Moral victories no longer enough for Canadian men

Opinion

In tournaments at the highest level of world football (sorry, Gold Cup), the Canadian men’s national team has played seven matches – and lost them all.

Now, they’ve also come up against some elite opposition in those two competitions and part of a third. There was the Soviet Union and Michel Platini’s France in 1986, and 18 months ago in Qatar they faced Belgium and Luka Modric’s Croatia.

For Thursday night in Atlanta, in the opening match of the 2024 Copa América, they were assigned the greatest player in history and World Cup holders Argentina. Two hours later, quite predictably, they suffered that seventh defeat.

Yet Argentina suffered too. It wasn’t until the 88th minute that the all-timer Lionel Messi put Inter Milan striker Lautaro Martinez through to score an insurance goal and secure the three points. Canada had a number of meaningful chances, and a 1-1 or 2-2 draw would hardly have flattered them.

At the same time, this is a group for whom showing up and winning the occasional moral victory is no longer sufficient. Not for the players, and not for the fans.

So, what do we do with this? With the record? With the two goals (and one an own-goal) from those seven outings? How are we to frame this moment in the story of Canada’s men’s team?

The next few days will not only show us, but also set the mood for a 2026 World Cup of which Canada is co-host.

On Tuesday (5 p.m., TSN), the men will take on Peru in their second Group A match of the Copa América. It won’t be an absolutely must-win scenario, but they’d no doubt prefer to approach their June 29 match against Chile (7 p.m., TSN) with a notch in the victory column.

Still reeling from a disastrous 2023 during which they won just a single match from 10, Peru are dead last in World Cup qualifying and have scored only once through six rounds. Performances in friendly matches have improved under new manager Jorge Fossati, but the fact remains if Canada can’t conquer La Blanquirroja they don’t much belong in the Copa knockout stages, anyway.

They should expect to beat Peru. The venue, Kansas City’s 21,000-capacity Children’s Mercy Park, will also serve as an advantage – the quieter, more modest surroundings in sharp contrast to the loud, at times bombastic, 71,000 mostly Argentina supporters inside Mercedes-Benz Stadium. They’ll feel they have more control.

They’ll also have more of the ball.

Incoming Canada boss Jesse Marsch, hired 40 days ago, has paired Porto’s Stephen Eustáquio with Watford’s Ismӓel Koné in a midfield tandem that combines distribution and smarts with strength and ball-winning ability. The two helped their side retain nearly 50 per cent possession in a recent friendly away to France, and on Thursday they didn’t look at all out of place opposite Leandro Paredes and Rodrigo De Paul. They’ll be more than a match for Peru’s Sergio Peña and Wilder Cartagena.

If the Eustáquio-Koné partnership was an obvious one to make – they’d already played together several times – the Derek Cornelius-Moïse Bombito duo was rather less so.

Marsch’s predecessor, John Herdman, mostly relied on Kamal Miller and Steven Vitória to mind the centre of defence, but upon his appointment the former Montreal Impact, RB Leipzig and Leeds manager went in a totally different direction.

Whatever it was he saw in the hypothetical combination, he worked closely with the Malmo veteran Cornelius and Colorado Rapids late-bloomer Bombito to put together a sturdy, confident shield that since its creation has kept the Netherlands, France and Argentina at bay for three-and-a-half periods. Cornelius might have been Canada’s best player on Thursday, and Bombito gave Messi no quarter.

Peru strikers Paolo Guerrero and Gianluca Lapadula are 40 and 34-years-old, respectively, and will find space and time in short supply in Kansas City.

Marsch deserves immense credit for putting Cornelius and Bombito together, and they won’t soon be separated. The 50-year-old may be creative in choosing his team — Liam Millar’s selection and resulting collaboration with Alphonso Davies is another example — but he is also nothing if not notoriously stubborn.

Now that his lineup is effectively set, the 50-year-old will rarely, if ever, deviate from it. Which is all well and good as long as the starting XI has the energy and concentration to execute his demanding counter-press. However, we’ve already seen the drop-off — and six second-half goals conceded in his three games in charge — when changes are required.

Simply put, Canada have no plan B. Or even an A2. Jacob Shaffelburg may well be an effective substitute for Tajon Buchanan, but it’s a swap that has also become highly predictable. As long as their opponents know exactly what to expect from them, Canada will be vulnerable.

By this time next week, when Chile await in Orlando, we’ll know if the Canadian men remain in the reckoning for the round of 16 and a prospective match-up with Mexico or Ecuador. And, to some extent at least, we’ll have a sense of what the run-up to the next World Cup will look like.

High stakes? Absolutely. Welcome to regular participation in the sport’s biggest tournaments. Now to put that 0-7 record to bed. Because those regular results just don’t cut it anymore.

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