BEHIND THE PLAY #57

So many international games this past weekend and into this week, including two I was supposed to be at. I’ll look at Canada at the just played CONCACAF Nations League finals and why that and other games interest more than is natural.

World Cup 2026: Canada prepares, part 2

Having already announced exhibition games against Wales and Romania away in September, the CSA recently announced a four team, “Canadian Shield” tournament in November in Toronto at BMO Field featuring Ivory Coast, Ukraine and New Zealand. Our games will be against the first two.

Two things are clear from this. As much as we all got hooked on playing the top teams in the world last year at the Copa America and in preparation for it, everyone we choose to play in the run up to the World Cup should, and apparently will, be based on the sort of teams we need to be able to beat to get out of our group. Advancing out of our group needs to be the goal.

We will be the top seed in our group and playing at home. Both are huge advantages compared to being the bottom seed as we were in Qatar. There will be no Argentina, England, France etc in our group as they’ll be top seeds themselves. The teams being picked for future games are likely second or maybe third seed teams. While not necessarily glamour games, they are the level we need to familiarize ourselves with and it’s good to see we have opponents that will present quite differently in teams like Romania, Wales and Ivory Coast.

My guess is that the only exhibition games we will schedule away after this fall may be one or two in Mexico to prepare for CONCACAF away game weirdness if we advance and end up playing in one of the three Mexican host cities.

At the team roster level, we had two more challenging opponents in Mexico, last Thursday, and the USA, on Sunday and Jesse Marsch used those games to get some first looks at players and, perhaps some last looks at others.

Perhaps the toughest job a national team coach preparing for a World Cup faces is walking the line between getting the players to bond and feel like a cohesive unit even though they only train and play together every few months and doing this in an environment where they also know they are competing for places on the roster and playing time. Find harmony and success in that equation can be very difficult. The pool of players in contention is over thirty, the final roster size is 26 (based on the Qatar World Cup) and only eleven can start. It’s competitive and Marsch will have to give many of these players crushing news at some point. They know that and they know that while the pursuit they’re involved in needs to demonstrably be 90% co-operative, it’s also 10% desperately competitive with those same people. Managing that dynamic is brutal.

So through the lens of this tournament being an important part of the team’s preparation for the World Cup let’s look at some specific choices Marsch and his staff made in the two games against Mexico and the USA.

Dayne St Clair played both games. Regardless of how you feel about Maxime Crepau or St Clair, this was the smart and necessary thing to do as St. Clair needs to be seen as a legit contender for the starter job. It’s healthy to have that competition and it’s necessary for both to play in meaningful games against quality opponents. The second Mexican goal off a free kick was the result of a poorly set wall. St Clair is responsible for the wall. He sets it to cover the near post and positions himself to cover the other side of the goal. The shot comfortably curls around the wall and goes in on the near post. St Clair also did not look good on the US goal but was not nearly as culpable on this one. He got a leg/foot on the ball but not enough to stop it going in. This goes down as ‘unfortunate’ for him but keeping it out would’ve been seen as remarkable and him as a difference maker. I’ve thought for awhile that St Clair would be my first choice as keeper but it’s still a competition and these two games didn’t buoy his stock as the starter.

New strikers. Daniel Jebbison and Promise David, two players that Canada invested time and resources in to get them to change their national team eligibility, from England and Nigeria respectively, were in the squad for these games. So was Tani Oluwaseyi who scored the first goal against the USA. Jebbison came on in the game against Mexico. David did not get to play. Just as there should be competition amongst the keepers, there should be challenges for Jonathan David and Cyle Larin, our two prinicipal strikers. More on Larin below.

The back four. Experimentation with Alphonso Davies’ role will hopefully end soon. Yes, in games where we are chasing and need a goal it makes sense to give him license to go forward but he needs to accept that his primary job on this team is as a left back. If he focuses on this we are very strong across the back based on how well Derek Cornelius and Moises Bombito have been playing together recently. Bombito, for me, was our best player against the USA. Alistair Johnston is as reliable as defenders come and being included in the FIFA long list for Player of the Year, along with just 21 other defenders, speaks to that. Bombito played today like this was the last game before the World Cup started and he wanted to be sure his name was on the starting eleven. It will take either someone really surprising us all or something unfortunate (ie a serious injury) for anyone to convince me there’s a better option than these four.

Players of concern. Tajon Buchanan has got to get substantial game time in at the club level. This season at Inter he did not play in any of their 10 Champions League games (injured for 3, on bench for 5, not in squad for 2). In their 31 Serie A games before being loaned to Villareal in Spain he didn’t start a game. He was subbed on in six and was injured or not in the squad for the rest. Total playing time was 89 minutes. At Villareal it’s only slightly better. In the six games he’s been there he’s started one and come on as a sub in four others for 113 minutes of play.

Cyle Larin has played in 23 of Mallorca’s 28 La Liga games (starting 16), he only has five goals. In his last 20 games for Canada’s he’s scored just two goals. These were against Panama in a friendly and Trinidad in a CONCACAF Nations League game.

I’m not sure where Jonathan Osorio fits into this team anymore. He really struggled in the game against Mexico last Thursday completing just seven passes in the 61 minutes he played as a wide midfielder. He’s 32 now and will be 34 when the World Cup is on in 2026. Jacob Shaffelburg is a considerably better option wide on the left and it seems that Marsch has no intentions of playing Osorio as a central midfielder any more.

I’ll be doing an update in the next BTP (out April 7) to the CanMNT Player Tracking Form I made recently.

A great week for distractions

This international break had interesting games galore on and I took advantage of it. Our club helped promote a showing of the Canada v Mexico game at the Hollywood Theatre in Vancouver last Thursday so it was cool to go watch that game on a massive screen with 300 others. Then I went to go see Argentina vs Uruguay at a bar with a friend the next day and followed that by watching the Whitecaps game against Chicago on Saturday night. Sunday was a full day with Scotland v Greece and then a good chunk of Spain v Holland before the Canada v USA game.

That’s more than I’d normally watch in that span but it helped take my mind off the fact that I was supposed to be in Uruguay watching that game against Argentina and then whipping over to Buenos Aires to see the granddaddy of all international rivalries, the Superclassic…Argentina v Brazil at Estadio Monumental in Buenos Aires. We were days from booking our flights when I got the worst text I’ve had in a long time…

My buddy blew out his Achilles. Right off the bone. Hard to complain given how lucky I’ve been to see many great games around the world but when I apply the standard I use for trips like this: meaningful games involving top teams in iconic stadiums in great cities; this one would’ve been near the top. Oh well. Definitely helped ease the pain when they announced Messi wasn’t going to be in the squad for these games.

Behind the Play Issue #58 out on Monday, April 7