with a country the size of Canada.