The friendly matchdays were removed and all the FIFA breaks are for 2 national team game, but of course teams don't have to play. http://canadasoccer.com/?t=csa_schedule&tid=all&genderId=0 doesn't have Canada playing any friendlies from now to April 28.
Canada announces friendly game with Scotland to be played on March 22, 2017. http://www.skysports.com/football/n...t-easter-road-in-international-friendly-match http://www.sportingnews.com/soccer/...d-in-march-friendly/bpa5yaewepfe15dj6zp8a4jko
you know you are not a big draw when Scotland plays you and moves the match to Easter Road! But thanks for the heads up about this match.
there are highlights at the link of the game http://www.canadasoccer.com/canada-wins-4-2-over-bermuda-to-kick-off-2017-campaign-p160362
yeah it looks bad, it's basically a pre-season friendly. Bermuda look like amateurs and we look like an inexperienced team. but at least that last goal is a good confidence booster to Jackson-Amal.
http://www.concacaf.com/article/canada-pleased-with-new-start-looks-to-future is titled "Canada pleased with new start, looks to future."
New friendly scheduled vs Scotland on March 22. They've beaten us every time. See how it goes for Fraser Aird.
I'm looking forward to this MLS season establishing a core for our program. I think we'll have the most Canadians ever this season, with several of them being young, attacking, dynamic players earning decent minutes.
Canada was up 3 spots to tied with Nicaragua for 117th in the FIFA Rankings. FIFA provides values to two decimal places, which has Nicaragua in 117th and Canada in 118th, but the rankings are done by points rounded to the nearest whole number. Canada is down to 15th in CONCACAF.
Personally, I think that is simply too low for the actual talent level in Canada. I think part of the problem is there aren't enough friendlies to build National Team cohesion.
No doubt. If we played a bunch of matches against #s 14-10 I think we'd come off them with a pretty solid record. Still I think that even with our current players, we're probably, in practical terms #8.
We have, historically, picked our squad for friendlies based on where the match is played....so if it is in Europe we pick the best available squad from primarily Euro teams and the opposite if the match in somewhere in CONCACAF...add in that we are so sensitive to hurting a player's club opportunities that if a player or team asks they not be picked we don't pick them.....the result is that we never seem to pick/field the same squad on a regular basis.....using that formula we could play a friendly a week and never build cohesion.
It would help if MLS would break for internationals. I'm sure though that some countries like Jamaica also face the same issue. I also think that it would be a good idea if we were actually made to qualify for the Gold Cup rather than automatically qualifying. Say instead of the fifth place Central American team and the fifth place Caribbean team competing for the final spot, we should have a three-way home and home competing for the final two spots.
MLS does not have to break...international rules are pretty clear....an eligible player gets released if the international team asks for his release.
It also has to do with the relative number of meaningful games we play and how they add to the FIFA ranking points. A lot of the teams ahead of us in CONCACAF get/have to play a substantially larger number of meaningful games than we do in various qualifying tournaments. This equates to the chance to grab more FIFA points than we can. I think this has the effect of letting some CONCACAF teams show up higher than Canada on the FIFA rankings when, in reality, they probably aren't actually better teams. (Obviously this doesn't apply to the highest ranked CONCACAF teams which actually are considerably better than Canada is.)
Clearly ahead of us: Mexico, USA, Costa Rica, Honduras, Panama Arguably ahead of us: Jamaica, Trinidad & Tobago On par with us: Cuba, El Salvador That's the way I see it anyway. If we did a qualification for the Gold Cup like I suggested above, that would give us an additional four meaningful games every two years.
The CanMNT is returning to Montreal to play Curacao. http://canadasoccer.com/canada-soccer-s-men-s-national-team-to-play-in-montréal-this-june-p160649 At least they're playing at home.