A B C D
E F G H
Nats are out of control
You're a player on Canada's national soccer team. You and just about everybody you know on the team has, at one time or another, sacrificed salary, starting spots and more to play for your country, even when it's been lower than a snake's belly in a wagon-wheel rut like it is right now. You've flown back and forth, back and forth from Europe 16 times in the last two years. You do it for your country. And you do it for your teammates.
You arrived here yesterday to prepare to play mighty Mexico Sunday at Commonwealth Stadium to find out two rats have deserted their sinking ship.
ONLY ONE QUESTION
Tomasz Radzinski and Paul Peschisolido, arguably their best two players, aren't going to be here to play in the only place in the world where you win, the only place in this qualifying round where you've won.
You have only one question.
"How do you pick and choose your games?'' says Craig Forrest, the West Ham United English Premier League goalie who three times has come to play for Canada only to go back and find his back-up playing first string in his place.
"I'm not sure what all the things involved here are. At least I know with Paul that he wants to play for Canada. I know that he loves playing for Canada. Still ... it's disappointing anytime it happens, no matter who it is or what the circumstances which are involved.''
There was a twist yesterday on the Paul Peschisolido scenario.
Coach Bobby Lenarduzzi had agreed to not force him, under FIFA rules, to play in this return leg of the game which drew 105,000 people in Azteca Stadium this spring in Mexico City. A financially lucrative deal with Fulham was pending for the West Bromwich player.
But the deal didn't go through on the weekend and that means Peschisolido should have been on the plane.
He was a no-show. Instead, there was a fax in the hotel room of manager Les Wilson saying he'd been injured and wouldn't be fit to play this weekend.
Many players feel Radzinski lost interest in playing for Canada when our heroes went through their first four games without a win and without a goal.
And the No. 1 reason why they didn't win a game or score a goal was Peschisolido getting ejected early in a game against El Salvador and suspended for the next two.
DOESN'T HE OWE THESE GUYS?
Shouldn't he be here, at the place headline writers came to call St. Paul's Cathedral for the scoring success in Commonwealth Stadium where Canada has only managed to lose one game, and that one on a last-minute goal by Chile in a Canada Cup?
Even if he flies over here as a spectator and proves to all, first and foremost to his team-mates, that he's actually hurt?
This ought to be cut and dried.
At the start of every year you make a commitment to Canada or you don't. If you make it, you come to play no matter what.
"When Paul called me Thursday, he said his playing for Canada was holding up a financially lucrative move,'' said Lenarduzzi.
"I wasn't happy. However, I made a deal with him that if he didn't make the move by the weekend, and with West Brom not playing this coming weekend, I expected him to be here. He said, `No problem.'
"I received a call from his wife saying he played this weekend and injured his knee. The fax said it was swollen.''
Radzinski, if you'll remember, was injured and unable to play for Canada's Under-23 Olympic team in the qualifying tournament here last spring. And he missed early qualifying games for Canada this year with injuries.
"He played in our September game in Jamaica,'' said Lenarduzzi. "Then we went back to Florida. And I'm hearing players say he's decided he wants to go home. At the end of a practice he said he was injured. Our doctor felt he'd be fit for game day.
"We took him to El Salvador and I had a chat with him there. I asked him if what I'd heard from the players was true, that he had decided he wanted to go home. He admitted it. I didn't need to hear more.
VERY DISAPPOINTED
"I told him I'd dress him for the game but I wouldn't select him to play. And then I called him when he got back, after he played 90 minutes for Germinal Ekeren in a win over Red Star Belgrade in the Cup Winners Cup three days later, and told him I wouldn't be asking him to play any more games for Canada this year.
"In my coaching career, I have never been more disappointed.
"He asked me to miss the Costa Rica game here in Edmonton because he had the Belgium Cup final the same day. I saw that as a unique situation. I told him to stay there and win his game and we'd go to Edmonton and win ours,'' said Lenarduzzi of Canada's only qualifying win so far.
So who's to blame?
LENARDUZZI!
You have to have one rule. No exceptions. You sign on, you show up.
It's like small-market NHL teams with the big teams submitting big-buck offer sheets to steal their star players. You have to match them. If you don't, you declare open season on yourself.
Just say no, Bob. No exceptions. Ever.
NEXT ROUNDS: Round of 16 || Quarter-finals || Semi-finals
GROUP A: Brazil, Morocco, Norway, Scotland
GROUP B: Austria, Cameroon, Chile, Italy
GROUP C: Denmark, France, Saudi Arabia, South Africa
GROUP D: Bulgaria, Nigeria, Paraguay, Spain
GROUP E: Belgium, Holland, Mexico, South Korea
GROUP F: Germany, Iran, United States, Yugoslavia
GROUP G: Colombia, England, Romania, Tunisia
GROUP H: Argentina, Croatia, Jamaica, Japan