Message to Canada Soccer: We don’t care about your money troubles

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It’s in the nature of the modern sports professional to talk like they are curing cancer, especially when there’s a few bucks involved.

“Four years ago, we set out on a mission to leave our program in a better place than we found it,” begins an open letter from the Canadian national men’s soccer team.

Many demands later, the letter is signed off, “We stand on guard.”

I guess this is their Gettysburg Address, only boring.

On Sunday, the senior men’s players said yeah-no to a scheduled friendly match against Panama in Vancouver. Now that the Canadian men have finally made a World Cup, the players believe they deserve a bigger cut of that sweet FIFA cake.

In order that their demands be taken seriously, they pulled the plug on the Panama game a couple of hours before kickoff.

On the other side, you’ve got their bosses. Let me assure you, these are men capable of very serious facial expressions.

“We would like to have a facts-based discussion within the fiscal reality that Canada Soccer has to live with every day,” Canada Soccer president Nick Bontis read from a statement after the cancellation.

The amazing part of that sentence is that someone wrote it down and then someone else said, “Looks good to me.”

A bunch of percentages are getting tossed around. According to a TSN report, the players were offered 10 per cent of the World Cup booty. Canada Soccer says it’s offering 30 per cent for the men, as well as another 30 per cent for the senior women’s team. The men would like 40 per cent and “a comprehensive friends and family package” (read: Economy Plus/unlimited access to the buffet).

Here’s the percentage that matters in these kinds of disputes: zero per cent.

That is the precise amount of normal people who care if a bunch of guys who kick a ball for a living get a fat raise.

Also, zero per cent – the number of normal people sympathetic to bosses who travel the world on the public dime saying things like “facts-based discussion” out loud.

This isn’t a struggle for equity or fairness – as if either side actually believed such things exist in sports. If the world was fair, top nurses would sign $20-million deals and goalies would do their job for a round of heartfelt applause.

In a sports negotiation, all that matters is whatever you can convince people to give you.

The players have some leverage in that regard. Everybody loves their plucky origin story. Now they would like to convert some of that goodwill to cash.

However this ends, the fairy tale of Team Canada and its merry band of soccer misfits is over. What you’ve now got is a bunch of mercenaries looking to grab what they can while the grabbing’s good.

More power to them. This isn’t a working holiday. It’s work. A man’s just as likely to break an ankle playing for Canada as he is for Bayern Munich. He has every right to demand what he sees as reasonable payment to take that professional risk.

But maybe go easy on the patriotic bumpf while you’ve got your hands stuffed in someone else’s pockets. This isn’t national service you’re in the middle of. It’s a garden-variety shakedown.

In fairness, if anyone deserves a good shaking, it’s Canada Soccer. No sports organization in the world takes itself more seriously. Every communique sounds as if it is being broadcast from the snowy peaks of Mt. Football. Every achievement is celebrated like it was the middle-aged guys in suits who won the penalty shootout.

What is Canada Soccer’s vitally important sports mission? Warring with their own players and being mostly bad at organizing soccer. They’re pretty good at it, too.

Having procured an unexpected windfall in the World Cup money – money that doesn’t exist if the players don’t make the tournament – Canada Soccer’s first reaction is to say, “Mine.”

After taking a hard slap in public, their next reaction is dragging a cross in front of a bunch of journalists to ask if anyone can spare a few nails.

“We will not negotiate this through the media,” Bontis said at a press conference in front of the media.

Really? Then I’m just going to mute this for now. I’ll know you’ve stopped negotiating when your lips stop moving.

Bottom line – no one cares who wins here. They care even less with each passing moment.

This isn’t a struggle to find the golden mean. It’s The Office, only the actors don’t realize they’re in a comedy. They think it’s a prestige drama. That’s the funny part.

This only ends one way. Canada Soccer will cave, because what else are they going do? Threaten to hold back their next quarterly report? They aren’t owners. They’re administrators. Their only leverage was the tolerance of their employees, which they’ve just lost.

It’s such a masterpiece of mismanagement, they ought to hang it on a wall at the Harvard Business School.

Once it’s over, the number zero comes back into play again. That’s the number of people who’ll hold a grudge.

People enjoy the bloodsport of a contract negotiation. But since they have no vested interest in the outcome, they don’t hold on to any ill will. They just want to watch sports.

But all the players in this show need to be mindful of one thing. People are well-disposed to you because you entertain them. Everyone loves to be entertained. But once you introduce cynicism into the storyline, they get cynical, too.

If Canada wins at November’s World Cup, everyone is forgiven. This was adversity or a steep learning curve or whatever cliché you think fits.

But if they lose, this was a business deal gone wrong. And then people are going to want to know how, where and, most importantly, who the money was spent on.