CREDIT: JONATHON BRODIE
A Toronto Croatia player collides with a London City player in City's home opener this season.

The Canadian Soccer League is a minor league. It's Canada's only 'professional' league, even though it's mostly semi-pro. Clubs are nearly family businesses (including our own London City) and are rarely given any time in the media, until now. Recently, CBC and Metro ran an interesting piece into match fixing in the small-time league. One would ask, why fix the results to bet on such a small league? The answer is, as it always is, money.

The match reporter Ben Rycroft focused his work on a game that featured the Trois-Rivieres Attak and Toronto Croatia in 2009. A bribe of $20,000 was given to four players on the team, yet possibly hundreds of thousands of dollars could have been wagered on that game on major gambling websites, almost all of which have CSL games as wageable ventures.

The CSL has a lot of problems that are almost always visible. The clubs are run by volunteers, owners are sometimes non-existent and the players are constantly being turned over. Some up-and-coming Canadian stars are playing in this league, yet this isn't a very good atmosphere for these players to play in, including here in London.

In fact, transcripts from an interview Rycroft did with an anonymous player who had supposedly been approached with a bribe to throw the game show the player was also approached during a game in London. London City has been marked by a few questionable events this season. Players have been in the door almost as fast as they're out, the manager left halfway through the season (after going to Europe and then telling the club he wasn't coming back) and the new owner based in Hamilton hasn't been around the club or games.

All the while the financing of the clubs has gone into question as well. It was leaked in a wiretap that the men who worked the match fixing in the CSL in 2009 were looking to buy a team. London City is the newest team to be given to new owners.

The problem with the CSL is that no one cares, really. Canadian soccer has blossomed in the past decade or so, but very little to almost none of that growth is being felt by the many small clubs that dot the landscape. Obviously Major League Soccer teams are doing well, but those are only three major markets. This brings me to my next point: the players are suffering the most in this situation. With such little structure and action like this regularly occurring, how is Canada supposed to develop talent outside of the three academy systems? After all, only three proper player academies cannot properly serve the 30 million people in this country and the thousands of soccer players that take the sport seriously.

Hopefully this can be a start to creating a proper league that can produce proper players. The transparency this report brings could very easily clean up the league and the game in this country.