Quote:
Originally Posted by esquire
The column is talking about a NHL team, though... there is a bit of a difference between a national team and a club team. As a Jets fan my goal is to see the team win the cup. I do not care at all where the players come from... even though quite a few pro hockey players have come out of Manitoba, only a few have played for the Jets. If having 20 players from Fujian means we get to have a Stanley Cup parade, then let's have at 'er.
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I was going to mention there is a nuance between a professional club team and a national team for international competitions.
But there is an additional nuance when it comes to the Habs in that the club is kinda like FC Barcelona is for Catalans. The history of the club is basically interwoven with the history of Quebec and indeed of French-speaking Canadians, from the early days when the Maroons where the English team and the Canadiens were the French team, to the Richard riots, to the Hockey Sweater by Roch Carrier, to the Flying Frenchmen image, to innumerable TV series and movies.
That's why there are still decent numbers of Habs fans in small francophone communities on the Prairies, and that until a decade or so ago (maybe a bit more), Radio-Canada still broadcasted every single Habs on the radio from coast to coast.
When you go to Camp Nou in Barcelona, the colours in the seats spell out a giant MAS QUE UN CLUB. That's kinda how the Habs feel for a lot of us.
But contrary to how Barça (for whatever reasons, and I know the situation is different) appears to have nurtured its position as a bastion of Catalan pride (generally putting its money where its mouth is), the Habs have been, well, hit and miss over the years.
This isn't new by the way. There have always been rumblings that the Habs weren't in tune with their Québécois francophone history enough. I could give tons of examples even from the 1980s, and part of the reason the Nords were as popular as they were well beyond the Quebec City area was because of that: the Nords were unabashedly Québécois and francophone as an organization. Even if they had many non-francophone players and stars. But one often got or gets the impression that the Habs are operating in Toronto but with a bilingual PR department and a huge francophone media wolfpack.
I think that's a bit unfair but the perception is there.
Still (realizing again that European soccer is different for all sorts of reasons) but FC Barcelona AFAIK still requires its players to sign its contracts in Catalan, and at last check they had about a half dozen Catalan players out of 20 on their regular squad.
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