By Tokunbo Ojo
The FIFA U-20 World Cup has come and gone. But there are still lingering question about the future media coverage of soccer in Canada.
For the first time in the history of soccer coverage in Canada, the three-week global tournament saw a total of 110 broadcasts and over 220 hours airtime, in addition to hundreds of stories in the print media across the country.
This is a remarkable feat.
“It often takes something like this to push soccer off the back pages,” said Rob Brodie, night sports editor at the Ottawa Sun.
Soccer does not get huge coverage in the Canadian news media because a large number of the decision makers in the newsrooms do not come from a soccer background according to Brodie.
However, with the success of the FIFA U-20 World Cup, he and some other Canadian journalists, who covered the tournament, hope newsroom decision-makers will now see soccer more as part of all news that is fit to cover.
“What’s needed is a major shift in mindset among the decision-makers,” he explained. “I know at our paper, we have made a concerted effort to increase world soccer coverage because we know interest is growing. But more time and energy needs to be put into coverage at the grassroots level in our own communities. We all put a lot of effort into minor hockey coverage, simply because it’s something that’s always been done.”
“But twice as many kids in Canada play minor soccer now. At some point, I believe, that has to be acknowledged in coverage levels. What that requires is somebody deciding it has to happen, and somebody willing to put in the time to make it happen. At a lot of papers, that kind of thinking and that kind of staff level doesn’t exist right now.”
Soccer has grown significantly in Canada since 1987, when Canada hosted the FIFA Under-17 World Cup — in Toronto, Montreal, Saint John (New Brunswick) and St John’s (Newfoundland).
In 2006, there were over 850,000 registered players across the country — 84% of them between the ages of 5 and 18. About 370,000 of these registered players played in Ontario.
Canada 2007 set a new FIFA U-20 World Cup attendance record, with a total attendance of 1,195,239. The 52 matches played in Montreal, Ottawa, Toronto, Burnaby, Victoria and Edmonton from June 30 to July 22 gave FIFA the highest attendance in the history of the 30 year-old tournament. The previous attendance record of 1,155,160 was set in Mexico ’83 U-20 World Cup.
Despite the growing popularity of soccer in Canada, the absence of expertise among the sport reporters also affects its coverage. Don Brennan of the Ottawa Sun has 21 year experience in journalism, covering football, hockey, golf and baseball among others. But soccer is not his thing.
Apart from a feature story he did on a local kids tournament about a decade ago, he has not written anything about soccer until the FIFA U-20 World Cup came to town. Covering the tournament was a tough task for him.
“Others are more familiar with the sport than I, so they have a greater appreciation of it,” said Brennan who has been with the Ottawa Sun since 1988. “I think if I knew it better, it would be easier and more fun to cover.”
Unlike Brennan, Ottawa Citizen’s Mohammed Adam did not have that difficulty. With a wealth of experience covering the game in Ghana under his belt, he took a voluntary leave from the news desk to team up with Richard Starnes, the Ottawa Citizen’s sports desk only soccer writer/columnist, for the World Cup coverage.
Although he described his experience covering the U-20 World Cup as being great , there are still many hurdles to cross to keep soccer in the news in his view.
“Being a hockey country, the fundamental problem is getting people, even editors to pay attention,” he said. “Once the hockey season begins, the emphasis will shift again. You need ongoing events to keep the coverage running but there won’t be many.”
“If there was a professional league, things might be different. I imagine there will be more coverage in Toronto papers like the Star because the city has a team that will generate weekly stories.”
Peter Mallett, who juggles page layout with soccer reporting at the Globe and Mail, had seen it all. He said people still roll their eyes when they hear soccer stories are going on the front page because they see soccer as a foreign sport.
Things are changing gradually around the sport desks at the Globe and Mail according to Mallett. Since Toronto FC joined the major league soccer this year, Larry Millson, who is a renowned baseball writer/reporter, has now been drafted to cover the team and the league on a full-time basis.
As the soccer fever slowly spreads to the newsrooms, Mallett believes it is only a matter of time before soccer starts to rival the coverage of the National Hockey League (NHL) and the Canadian Football League (CFL).
In the meantime, he urges the Canadian Soccer Association (CSA) to improve the game both on the field and off the field.
“On the field we need to improve our technical ability,” he advised, “and off the field the administration of the game needs a complete overhaul if it is to really transcend and become as popular in Canada as it is in other countries.”
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