⚽️🇨🇦 Ok @OntarioIsSoccer and @League1ON let's get this straight:
▶️ "League 1 Ontario Management" (whoever that is) now gets to be the arbiter of whether or not players 1 or 2 years CHRONOLOGICALLY younger - without bothering to determine whether or not said players are DEVELOPMENTALLY younger - than the minimum age requirement, get to play in your league?
⏩ And the "Exceptional Player Permit" for chronologically/not necessarily developmentally younger players applies only if a player is:
✅ Identified by the biased @CanadaSoccerEN senior or youth National Teams, who don't employ scouts, and who just in the past few years have missed out on identifying dozens of talented young Canadian players - many of whom are currently playing professionally in other countries.
✅ Identified by a @CPLsoccer Club - which also don't have scouts and essentially rely exclusively on their Head/Assistant Coaches for player identification.
✅ Selected by an @MLS Club academy, which once again do not have scouts and - at least in Canada - also rely on a biased identification method which has (also) failed to identify dozens of talented Canadian youth players.
✅ Included in the Ontario Regional Excel Super Centre/ National Development Centre Ontario/ other REX/NDC program/ Provincial Excel program, all of which select their players via the even more biased method of having coaches from the $5000/year "Player Development League" (which Ontario Soccer profits from) tell the higher level coaches who their "best" players are...
❓ And we are supposed to believe that these are the only ways to define an "exceptional talent"❓
🙄 In every serious soccer country in the world, talented youth players are identified by competent, experienced scouts, brought into professional club academies where competent, experienced sports scientists determine their development age and, working alongside competent, experienced coaches, assess whether or not they are competing at the appropriate level developmentally. Decisions about whether or not a younger player should be permitted to "play up" - including teenagers playing with adult/senior teams, which happens quite often - are made by this team of competent, experienced professionals...and somehow, yet again, our incompetent leadership has settled upon a system which:
🚫 Doesn't bother to determine the developmental age of its players.
🚫 Doesn't bother to factor sex-specific developmental differences into their rules regarding age limits.
🚫 Outsources the identification of "exceptional talents" to biased, ill-equipped third parties, many of whose financial interests are in direct conflict with their developmental interests.
🚫 Dishonestly ascribes the rationale for their decision to their alignment with the "principles of Long Term Athlete Development, prioritizing Player Welfare at all times"; if it were really about "player welfare" then why not create sex- and developmental-specific criteria based on current scientific literature, rather than allowing only those players who are part of the programs you can control?
⬇️ Thoughts and comments are welcome, so please feel free to share them!
@effodu Crazy that one would exaggerate so much just for internet clout. I happened to be on this flight from YUL.
Half of what you said did not happen.
@HerosofCanada@YRP How do you figure? The driver with the dashcam was initially in the lane that goes straight. After the accident they make a right turn to likely and hopefully pull over and check on the driver.