Canadian national-teamers Desiree Scott, Emily Zurrer and Julian de Guzman posed in the team's new kits Friday. The new Umbro kits were unveiled at the flagship SportChek store at West Edmonton Mall.

All you do is this: If you would spend $500 a ticket (yes, I know some tickets would be less, some would be more, but this is a good median figure), then go down and click off a box that corresponds to your region. Please don’t vote more than once. I have this poll policed, but technology is never 100 per cent efficient.

Issue 5 of Plastic Pitch, out now, represents our most pain-staking effort. This issue is a labour of love, of passion for the Canadian game — and asks questions about our Canadian identity within the game. It should easily become the most talked-about issue we’ve put out.

Lowball contract offers. Teams that don’t want to “waste” precious international roster spots on a Canadians. A player being told that he’ll get a chance to make a team once he gets a U.S. green card. These are the realities of Canadians trying to play in North America. In NASL and MLS, Americans are allowed to be treated as domestic players on Canadian teams. But, on the American teams, Canadians are treated as internationals. Here’s a look at the domino effect of roster inequality in North America...

When the NWSL was founded, the Canadian Soccer Association was in on the ground floor; the CSA agreed to subsidize the contracts of 16 Canadian players, who would all be assigned to various teams in the new women’s league. But, that relationship isn’t quite as rosy as it was a couple of years ago — and Canada is no longer using its full allocation...

Former CSA president Dominique Maestracci accuses MLS of breaking promises it had made to the association; and he says the relationship with the USSF was not a cooperative one...

We don’t currently have a true Canadian professional league to call our own — but, what can we learn from those who tried to launch national soccer circuits in previous decades?

Canada has only qualified for the World Cup once — in 1986. But, thanks to a bunch of players who had honed their skills in the Canadian Soccer League, a scrappy and determined national team got very close to making it to USA 1994. That represented the last time Canada got close to a World Cup. We wonder what would have happened to us if the first-division Canadian league would have survived...

An American soccer expert explains why, despite some pretty noble intentions, that his nation’s leagues and federations aren’t ever going to be decent stewards of the Canadian game...

“Until two to three years ago, the relationship was non-existent,” says Montagliani. “Basically, we were a foregone conclusion to our friends from the south. But we have strengthened our relationship, first with the USSF, and now we have better relationships at the MLS level, and the NASL level. Our relationships are improving but, remember, it’s been just two or three years.”