Well, here’s a feel-good story out of nowhere:
Phoenix Suns point guard and two-time NBA MVP Steve Nash is sinking a chunk of his discretionary investment income into a new women’s professional soccer league.
Nash loves soccer. His dad played pro, and his brother Martin is a Vancouver Whitecap and frequent member of Canada’s national men’s team. The best point guard in the business also has twin three-year-old daughters, and is a huge booster of women’s pro sports.
The league, hoping to begin play in eight American cities in 2009, plans to use Nash’s unspecific donation to help defray set-up and administrative costs. No Canadian cities are involved at the moment. Vancouver’s apparently a possibility, but the Whitecaps remain committed to their current ladies’ loop, the W-League.
I’ve already received one e-mail today – from a grouchy guy who ought to know better – saying it’s a shame to waste money on women’s soccer.
That is a horrendously short-sighted view. Soccer is a universal game, and half the universe is female. Canada’s own Christine Sinclair is one of the very best female players on the planet. Darn right she should be playing pro, as soon – and at as high a level – as possible.
Also, any Canadian who loves soccer owes the women’s game – hugely. Remember that sensational final of the women’s Under-19 World Cup in Edmonton back in 2002? Over 50,000 people at Commonwealth Stadium for an electrifying final match. Sinclair misses a late sitter that would have actually won Canada a World Cup, and then the Americans pull it out with a sudden-death goal in overtime.
That astonishing day led directly to every great thing that happened in soccer in Canada in 2007. Without it, there is no BMO Field in Toronto, no Under-20 World Cup in Canada – no Toronto FC.
If you got any fun at all out of any of those things in the past 12 months, you owe it directly to women’s soccer. And if women’s soccer has a dream, and an NBA superstar wants to help, they should cash the cheque, thank their lucky stars and get on with it.
Soccer is a game where the hugely rich can – and do – make dreams come true.
So, along those lines – might there be any very wealthy folks out there who might be interested in ponying up a few million to help draft and implement a new operating structure and constitution for Canadian soccer in general? Found, fund and raise corporate support for an entirely new organization to replace the Canadian Soccer Association and run Canada’s national soccer teams – similar to the recent bold, successful overhaul of the beautiful game in Australia?
If S.N. from Phoenix has committed his cash elsewhere, howzabout J.S. from Montreal? G.K. from Vancouver?
… MLSE from Toronto?
Get in touch, guys. Let’s talk.
