Best of the Rest Archive

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Toronto to host massive soccer festival in August… for a good cause

We have seen road hockey tournaments that raise funds for charities. Same goes for the running community. On any given weekend in any Canadian city, you can jog or run to raise money for a good cause. There have been attempts at playing the world’s longest hockey games, there have been cycling events for charity.

But what about the soccer world?

In August, Toronto hosts what organizers call the “world’s first epic mass participation, grassroots soccer fundraising event.” The Festival of Football aims to gather clubs that encompass a variety of age and skill levels Aug. 18 at the Eglinton Flats Premier Pitches. The funds raised are earmarked for the West Park Healthcare Centre. More than 100 teams are expected to play in a six-on-six format.
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SFU coach Alan Koch to coach Canada at Maccabi Games

Alan Koch, the architect of Simon Fraser University’s soccer program, is taking on a new challenge. He will coach the Canadian team at the 2013 Maccabi Games.

The Maccabi Games are a world athletic competition open to Jewish athletes, and Canada will be sending men’s and women’s teams in a variety of age groups. Koch will helm the Canadian men’s open team, which is expected to have a few notable native sons in the lineup.

Koch led SFU to an 18-0-1 record in the school’s provisional NCAA Div. II season, and the Clan finished the year as the No. 1 ranked Div. II school in, ahem, the United States.
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BACK IN BLACK: WIN a new FC Edmonton home jersey

Congratulations to Larry Eloy, who has won our FCE jersey contest!

FC Edmonton has a new look for 2012 — and The 11 wants to outfit a lucky reader in a new home black Adidas FCE jersey!

Black with a blue chevron piping, FCE’s new shirt gives the club a unique look amongst the other NASL teams and their Amway Canadian Championship rivals.

On the weekend of the Apr. 22 home opener, The 11 will select a lucky follower and send out a brand new jersey to the winner.

How to enter? Easy. The contest is open to everyone who “Likes” The 11 on Facebook. So head over to our Facebook site, click “Like,” and you are entered. All entrants must be on the like list by noon MT on April 21, 2012. For more on the contest, CLICK HERE to our redesigned Facebook page, and then click through our Back in Black icon.

(Thanks to Edmonton Supporters’ Group for designing such a great “Back in Black” logo — we couldn’t have done better ourselves)

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The 11′s top 11 stories of 2011

The editor of this site is a self-professed geek. And, unlike almost every other writer I know, I enjoy crunching numbers.

So, when it comes to picking the year’s best stories, I let the numbers speak for themselves. I went back through Google Analytics and looked at the 11 stories you, the readers, kept reading and re-reading.

You can argue that a story put up in January has had more time to accumulate hits than a story slapped up just a couple of weeks ago. But, in truth, most of the traffic generated by stories happens in the first week after they go up.
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Does Australia’s radical soccer reform hold lessons for Canada?

You can draw a lot of comparisons between Australia and Canada. We are both Commonwealth nations, with small populations relative to our land masses. Australia has about 23 million people, Canada has 34 million.

Ask any foreigner to name any urban centres outside of Canada or Australia’s top three or four cities, and they’ll struggle.

Soccer in both nations takes a back seat to other more popular mainstreams sports; in Canada, we have hockey. Australia has rugby, Aussie Rules football and even cricket. In fact, you can argue that, in Australia, soccer has less of a hold than it does in Canada, as A-League teams generally draw fewer fans per game than the Canadian MLS teams (albeit that Australia does have its own professional league).

So, with so much to compare the two nations, can Canadian soccer fans draw anything from Football Federation Australia’s new strategic plan? (CLICK HERE TO READ IT)

In Canada, reformers speak of changes that will benefit the game in the long-term, but warn we shouldn’t expect widespread success for a couple of World Cup qualifying cycles to come. Australia has done the opposite — it has set some heady goals for its federation.
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Nakajima-Farran’s Roar has record streak halted

Issey Nakajima-Farran

The streak is over.

After scoring two goals last weekend to help the Brisbane Roar set an Australian team-sport record with its 36th consecutive game without a loss, Calgary’s Issey Nakajima-Farran and his teammates fell 2-0 to Sydney FC, Sunday.

Sydney’s Dimi Petratos scored just 36 seconds after kickoff and was up 2-0 before the 20-minute mark, thanks to a shot from former Blackburn Rovers’ regular Brett Emerton that took a deflection and was credited as an own goal.
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Calgary’s Nakajima-Farran helps Roar set Australian record

Issey Nakajima-Farran scored twice this weekend. PHOTO: BRISBANE ROAR

Calgary’s Issey Nakajima-Farran made a massive contribution to the Brisbane Roar’s quest to remain the Invincibles of Australian pro soccer — and to become the Invincibles of all Australian team sports.

Nakajima-Farran, who signed with the Roar ahead of the 2011-2012 A-League season, scored twice this past weekend as Brisbane scored four first-half, then cruised to a 4-0 win over the Perth Glory. The win gave Brisbane a new Australian record (in all team sports) for longest unbeaten streak — the Roar haven’t lost in 36 games, a streak that goes back to the 2010-2011 campaign.

The Roar broke the record of 35 consecutive games undefeated set in 1937 by Eastern Suburbs of the NSW Rugby Football League.
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Schrijver talks about his Edmonton return, Matt Lam and what went wrong at JEF United

Hans Schrijver

FC Edmonton coach Hans Schrijver sat down and chatted with The 11 about his decision to come back to the club, his dismissal at Japanese side JEF United, and about how much the team has progressed in the year that he was gone.

Schrijver was Dwight Lodeweges’ assistant in 2010, when FC Edmonton was born. But, after a season of friendlies, Lodeweges and Schrijver accepted a lucrative offer from JEF United, and recommended that Harry Sinkgraven take over as FCE’s new coach in time for the club’s first NASL season.

But, as FC Edmonton played their first NASL season in 2011, Schrijver and Lodeweges — along with Matt Lam, the local product loaned out by FCE to JEF United — were facing tough times in Japan. They were fired before the end of the season. Schrijver then made the decision to return to Edmonton to be an assistant under Sinkgraven, the very man he had recommended for the job months earlier.
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The 11 celebrates its first anniversary… a little late

I didn’t realize that The 11 had been in existence for over a year until I cracked open my analytics pages and realized I had a new section: The top “Older Than 1 Year” posts.

So, the editor missed the site’s first birthday.

The 11 launched on November 8, based out of a sort-of pledge I had made to myself a in the wake of a post-World Cup column I had written for the Sun chain. (That column is here). I wanted to focus more energy on covering Canadian players. I didn’t want to be yet another Canadian journalist who acts as a far-off EPL pundit. I wanted to be part of a cultural shift where the sports news would show the Canada highlights ahead of the latest England game.
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Edmonton’s Lam gets the start as JEF United plays for first time since earthquake

Matt Lam

Edmonton native Matt Lam started and played 62 minutes for JEF United as Japanese football got back on its feet Sunday.

Lam, on loan from FC Edmonton to the second-division Japanese side, which is one of the favourites to earn promotion back to the top flight, got the start in a 3-0 win over FC Tokyo. It marked the first competitive game for either team since the devastating earthquake and tsunami killed tens of thousands in Japan.
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