Canada's goal pretty much assures that they won't finish as the worst team at the event. They're only one of two teams so far without a point. They'll now finish with a better GD than Qatar. Let's see if they can push on from here to get a result!
So much depends on how Canada sets up. The way they have played against us makes beating them pretty difficult. And I get your comparison to wales in terms of overall talent, but Canada is a lot more dangerous in attack. They just exposed their own weaknesses in a very foolish manner at the World Cup.
Well, that was true for Wales too when they had Bale at the peak of his power. He was far better than anyone England had at the time. Ramsey was on their level at least. I think we'll start bossing them as we should when our young players mature to be productive for both club and country, and we can feel confident enough as a nation to put 4 attackers on the field, including 1 thru the center. Even though Canada's formation and tactics were more conservative, their personnel was actually more aggressive than ours.
I am so torn. I would love to see Canada win a game, but the notion of Morocco sending one of Croatia or Belgium home is delicious. edit: I guess a draw would do that too, so I'm rooting for a draw, officially.
I was almost falling asleep watching Belgium pass the ball around like it was a recovery day practice.
Yes, but we are talking about Wales as they are now, and they have a toothless attack. This Canada team has clear flaws, but they can be very dangerous when they get the tactics right. I was impressed by the job Herdman did in qualifying, but I also thought he got too much praise from this board because he was a bit lucky as well. Now things are reversing and everyone wants to crap on them. I’m enjoying their struggles as much as anyone, but they still represent solid competition for us.
This is the big thing. It's kind of funny how many US fans were applauding Canada's tactics in the first game as how we should play because it was so wide open ... but that's the issue. In Qualifying, I'd also point out that Canada got a bit lucky at times? They played really physical, and the refs let them. They had a decent number of pen+opponent OG, IIRC, and like someone pointed out, the US and Mexico weren't great offensive teams.
For our friendly, I remember looking at their roster and thinking hey, this team is right up there with anyone in the middle rung in talent.
Maybe at the WC, Canada played better teams than in qualifying? Also, memories tend to be tinged by the actual result. I watched several Canada games - mostly cheering for them - and they were winners but the matches were close. I saw several people post things like "Canada crushed Mexico at Azteca" and that wasn't my impression at the time. Canada got fortunate.
I don't know, I feel like there were quite a few of us and journo's who argued that one of the two big dogs was surely going to crash, either Belgium or Croatia, old and slow in the back for the former, old, and erratic for the latter (kings at WC '18, middling clowns for much of Euro '20, kings against in NL. Hard to get a feel for them, one of these teams was gonna go Czech 2006, we just didnt know which). I know I argued before the tournament that this group reminded me of the England group from 2002 where it had England, Argentina, Sweden and Nigeria. No weak teams, 2 world powers, a regional power, and in Sweden, a team prone to deep runs from time to time at tourneys. This group had two world powers, and two up and comers, and my argument with Morocco was that unlike prior Morocco's, this one actually had a legit world stage level attack, and then they went and slept through matchday 1 while Canada was thrilling. All in all, I'm not really surprised at anything in this group other than how badly Canada played after going up a goal on Croatia. Canada performance wise had one great performance, Croatia has one great performance, Belgium has zero and it looks like Morocco has 2. I missed on the surprise team, I thought it would be Canada, but I'm also not surprised that Morocco is almost certainly going to knock Belgium out through this performance and good for them. We need a team representing the Northern Africa/Middle East Community and Morocco will be it.
Canada did have one enormous stroke of luck in qualifying. It was that one in a million goal with a strange deflection/bounce at the endline against El Salvador in January. A draw or loss in that one would have put the pressure on in the final 3 matches in March.
Can we at least note that Canada got a draw at least 10x tougher than us or Mexico. As I mentioned after the draw, Mexico got if not the worst, two pretty awful pot 3 and 4 sides. We got an awful pot 4 side, and a middling pot 3 side. Canada got a weaker pot 1 side, but a monstrously difficult pot 2 side, and in Morocco, at least a good pot 3 side. Zero weak sides in the group, and if Belgium showed up, this group was 2 powerhouses, and a very high upside Morocco. As much as I like Iran as a dark horse AFC side, they're still at best, third in that region historically the past few decades, and Poland and Wales were easily the worst UEFA entries period while the Saudi's other than their shock against the run of play win against Argentina, were rightfully regarded as the worst team out of the AFC. It's just not comparable. I think they made obvious mistakes in matchday 2 after getting desperately unlucky on matchday 1, but at the end of the day, they had an immensely difficult group to get out of. What bums me out is that the performance fell off so badly after the first match. I don't doubt that in some ways they're learning the lessons Panama learned in '18, that concacaf is a poor teacher for when it comes to true international competition, and the fact that we played so poorly against them didn't help either. It's a shame they tumbled out of the U20 competition last summer because they could have really used an Olympic birth 18 months from now. Otoh, they've signed up for Copa America '24, so that will be an excellent competition to battle test them for hosting duties 3.5 years from now. Very odd note on it. Apparently Ecuador has known it was hosting for a decade, but eventually declined last month and Peru is trying to host instead. That will be a unique experience for Canada. What altitudes are the bulk of Peru's stadiums? I imagine most of them are closer to sea level that they'd use but I could be wrong.