Matt Lam may be gone (for now) but he's definitely not forgotten. Lam is a member of JEF United — for this season at least — but the team that loaned him out will try to turn the Canadian midfielder’s move to Japan into a public-relations coup. FC Edmonton plans to keep its fans updated on Lam's progress in the Japanese second division.

FC Edmonton is looking more and more like the farm club of JEF United. On Monday, the club announced that local product Matt Lam will leave on loan to the Japanese second-division side, following former FC Edmonton coach Dwight Lodeweges and Dutch veteran midfielder Sander Van Gessel.

While the rotten smell left behind by the voting process for the 2018 and, especially, the 2022 World Cups is still strong in FIFA’s Swiss headquarters, there is one bit of good coming out of the Qatar bid. And that’s the continuing rumblings that the tournament will have to be held in January — to give the players and fans a reprieve from the Qatari summers, where temperatures regularly soar past 40 C. Because, once and for all, it would smash the notion of the “international calendar,” a large truck of snake oil that has been pushed onto the world’s footballing community by rich, European clubs.