From the Black Hole

In Episode 80 we sat down with Tino Fusco, born and raised in Regina, played CIS in Saskatoon, and now coaches with Mount Royal University in Calgary. Tino has endeavoured to create a Canadian university women's futsal team and take them to the FISU World University Futsal Championship in Brazil. When you hear about the hurdles he's overcoming to do this, you will have to agree that it is a very ambitious undertaking.

Wow. Just wow. The Canadian Men played two friendlies. The Canadian Women played two home friendlies in front of mostly full stadiums. Both the men's team and the women's team won games ON THE SAME DAY!! And if that's not enough, we've just watched the semi final of the 2016 Voyageurs Cup. So. Much. CanSoc.

No team? No league? No problem say the people in Hamilton supporters group Barton Street Battalion. In anticipation of a new soccer team in Hamilton in a new Canadian professional soccer league, James Hutton has gotten ahead of the curve by helping found Barton Street Battalion. There are many interesting parts to his and their story, but perhaps the most interesting, especially to those that call CanPL a fantasy, is the fact that they have already met with the prospective Hamilton team's ownership. BSB's story is an incredibly unique one on the Canadian soccer supporter landscape.

The CSA just had their AGM, Victor Montagliani was just acclaimed CSA president, and then quickly won the presidency of CONCACAF, so we convinced Clare and Squizz to join us to chat about the ever evolving trajectory of Canadian soccer. Enjoy!

While Lars is away exploring the history of the American Civil War (I'm not kidding), Jeff and I had a free Sunday night, so we recorded this ramble-y thing. It was fun but I suspect it will be hard to follow. Regardless, you should give it a listen.

We were very lucky to be able to sit down with a group of gentlemen who have established PDL squads in their communities when they got together for some pre-season friendlies in Winnipeg. All of them have their own motivation and purposes for having a PDL club at the top of their pyramids. Tony Colistro is the owner and founder of the Thunder Bay Chill. Eduardo Badescu is the founder and head coach of WSA Winnipeg. Karl Oram works with both Calgary Foothills and FC Edmonton coaching and doing video analysis. And no stranger to the podcast, Tommy Wheeldon is the TD of Calgary Foothills and the head coach of their PDL squad. We had a very fun conversation with a lot of joking around thrown in. Apologies for the amount of background noise on the recording. We hope it doesn't detract from what was said too much.

In Episode 74 we welcome back Percy Hoff, who first joined us as part of our 'Focus on SK' series. With years of experience in Saskatchewan soccer under his belt, Percy has a lot to say about where we need to go developmentally on the prairies and as a soccer nation.

Well on the good side, Lars has rejoined us for our latest episode. On the bad side, discussing the Men's National Team's losses to Mexico was on the agenda. Not much else to say there that we didn't include in the podcast so have a listen.

In Episode 72 we sit down for a feature interview with Canadian Men's National Team coach Michael Findlay. We discussed the current World Cup Qualifying campaign as well as items about the Men's National Team and CSA more broadly.

Here is our last instalment of our Focus on SK series and last, but not least, we are joined by Kevin Holness and Markus Reinkens, TDs of FC Regina. Kevin has joined us before but Markus has returned to Regina from the warmer climes of BC to work with Kevin on the recently formed FC Regina. They take us through the establishment and direction of the club and Kevin gives us a little blurb about the WCP Cup at the end.

Tommy Wheeldon Jr joins us again to look back on Foothills PDL inaugural year and discuss the many new developments at his constantly growing club.

We've had enough 'Focus on Sask' episodes now that I've officially lost count, and am also too lazy to go back and look it up. On today's episode we are joined by FIFA ranked official, Chantal Boudreau. Chantal has rocketed up the refereeing ladder attaining her FIFA level only 6 years after her first game as an ref. Her passion for the game drives her, and it is pretty exciting to have a Regina local involved in the game at such a high level.

We continue our focus on our home province with Percy Hoff of Astra Academy. Percy has been involved with soccer in Saskatoon and provincially for many years as discusses the difficulties facing the sport locally and the potential solutions.

Has there been a bigger year in Canadian soccer? I think a compelling case could be made that 2015 has been the biggest. Not only did Canada host the Women's World Cup, but there were tons of other notable events with clubs, national teams, and individual players. At times it was difficult to keep track of it all. Here at FTBH we see it is part of our approach to try and support and connect others who are supporting soccer in Canada, and this influenced our approach for the 2015 review. We invited people from across the country to participate by sending us a brief discussion of their 2015 Canadian soccer highlights and a look forward to 2016. The people we contacted ranged from Voyageur friends to coaches, writers, bloggers, and pundits. And what a response! From across the country we received over 20 contributions. Needless to say, we feel incredibly thankful that we have been able to meet and get to know so many great soccer folks and we not only admire them a great deal, but are fortunate to be able to c

In part 5 we visit with Queen City United Soccer Club Technical Director, Hugh Dooley and the club's President, Chris Bailey.

In part 4 of our focus on Saskatchewan, we chat with Filipe Dos Santos. After recognizing a deficiency in the technical abilities of Saskatchewan players, Filipe decided to do something to address the issue. His solution was to establish Ginga Soccer Academy.

The focus on Saskatchewan continues with Regina's Josh Hartl. Josh is a local soccer coach and is also attempting to establish a Futsal league in Regina.

We are back with the second part of our focus on Saskatchewan with University of Regina Women's Soccer head coach Bob Maltman. Bob discusses a whole range of topics from his immigration to Canada from Scotland, the ins and outs of the university soccer program, and the state of the game in Canada. Bob is a great storyteller and provided a bunch of funny anecdotes along the way.

In our latest episode we are joined by Sam Gregory. Currently Sam has a podcast, website, and consultancy called Analytics_FC, but to us, Sam is also one of our Voyageur friends who we've attended a bunch of Canada games with. He's written for Red Nation and Sportsnet and now joins us to discuss xG maps for Canada's games in both the Gold Cup and recent World Cup qualifiers.

Canada played two qualifiers against Honduras and El Salvador over the past week, and we are here to break the games down. At least, we break the games down after spending far too much time talking about other things. Oh well.