Expert Blogs

Bob Bradley is a wise and sage man.

The U.S. national team coach is highly regarded in the international coaching fraternity, and is considered one of the game's more articulate and intelligent thinkers.

But it was hardly an original thought he expressed when he recently told this reporter that one of the major reasons why he and his players will board a plane bound for South Africa in June is because they played a series of exhibition matches against top opponents that prepared them for the World Cup qualifying campaign.

Exhibition games the key

Bradley gave a great deal of credit to the United States Soccer Federation, the sport's official governing body in the U.S., for organizing a string of challenging friendlies long before the CONCACAF qualifiers even began in June 2008.

"The main reason [the U.S. qualified for the 2010 World Cup] is that we had prepared ourselves well in 2007 and 2008; we did an excellent job of scheduling during those years," Bradley told CBCSports.ca.

"We played against very good teams, we played games in Europe and games that tested us and taught us a lot about ourselves, and I think that really helped us going into 2009 when the CONCACAF qualifiers heated up."

Take note Canadian Soccer Association.

We all know the challenges facing the CSA and the game in this country. CBC Sports soccer commentator and former national team captain Jason de Vos eloquently outlined the major problems during his special blog series Offside: Fixing Canadian Soccer published on this website last year.

In a nutshell, de Vos called for sweeping changes to be made the Canadian system of player development, and stressed that improvements in coaching standards across the country must be made.

Those are all long-term problems that can't be solved over night.

In the interim, one of the simpler issues to address has been the CSA's inability to schedule friendlies against top-ranked opponents on a consistent basis.

Make no mistake about it: this is yet another reason why Canada's national team hasn't qualified for the World Cup since 1986.

U.S. playing more friendlies than Canada

While our neighbours to the south, who are set to compete in their sixth consecutive World Cup this summer, have played a whopping 19 exhibition games since 2007, Canada has played in only 13 in the same time period.

The U.S. has matched wits against the likes Brazil, England, Spain and Argentina. Canada also played against Brazil, but has dieted on a feast of friendlies against teams the calibre of Cyprus, Panama, Estonia and Martinique.

The Americans hosted Sweden in California last January. Canada's previous exhibition match on home soil was in 2007.

Granted, the CSA doesn't have the same budget as the USSF to spend on arranging exhibition games against marquee teams, but they should do everything in their power to raise the cash to make these matches happen.

Thankfully, the CSA appears to have recognized this and are doing something about it.

"We are doing quite a bit of work in the background to get games on a more consistent basis," national team coach Stephen Hart recently told reporters during a conference call.

Baby steps.