Grant Surridge

Toronto. Via Winnipeg, Prague, Seoul and Halifax.

[Grant Surridge @SCGGrant]

UPDATE: The Alphonso Davies statue in front of my house will be gold-plated and revolve constantly to face the sun.

[Iain Cameron @theiaincameron]

Canada v Qatar is the World Cup's group stage match with the biggest disparity in land size.

Canada covers almost 10 million km². Qatar covers just over 11,600 km². You could fit more than 850 Qatars inside Canada.

Stay tuned for more cutting-edge, geography-based World Cup analysis.

[Lars Sivertsen @larssivertsen]

I feel like the decision to change the format of the sport from two halves to four quarters should have been more widely discussed before it was implemented. Does anyone actually want this?

[The Away Fans @theawayfans]

Marcelo Bielsa: "I am sure that football is in a process of decline.

"It is becoming less and less attractive because what made it the best game in the world is not there anymore.

"If you let a lot of people watch football, but you don't protect the pleasure of what they watch, that favours business, because the business is that a lot of people watch football.

"For me, the introduction of technology like VAR does a lot of harm to football.

"This sport has a particularity: when it becomes completely predictable, it loses its appeal.

"As time passes, as fewer and fewer footballers are worth watching and as the game produced is less and less enjoyable, this artificial increase in the number of spectators will be interrupted."

[Grant Surridge @SCGGrant]

@Kubani7 @24thminute This loyalty stuff has bubbled below the surface of Canadian soccer fandom for decades. There's bad blood out there and it just felt to me like a really dumb idea to poke this bear. That said, the coverage was more positive than I expected. Hopefully we can move on.

[Grant Surridge @SCGGrant]

The irony about this whole shirt-swap-giveaway controversy is that lining up for hours in freezing weather just to get free shit is the most Canadian thing possible.

[Grant Surridge @SCGGrant]

Lol. Shows what I know. I wonder if @CanadaSoccerEN ever actually intended to take the Italy shirts?

[Matthew Scianitti @TSNScianitti]

Hundreds lined up for 'Forza Canada' @CANMNT_Official jersey swap at Cafe Diplomatico. All the jerseys were gone within minutes. Canada Soccer never took the jerseys, they just handed out 2026 kits and posters. Well done 🇨🇦 (viz via @CanadaSoccerEN) @TSN_Sports @TSNSoccer

[Grant Surridge @SCGGrant]

I agree. This is a bizarre move from @CanadaSoccerEN

[Marco D'Onofrio @Kubani7]

This might be one of the quickest ways to turn a fanbase off who more than than likely would have thrown all their support behind the #CanMNT anyways. Big miss on this one.

[Grant Surridge @SCGGrant]

@amato_mike Canada was one shot away from being knocked out in the QFs. Desperation against Finland, too. All 3 games we were the better team by a lot. The eventual dissection of this showing has to focus on why all these games were so close. Keep doing OT, you'll eventually lose one.

[Jeet Heer @HeerJeet]

This is ridiculous misreading of George Grant -- whatever criticisms he had of Diefenbaker he was far more critical of pro-USA elites who wouldn't defend Canadian sovereignty.

[Les Perreaux @perreaux]

The replies to this are a tiny taster of the info ops that will be taking place if / when this happens.

[Grant Surridge @SCGGrant]

Looking at Group J, I have to wonder if there's ever been a World Cup group in which all countries start with the same letter.

[Grant Surridge @SCGGrant]

#CanMNT qualified for the knockout rounds of last summer's Copa America after benefitting from red cards in each of their last two group-stage matches. Yes, this is disappointing, but the project will be judged on what happens next summer.

[Public Citizen @Public_Citizen]

A sitting U.S. Senator was just forcibly thrown out of a DHS presser.

A SITTING U.S. SENATOR was physically stopped from asking questions in an OPEN PRESS CONFERENCE.

This. is. not. normal.

[Mike McIntyre @mikemcintyrewpg]

I’m not sure Gabe Vilardi is going to be able to fix this.

[Grant Surridge @SCGGrant]

The fact that we didn't ever really come close to scoring is probably cause for mild concern.

[Grant Surridge @SCGGrant]

Yeah, we lost. But we did carry the balance of play against a Mexico team with home-field advantage and were denied a crystal-clear penalty that would have changed everything. It's not *that* long ago that this situation would have been unthinkable for #CanMNT

[Garry Kasparov @Kasparov63]

My regular Super Bowl reminder that no, it’s not "like a chess match out there"!

[Grant Surridge @SCGGrant]

@24thminute Do we have drive-by fans for men's basketball? I would assume that if you follow the NBA, you would at least have a sense that these players are objectively good.

[Ben Steiner @BenSteiner00]

From my understanding:

Because FIFA moved the Canada Soccer case immediately from the Disciplinary Committee directly to the FIFA Appeal Committee, Canada can appeal this at the CAS much faster.

It would allow for an appeal to have an impact on the Olympic tournament.

[Lord_Bob @Lord_Bob]

I'm going to keep saying it, the advantage you get from spying on every practice in a tournament is less than that from one dive in the penalty area. It is certainly much, much less than two wins. But a drone is novel cheating, while diving is cheating the TV tells us to accept.