The Canadian Soccer Association announced on Friday that Benito Floro is the new head coach of Canadas mens national team. Floro takes over the reigns from Stephen Hart, who resigned after Canadas 8-1 loss to Honduras in World Cup qualifying in October 2012. Floro has over 30 years of coaching experience, including a stint in charge of Real Madrid from 1992-94, and will bring with him a wealth of knowledge gained from around the world. His career has taken him from clubs at the highest level of Spanish football, to coaching positions abroad at clubs in Japan, Mexico, Ecuador and Morocco. Critics of this hire will point to the fact that this will be Floros first job coaching a national team; that he has never had to prepare a team to compete without the relative luxury of the daily contact that is afforded to coaches at the club level. I dont believe that this argument carries much weight; an experienced coach like Floro will be able to adapt to the intricacies of international football with relative ease. In my opinion, his strengths – decades of coaching experience, multi-lingualism (this is a big plus, given the multicultural nature of our country) and a wealth of experience as a coach educator – far outweigh this weakness. Victor Montagliani, President of the CSA, told me this: "Its not just about the 20 or so guys he will be coaching at any point in time on the mens team. He is one of the top coach educators in Spain. While that is not going to be his mandate, he is going to be a fantastic resource for Tony Fonseca in coach education. "He has a presence. Certain guys, when they walk in the room, you take notice. Benito Floro has presence." The presence that Montagliani refers to will help Floro when it comes to coaching the mens team, but I believe that his background in coach education could be where Canadian soccer will see its biggest gain. Floro will be restricted to working with "what he has" on the mens national team, as he will not be in a position to develop players quickly enough to affect qualifying for the World Cup in 2018. He will, however, be in a position to leave a legacy behind if he can also play a role in developing the next generation of Canadian coaches. It is this area where his knowledge and experience will be a considerable asset to Tony Fonseca, the CSAs Technical Director, as Fonseca looks to improve the CSAs coach education program. A key component of that program will be a brand new national curriculum - something that is currently being assembled, and should be fully completed by the end of the calendar year. This is big news. Canada has never had a national curriculum – a resource for coaches across the country to use in training and developing the next generation of Canadian players. All that is about to change. Up until now, player development in Canada has been by chance, not by design. Players had to fight their way through a broken, fractured mess of a development system, which saw too many talented youngsters slip through the cracks. With a national curriculum in place - coupled with the implementation of high-performance youth leagues in our major provinces (to begin with) - we may finally start to see Canadian players being developed by design, rather than hoping for the best. What I like about the way Fonseca is assembling the national curriculum is this: it is being done collaboratively. Fonseca is not force-feeding a document to the provincial associations that was developed in secrecy. Instead, he has enlisted the provincial association technical directors to help write the content. He will have final approval over that content, but much of the workload in creating the curriculum is being shared by the provincial TDs. This allows the provincial associations to take ownership of the document, knowing that their technical staff played a big role in its creation. It also makes it far easier to implement, as the provincial associations will be much more inclined to buy in to something that they played a direct role in creating. The hiring of Benito Floro and the creation of a new national curriculum are positive moves from the CSA, but it is important to take a long-term approach when measuring the benefits of those moves. No one – including Floro – can solve all of our problems overnight. But on Friday, Canadian soccer took a big step forward. And for that, the CSA should be applauded. MLB Jerseys 2020 Online . Then the Pacers gave Oladipo and his Orlando teammates the cold shoulder. 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The Sprint Cup Series season draws to a close, but not before we have one more chance to sit down, enjoy a caffeinated beverage and figure out one more fantasy lineup together.Last week, we went racing at Phoenix. I loved Kevin Harvick with all my heart. He had not just won five of the last six Phoenix races but dominated most of them.Harvick had a decent enough day, finishing fourth for 45 points, sixth-best in the field. But he didnt lead a lap.Another driver led more than half of the race, but it was maybe not whom you expected. Alex Bowman, driving in place of the injured Dale Earnhardt Jr., led 194 laps from the pole and added a race-high 58 fastest laps for 110.5 points, 38 more than any other driver.The kicker is Bowman only cost $6,900, and he has the most points of any sub-$7,000 driver this season by far. The second-best day from a DFS option that cheap was Ricky Stenhouse Jr.s run from 25th to second at Bristol.Bowman was my top bargain-basement special of the weekend. Not that Im patting myself on the back, but sometimes I like to give myself a little affirmation.Anyway, weve got one race to go, and its at Homestead-Miami Speedway. Its another 1.5-mile track, the 11th such race this season. Its not a copy of Texas or Charlotte, but your basic principles that lead to success at those tracks hold true.Another plot twist is this is the season finale, and four drivers will be competing for a championship, with the highest finisher among the four taking the title. This is only the third year with this championship format. How has it affected things in the past?In 2014, three of the four drivers going for the championship finished among the top-four fantasy plays. But it was Jeff Gordon, from the pole, who put up a race-best 104.75 points.Last year, Kyle Busch and Kevin Harvick finished second and fourth as Chase drivers, but both of them were looking up at Kyle Larson, who didnt lead much but drove from 23rd to fifth.None of the drivers had a poor race either, which could make one or two of them excellent fantasy plays this weekend.For more, heres my early-week fantasy picks to get you started at Homestead. But check back after qualifying for my final picks and fades.Im startinng my team with.dddddddddddd..Given that we only run at this track once a year, and even then its under some unusual circumstances as the season finale, its tough to weigh past track performance and the recent showings on similar tracks. But I think the driver whos best weaving those two tapestries together is Joey Logano.In the last 1.5-mile race, Logano led 178 laps and finished second at Texas. Hes had a top-three finish in three of the last four such races. Meanwhile, at Homestead, Logano led 72 laps and finished fourth last year in this race, for 65.5 DraftKings points.Keep an eye on these fourJimmie Johnson: This is a rare track, where Johnson has never won, but in his championship seasons he never really came to the season finale needing to win to clinch a title. Im more interested in the fact that in the four 1.5-mile track races since the start of the Chase, Johnson has twice topped 100 laps led.Carl Edwards: A third driver going for a championship, Edwards has cost less than $9,000 in the last two 1.5-mile track races, so he can fit more easily on your roster than Logano and Johnson. Edwards has won twice at Homestead, and in the last two 1.5-mile track races, he has put up more than 25 fastest laps, 35 laps led, and finished in the top two in both.Kasey Kahne: Four Chase races on 1.5-mile tracks, and its four top-10 finishes for Kahne. And in each of those races, Kahne moved up at least nine spots from his starting position, a combined +54 in those four races. That makes him, on average, the fourth-best fantasy driver.Ryan Newman: An odd little fantasy trend is that in the last six 1.5-mile track races, Newman has been part of the perfect lineup. He enters the weekend on a nine-race stretch of top-20 finishes on 1.5-mile tracks, with five top 10s in the last seven races. Hes not going to give you many laps led -- he has led one in the last 15 1.5-mile track races -- but he is a safe fantasy play.Thats all I have for you today. Check back again this weekend for my season finale. Wishing you a happy offseason filled with scrumptious holiday meals. ' ' '