Carving up the national team...again

It's Tuesday, which means John Carver's unhappy with the national team.

Any national team.

Just about every national team.

Last week Carver was miffed that Canada's head coach, Dale Mitchell, hadn't called him to discuss how the two teams would share players, even after TFC training staff helped treat national team standout Julian de Guzman.

This morning Carver complained that the U.S. national team keeps grabbing Maurice Edu for games in which they don't really need him.

Edu, the 2007 Rookie of the Year, will miss yet another MLS game this weekend because of U.S. World Cup qualifying.

Carver says there's nothing wrong with that.

He's more upset that this past Sunday Edu dressed for a U.S. squad that featured only six MLS players, playing about half an hour in an exhibition against Argentina, but missing Toronto's game in Houston.

Carver points out that Houston stars Brian Ching and Ricardo Clark have played for the national team in the past but weren't called up for Sunday's game, so they played against TFC. He thinks the U.S. national team should have done TFC the same favour with Edu.

But since they didn't, Carver came up with a new rule.

No national team games for anyone except for FIFA match dates.

Period.

Yes, Carver realizes that all MLS teams lose players for international games, but he suspects that the CSA and U.S soccer don't respect TFC the way they do more established clubs, leading them to borrow TFC players more liberally whether or not they plan to use them.

"I've got no interest in what happens outside of here," Carver said. "If it's not an international date, I don't care who it is. They're not going. This has hurt Toronto more than anyone else in the MLS."

Hemming and Hawing

Tyler Hemming has signed with TFC.

Again.

You probably remember that the team released him in late April, dropping him from the roster as it signed Oliver Tebily. Evidently Tebily's presence started a chain of events that ended with the team offering Hemming to the developmental roster, with the pay cut that goes with it. Hemming wasn't interested, so the team waived him on April 25.

Both the player and the team seemed to move on.

Less then a week after his release Hemming returned to BMO Field with the New York Red Bulls reserves, but didn't stick with the team.

He later flew to Sweden for a 10-day trial with Hammarby IF, where he says he played well but, couldn't win a job on a squad already stocked with midfielders.

Meanwhile TFC kept making deals, and Jarrod Smith's promotion to the senior squad opened up Hemming's old roster spot, and earlier this week the team phoned to ask if he wanted it back.

Of course he did.

If you're keeping track, Hemming has gone from opening day starter to the end of the bench, to Stockholm and back to BMO Field -- all since the end of March.

At 23 he'd like to settle in and start his career somewhere, but says he's made peace with the itinerant life of a young soccer pro.

"For two years I've been basically living out of a suitcase," he said. "But that's what I signed up for. I could have a 9-to-5 job, but I wanted to to this and I chose to do this."

-- Morgan Campbell

Comments

[Maple Leaf Red]

And that's why I love Carver.

[JJ]

Morgan,

If Carver said he's not releasing anybody except for FIFA dates does this mean he'll be holding Edu and Wynne back from the Olympics? Definitely a question to be asked because FIFA states that clubs are NOT required to release players for the Olympics.

Cheers

[alex]

Props to Tyler for sticking it out.

MLS has to realize if they continue to pay the young fringe players so little and giving them so little contract security, they are giving themselves very little to build on for the future.

Those same second tier players can earn more in the USL or scubbing the benches of 3rd tier european teams than they can on Development rosters. On top of that, a lot of them will turn out to be solid pros.

This isn't minor league baseball, we have competition to worry about.