The Footie Fool

Looks like there is fire underneath the Jim Brennan smoke I posted about a few days ago. The Toronto FC defender has publicly spoken out against both Dale Mitchell and the CSA. He hasn’t retired from the MNT, but emphatically states that he won’t be suiting up as long as Dale Mitchell is at the helm.

“I spoke to officials here at Toronto FC, my family and friends, and decided that it was best that I step down from the national team while the current manager is in place,” Brennan confirmed to reporters on Tuesday.

“That’s not to say I won’t play for Canada again, it’s just that there’s a lot going on that I don’t agree with, I don’t see eye to eye on a lot of things.”

If there wasn’t so much dirt swirling around the CSA and Dale Mitchell’s relationship with the team, then you could write off Brennan’s comments as sour grapes. He has been called away from TFC and, some would argue, has been underutilized when called during this WCQ campaign. But because the persistent rumblings of mismanagement, both on and off the pitch, keep swirling around, you have to think that Brennan is not the only one harbouring these types of feelings towards both the CSA and Mitchell.

All in all, it points to a team that seems to be imploding. And hearing stuff like this makes me feel like the dream is dying dead. At a crisis time like this in the campaign, where we still have a shot, this is the time when you need key players stepping up and talk about things like the ability, the belief, the drive that exists in the team that they can do it. And we just are not hearing that these days.

I am not blaming Brennan here, although, like Joe Ross at The Score,  I wish he would have waited until this campaign was over before speaking out as his news does nothing but hurt our already slim chances of qualifying. Brennan could have stuck to the route that, apparently, many of the other players are taking. Says Brennan:

“There are a few people who shouldn’t be there, there are a few people on the bench who shouldn’t be there. When this World Cup campaign is over, I think a lot of players will come out and say how they feel, but they can’t right now because of the situation.”

Which makes me think that when this campaign is over, the shit is going to hit the fan and the truth will come out. And I hope that, for the good of the game in this country, the players speak up about specific issues they have and somehow, in some way, some confidence can be restored in the body governing soccer in this country. If not, we are going to continue to see more and more great players bleed away to play in other countries – countries that know how to run a national team.

There is also a video interview with Brennan available from Sportsnet, but I am having problems viewing the video right now.

Sidenote: I have given the CBC’s John Molinaro public guff in the past for his failure to write about Canadian soccer when he is the man for the CBC. But kudos to him for this story. Nice work, John. We need more of this type of reporting.