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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. Scarpe Ultra Boost Uomo Offerta . The head of USA Boxing came out swinging Tuesday with an open letter to Tyson -- a former Olympic hopeful himself -- that accuses the former heavyweight champion of trying to poach fighters who might be candidates for the U. Ultra Boost Italia . The Australian is competing in his final season in Formula One and still looking for his first win this year. He will look to end Vettels run of six straight race wins on Sunday. Webber, who is fifth in the championship, earned his second pole from the past three races and 13th of his career. http://www.ultraboostoutlet.it/ . Jay Feely kicked a 41-yard field goal in overtime, and the Cardinals edged the Tennessee Titans 37-34 in overtime after blowing a 17-point lead late in the fourth quarter. Ultra Boost Outlet . Louis Rams wide receiver Stedman Bailey last Sunday. The fine is the fourth this season for Goldson. He was fined $30,000 for a hit on the New York Jets Jeff Cumberland in Week 1. Outlet Ultra Boost Online . The 28-year-old from Calgary matched his career best after missing just one shot in his two rounds of shooting in the mens 10-kilometre sprint competition. Smith finished in 23 minutes 15.It was 25 years ago that Wayne Gretzky was traded to the Los Angeles Kings from the Edmonton Oilers - and stunted one of the greatest dynasties in NHL history. To many, that seems like the distant past. But to others... "It goes fast," Peter Berg, the acclaimed filmmaker and director of the ESPN 30 for 30 documentary Kings Ransom told TSN.ca this week. Berg - a self-professed life-long hockey fan - recalls the details of hearing about the trade vividly. "I was actually in Paris and I had just booked an acting job," he said. "A friend woke me up and said ‘Weve got Gretzky. And then he said, ‘We gotta buy season tickets." "I said: ‘We have to buy season tickets? and then I realized that I had to buy them. So I took all the money I made on that film and bought season tickets - because we had Gretzky." The trade turned the franchise on a dime, as Berg remembered the Kings prior to Gretzkys arrival. "They were just kind of a wonderful mess, he said. "I think they averaged a few thousand people per game and we used to go to all the games, because we could afford - for five bucks - to get a ticket." It was kind of like we had a junior team wearing NHL uniforms. Occasionally wed win and occasionally something exciting would happen." And afterwards? "When that trade happened that was exciting," Berg explained."That was the beginning of (Kings owner) Bruce McNalls desire to turn things around." The Kings morphed within the span of a year, becoming a hot spot for Hollywoods elite to coincide with the arrival of the biggest name in hockey. Kings Ransoms archival footage reveals a whos who of the late-1980s elite clamouring to get a look at The Great One: Tom Hanks, Kevin Costner, Sylvester Stallone along with Canadian-born celebs like John Candy and Michael J. Fox. Even U.S. President Ronald Reagan dropped in. "It went from being kind of pathetic to - once Bruce McNall came in - things started to get turned up," said Berg. "The Kings had an owner that was not going to accept the status quo. He was going to figure out a way to shake things up and he sure did." But what about the City of Edmonton? Therein lies the greatest question left lingering by Bergs film and one that is inevitably addressed by Gretzky himself. Gretzky and Berg traded swings on an L.A.-area golf course and Berg asked flat out: "How many Cups could you have won, had you stayed in Edmonton?" "Ummm, I dont know," Gretzky paused. "The team was good enough maybe I wouldve won four more?" So how does a city move on from the possibility of doubling down on what was already one of the greatest teams of all-time? "When you think about the dynasty that was broken up in Edmonton, you cant help but shake your head and wonder," Berg recalled. "Yeah, the trade did a lot and it opened up hockey in the southwest of the U.dddddddddddd.S. Yes, Wayne is a great ambassador for the sport and yes, his move to L.A. helped make the sport a bit more popular in America. But he never won another Cup and he broke up arguably one of the greatest dynasties in the history of professional sports." But when faced with the question of why the move had to be made, that is where Bergs narrative veers from what has traditionally been accepted as fact in Edmonton, Canada and many other hockey circles.Just about every story thats been told indicated that Oilers owner Peter Pocklington made the move out of the need to get a monetary return for his greatest asset and partially out of frustration with the sheer size of Gretzkys on- and off-ice persona. And in the end, there sat Gretzky, struggling through his tears, saying goodbye to Edmonton. In Bergs conversations with Gretzky it became clearer to the filmmaker that Gretzky was less a victim of the shrewd business tactics of Pocklington and McNall and more a willing participant in the greatest collective turn of fortune in hockey history. "I think the fact that his wife was from there was certainly a factor," he told TSN.ca. "I think the money was a factor and I think that at the end of the day the chance to do it again with another franchise was a chance to take on a new and more epic challenge," Berg said. "I think all of those factors contributed to Waynes decision." But also factoring in was Gretzkys pending free agency and the fact that at least preliminary discussions about a trade had taken place prior to Gretzky hoisting his fourth Stanley Cup with the Oilers. And Gretzky was candid about his reaction to hearing about such discussions. "I was mad they were trying to trade me," he told Berg in Kings Ransom. "So, I left." As for Pocklington, Berg was loath to paint him with the brush of villainy that immediately followed news of the trade. "Look at the reality of what kind of dynasty was broken up," Berg said. "I would imagine Pocklington knew what was happening and he knew that while - yes, he was making some cash - he was also aware of what kind of injury he was causing to his team and to his franchise." In the end, the injuries would go both ways. Gretzky retired without ever again hoisting hockeys top prize and Edmonton - despite the Oilers capturing the Cup once more in 1990 - would soon watch their empire get dismantled piece-by-piece and endure a championship drought that extends to the present day. The cost was high. But in the end, it was one that was paid out on both sides. "[Gretzky] was flat out about it," explained Berg. "He said, ‘I think about it every day, and wiped a tear out of his eye. I can imagine that every time he and Mark Messier get together, theres not a moment where they dont look into each other and kind of wonder what might have been." ' ' '