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Alphonso Davies in Canada national team jersey (stock image, 2021)
Photo: HENRY ROMERO/ REUTERS
A players' strike by Canada's national soccer team prevented Sunday's World Cup test against Panama.
A few hours before the international match in Vancouver kicked off, the Canadian association announced in a brief statement that the game would not take place.
Shortly thereafter, the North American team announced that they had decided to cancel after failed negotiations over compensation payments.
“We want to work with our association, but the relationship has been strained for years.
And now Canada Soccer has treated our team with disregard and jeopardized our efforts to raise standards and advance football in Canada," the players, led by Bayern Munich full-back Alphonso Davies, wrote in a statement.
It continued: "We hoped that qualifying for the World Cup would bring our team a level of respect and financial opportunity that would raise the standards and opportunities for the next generation of players in our country and the path of football in Canada could be changed forever.«
Among other things, the players are demanding 40 percent of the prize money for participating in the World Cup in Qatar after the Canadian men's national team qualified for a World Cup finals for the first time in 36 years.
Canada Soccer initially “unnecessarily protracted the negotiations” and only submitted an inadequate offer on Thursday, according to the Canadian professionals.
The team also called for an "equal structure for our women's national team" with an equal share of the prize money at the respective world championships.
It is hoped that the dispute with the association will be resolved by the Concacaf Nations League game against Curaçao on Thursday, it said.
"We are brothers, we fear nothing," the players signed the paper.
Women demand equal pay
The desire for equality is also reflected in a statement by the much more successful Canadian women's national team, which differed from the men in their demands: the Olympic champions from Tokyo stated that they wanted to work with Canada Soccer and the men's national team.
At the same time, they emphasized that "equal percentage participation" of the respective teams is not the same as "equal pay" and should not be accepted.
The Canadians apparently have a similar deal in mind as the US players have already been able to realize: In the USA, the men's and women's national teams for the 2022 World Cup in Qatar and 2023 in Australia will be paid equally, although in the men's tournament with a total 440 million US dollars, significantly more prize money is distributed than in the women's competition (60 million US dollars).
The US soccer players are much more successful than the men, have won four Olympic golds and four World Cup titles, but were paid significantly less.
In Canada, women have participated in all World Championships since 1995.
Their best result was fourth place in 2003, they last qualified for the round of 16 in 2019.
There is conflicting information about how much Canada Soccer wants to concede to each team and how much the men's national team is asking.
According to the association, men and women were each offered a share of 30 percent of the total amount, after initial media reports had put the figure at just ten percent.
At the same time, the association claims that the men's national team originally aimed for a share of "75 to 100 percent" in the prize money for the World Cup in Qatar instead of the 40 percent that has now been communicated.
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