Turf war

Key players in Canadian mess speak but say little

Ninety minutes was never going to be enough. Two days may have been inadequate. Even if the Standing Committee on Canadian Heritage was fully informed (which they are not), even if the witnesses were fully co-operative (nope), even if the topic was confined to the past few years in Canada Soccer (which have been eventful), the exhumation of soccer in this country could go on for weeks. Bodies have been buried, as it were, and a lot of MPs were more or less digging with their hands.

So, what you were left with was the rough parameters of the field, and missed opportunity. Thursday, two former Canada Soccer presidents testified to the committee: Victor Montagliani and Nick Bontis, along with current chief financial officer Sean Heffernan.

It took two minutes for Bontis to apologize for a comment about Canadian soccer legend Christine Sinclair “bitching” about something, and to detail how the death last week of a stalker who had threatened him had delayed his testimony. It took only a few questions before Montagliani and Bontis were refusing to say how much money they now make from CONCACAF, soccer’s collection of North and Central American and Caribbean nations.

And after that there were only rare moments of clarity. The lack of oversight in soccer over the past 15 years has resulted in a lot of things to ask about: the Bob Birarda sexual assault case that dates back to 2008; the sponsorship and broadcasting rights deal with Canadian Soccer Business in 2019 that has contributed to deep budget cuts for the national teams this year, despite unprecedented team success; the mismanagement of the organization, and the spectre of Montagliani’s enduring influence.

So much to choose from, so little time. Montagliani dodged questions about Birarda, who was allowed to coach girls for 11 years after Canada Soccer released him on favourable terms despite allegations of sexual texts with underaged players; Montagliani is said to be the person at Canada Soccer most closely associated with the handling of the case. Bontis, meanwhile, claimed the board of Canada Soccer needed fancy suits while the men’s team was the only nation not to get new uniforms for the World Cup, because his one suit was really wearing out and he needed a new one. He’s a showman, if nothing else.

And on the CSB deal it was Bontis, of course, who let the most slip.

Bontis is a walking wild card, the type who drops to his knees while trying to belatedly make a deal with his men’s players but climbs the ladder nonetheless. He was named a vice-president at CONCACAF just before he was more or less defenestrated as president of Canada Soccer last month, following a unanimous vote of the provincial federations.

On CSB, Bontis was both preposterous and disarmingly direct. The chief criticism of the deal is that it gave a group of private entrepreneurs sole discretion to renew it through 2037, with only minimal increases in the guaranteed base payment. CSB is comprised of the owners of the nascent eight-team Canadian Premier League, which is still said to be losing money. As one source with deep connections across soccer recently put it to the Star: “I mean, everybody wants (CSB) to be successful. Everybody wants them to invest in soccer. People just don’t want them to be taking it from the national teams to do that.”

But Bontis said his frame of reference while negotiating the deal was that “we need a long time to actually provide resources for a league to sustain itself. Three previous men’s leagues — CNSL, CSL, CPSL — historically all went belly up within that 10-year period.”

Meanwhile, on the payment structure in the copy of the CSB deal obtained by the Star, amounts started at $3 million per year in 2019 — minus any existing Canada Soccer sponsorships, which would be subtracted from CSB’s payment — and only rising to $3.5 million by 2027, the year after Canada is part of hosting a men’s World Cup. The extension of the deal is scheduled to be no less than $4 million per year. Heffernan was asked what formal evaluation was done to calculate that number and any potential rise in revenues over time.

“The analysis I did on the board evaluated the terms the contract forecasted in comparison to what our current sponsorships were at the time,” said Heffernan. “The guarantee was higher than what we were currently receiving and the long-term forecast trend. It’s really a trend line. It doesn’t take any actions as to the increase in valuation; that exceeds my expertise, as I am not a certified business valuator on anticipating future growth.”

Nobody asked if anybody else at Canada Soccer did so, but clearly it didn’t matter. Some former board members have said the $3 million was based on the existing average in the early 2010s, before a down year — the year before the deal was signed. So, the outrageous length of the deal, the ability of one party to unilaterally extend it and the capped payments to Canada Soccer — no matter how successful the national teams became — were a feature of the deal, not a bug.

And that led us back to Montagliani because in the modern world of Canadian soccer, all roads lead to Montagliani.

As president of CONCACAF he is one of the four or five most powerful people in the most popular sport in the world, and the sport is full of whispers about how he is capable of rewarding friends and punishing enemies. Liberal MP Anthony Housefather noted that while Montagliani left the organization in 2017, he still attended Canada Soccer board meetings and the board tried to pass a motion approving his attendance at all board meetings. Bontis, meanwhile, passed a question on the deal to Montagliani, because Montagliani was the architect of the original terms.

Bontis also claimed the gap between initial approval of the deal in March 2018 and a board meeting in December 2018 that made clear it was not complete was due to “smaller, unsubstantive issues, issues having to deal with misspelling and grammar.” And not for, say, extensive and even possibly desperate renegotiation of a deal whose initial terms are believed to have been even less favourable than they eventually became. Hmm.

It was a road map, not a destination, and it’s a shame the committee didn’t just spent 90 minutes with Bontis, letting him roll. Canada Soccer’s bodies remain largely buried, it seems. Thursday, the surface remained only slightly scratched.