Canada's National Dish: Chile, Pepper Spray and a touch of FIFA

With so many Chileans migrating to Canada in the 70s and 80's, it was considered a home field advantage for Chile's U-20 team last night in Toronto, Canada during the semi-finals of the Under 20 FIFA World Cup of Soccer/Futbol. In the end the Chilean team received 2 Red Cards, ejecting 2 players from the Chilean team and leading to a severe confrontation between local police and members of the Chilean team after the match. Many of the players were handcuffed and physically detained inside the stadium after the end of the match.

In front of the Canadian Embassy in Santiago, Chile many people saw the treatment of their national team as discriminatory. Many in Canada, who are not used to passionate expressions of support for a team outside of Hockey viewed the response after the loss by the Chilean team as unorthodox and the Toronto police quickly sought order during the match and after. The view by many in Canada is that the players threatened the overly strict FIFA official at the end of the match and the police quickly responded to the possible threat. In Chile, it was seen by many as a discriminatory response by Canada towards Chile's national team who had a right to be upset at the poor conduct by the official of the match. While FIFA will likely respond to the actions of the young Chilean players and the strict approach by the official, it seems that the end of a fairly exciting U-20 tournament will likely sour much of the progress made during the last 3 weeks of Fair Play as promoted by FIFA since the infamous head butt by France's Zidane during the final of the last World Cup.

With Latin passion being responded to with pepper spray, tasers and batons in Canada, there seems to be moments of controversy at the end of each World Cupat least it will keep people watching.  Oh, and Argentina won against Chile 3-0…almost forgot!