IIHF World ChampionshipDiscuss International Tournaments like the WJC, Olympics, and World Cup, as they take place, or discuss past tournaments. performances.
Now as the IIHF World Championship is beeing played there's something that crossed my mind concerning the French national team. When I watched France play a couple of days ago, I started to think that they could have a much better team. Maybe this is a stupid question, but what about all the French-Canadian players? There has to be a lot of players from the French part of Canada who aren't good enough to play for Canada, but still good enough to play for France.
I mean, I tend to see a lot of French-Canadians play in the French league and from what I can see, there are three of them in the WC roster. And one of them - Alexandre Rouleau, is even born in Quebec, Canada.
Why isn't it more common with French-Canadians in the French national team?
*Sorry for the ugly mistake trying to make the thread name bold.*
Now as the IIHF World Championship is beeing played there's something that crossed my mind concerning the French national team. When I watched France play a couple of days ago, I started to think that they could have a much better team. Maybe this is a stupid question, but what about all the French-Canadian players? There has to be a lot of players from the French part of Canada who aren't good enough to play for Canada, but still good enough to play for France.
I mean, I tend to see a lot of French-Canadians play in the French league and from what I can see, there are three of them in the WC roster. And one of them - Alexandre Rouleau, is even born in Quebec, Canada.
Why isn't it more common with French-Canadians in the French national team?
*Sorry for the ugly mistake trying to make the thread name bold.*
All of those franco-canadians first have to play in France league for two years. So, first you need few rich clubs that can sign, at least, ECHL "stars". Everything below that you can find in your backyard. I think France used a lot of their canadians in 90-s, but once when they got relegated to Division 1, back in 2001. they switched to "domestic" mode.
Do they even understand eachother when they speak, IIRC the two french accents are almost different languages, the quebec french sounds like french in france some hundred years ago
They have been seperated for too long. Believe it or not during WW1 (and WW2 to a lesser degree) there was a lot of protest in Quebec about going to fight in France, mostly it was English Canadians who went.
Do they even understand eachother when they speak, IIRC the two french accents are almost different languages, the quebec french sounds like french in france some hundred years ago
I think French Canadians can understand Parisienne French, but people from France have a hard time the other way. The difference in spoken languages is probably not that different than Svenska och Norska.
Though I support Quebec one must remember there were many violent protests to keep Quebec out of WW1 and 2 .During the 70's the FLQ were a terrrorist group that murdered a British Politician.And players like Guy Lafleur were harassed and sent hate mail for not joining the cause.
National team eligibility has nothing to do with ethnic heritage or descent.
To be eligible for a national team you must have citizenship in that country, and have played at least 2 seasons there - regardless if you are ethnically French or not. You can be ethnically Chinese for all the IIHF cares, as long as you meet this criteria.
Quebec has been separated from France for almost 300 years.
Asking this question is like asking why there aren't more Americans playing for the British national team.
Exactly this.
Quote:
Originally Posted by mindfly
Do they even understand eachother when they speak, IIRC the two french accents are almost different languages, the quebec french sounds like french in france some hundred years ago
Yeah, we do understand each other. They aren't even close to be different languages and you don't what you're saying about Quebec's french sounding like hundred years ago... My god!
Nevertheless, there are many accents in Quebec and some might be harder to understand (like Gaspesie, St-Lac Lake, etc...). But the same applies to some regions in France.
Think about UK english and US english. Most americans will have understand everything an englishman says, and vice versa. They will spot some differences, but the main obstacle is the accent.
A texan and someone from Scotland will have more trouble communicating, just like a Quebecer from Beauce region and, say a person from southern France.
I spoke to people from New Brunswick and they had close to no "accent" at all (from a french standpoint)
Nearly everything has been said. You have to play for some yers in the french championship to be eligible which is the biggest problem because if you're good, you ain't going to play in France (most of the French team players don't play in France).
We still have two of them : Alexandre Rouleau and Julien Desrosiers, both born in Canada.
In my opinion, I prefer to have the team we have now, being at our place and not having a lot of canadians. For me, a canadian in the french national team is the same as an american. Okay, they speak the same language as us, but they're still players that haven't had any formation in our country so that sound strange.
Maybe someone at the French federation actually cares about developing the sport in FRANCE and developing FRENCH players?
Maybe.
Quote:
Originally Posted by croAVSfan
All of those franco-canadians first have to play in France league for two years. So, first you need few rich clubs that can sign, at least, ECHL "stars". Everything below that you can find in your backyard. I think France used a lot of their canadians in 90-s, but once when they got relegated to Division 1, back in 2001. they switched to "domestic" mode.
Thanks. Maybe the relegation was a good thing after all.
Quote:
Originally Posted by NicolasH
Nearly everything has been said. You have to play for some yers in the french championship to be eligible which is the biggest problem because if you're good, you ain't going to play in France (most of the French team players don't play in France).
We still have two of them : Alexandre Rouleau and Julien Desrosiers, both born in Canada.
In my opinion, I prefer to have the team we have now, being at our place and not having a lot of canadians. For me, a canadian in the french national team is the same as an american. Okay, they speak the same language as us, but they're still players that haven't had any formation in our country so that sound strange.
Thanks. I do understand that you want as many "real" Frenchmen as possible on the team. Even though the results maybe suffers from it, haha. But seriously, the way it is now is much better long term for France as a hockey country.
Nearly everything has been said. You have to play for some yers in the french championship to be eligible which is the biggest problem because if you're good, you ain't going to play in France (most of the French team players don't play in France).
Even if you didn't have to play in France for two years, you would still have to go and live there to simply get your citizenship, because contrary to what some seem to be assuming, French Canadians are not eligible for French citizenship unless they go and live there.
