Behind the Play #64

Skipped last week's because it was a busy time and then switched gears and went away for a week to recharge. Your refunds are in the mail.National team updates this week but it wasn't a good phase for either the men or women.

Men’s National Team Ratings (July 2025)

Here’s the third instalment of who’s up and who’s down on the Canadian Men’s National Team. Based far more on the Gold Cup results than the two exhibition games which preceded it (and were oddly presented as a four team tournament called the Canadian Shield).

It was an odd and ultimately unfortunate Gold Cup for the men’s team. A cathartic 6-0 win over Honduras was a great opener but a laboured 1-1 draw in the next game vs Curacao followed by a workmanlike 2-0 win against an 80’s-style brutal El Salvador put us in first place in our group. It was looking good in the quarter finals when we ended up facing Guatemala but, as is becoming a bad habit, we went out on penalties having gone down to ten men thru a dark arts red card to Jacob Shaffelburg. It was the second penalty shootout we lost in June having also lost to Ivory Coast in the aforementioned Canadian Shield.

Bottom line: Just as we reached our new high water mark in the FIFA rankings (30th) we drew against Curacao, ranked 90th, and went out of the tournament to a team ranked 106th.

Clearly head coach Jesse Marsch was experimenting in the round robin and giving minutes to many players so no one got too tired in what was expected to be a longer campaign than it proved.

Note the differences in the back four each round robin game (left to right):

• Honduras: Sigur, DeFougerolles, Waterman, Laryea

• Curacao: Bassong, Miller, Waterman, Sigur

• El Salvador: Laryea, Cornelius, DeFougerolles, Johnston

Then for the quarter final against Guatemala it was:

• Laryea, Cornelius, DeFougerolles, Johnston

That’s a lot of squad rotation for a back four. Notably as soon as Canada drew level with El Salvador after going down 2-0 and benefitting from two red cads to them, Cornelius and Johnston were taken off and DeFougerolles followed them 20 minutes later. It made it clear that the back four in his last two games was what Marsch was looking to go with in the knockout games.

Clearly there will be a spot for Alphonso Davies when he recovers from injury and Moise Bombito must also be seen as having a starting job there as well given how much Marsch has gone to him since he started.

Smartly arranged fixtures against Romania and Wales in September plus a just announced game against Australia in October in Montreal mean Canada is gaining valuable experience at teams that will likely be #2 and #3 seeds in the World Cup. This is the calibre of team that we will need to be able to get results against to advance. Ukraine and Ivory Coast fall into this category as well.

Women’s National Team (briefly)

After tying World Champion Spain (in Spain) 1-1 after the Olympics in late October the team went on a baffling run of games against lower ranked teams. Yes, they were between coaches and morale was low at this point but here’s the results from those games (to be clear info presented is FIFA ranking, opponent, score):

• #14: Iceland (0-0)

• #19 then, #21 now: South Korea (5-1)

• #17: China (1-1)*

• #29: Mexico (2-0)

• #42: Taiwan (7-1)

• #33 then, #32 now: Argentina (3-0 and 0-1)

• #53 then, #50 now: Haiti (3-1 and 4-1)

• #43: Costa Rica (4-1)

*Indicates Casey Stoney’s first game with the team as manager

Canada was ranked 7th in March 2025 and we are now ranked 8th. I understand a run of games that allows a new manager to experiment freely with players to see what works for her. I do question the need for eight games against teams ranked an average of #38 in the world.

Stoney then went into the game against the USA having seen what the players were like. The starting lineup was not what I was expecting.

This result was coming. For anyone who pays attention to the women’s team, you knew we’d struggle in this game, especially with that lineup. Huitema just can’t be near this squad. There is no history there or scoring goals in meaningful games. I’d really like to know why Leon and Viens didn’t see the field. I’m assuming Olivia Smith is still recovering from an injury incurred in June against Haiti. Fleming, while good, never did blossom into the world class creative midfield force we need. We have been kept afloat recently by Gilles at the back and Leon up front. That’s not enough and this questionable, and prolonged, string of games against teams way down the FIFA rankings has just served to delay this result. It could have easily been 4-0 halfway through the first half. We looked naive, slow and unable to stop the US women from getting in behind our back four and unable to deal with balls played in from wide areas.

Factor in that the average age of our starters was 27. The US? Only 25.

Here’s 15 minutes of us being dominated in the game.

Shank

My close friend, Dave ‘Shank’ Partridge passed away on June 16th after a brutal but spectacularly defiant battle with cancer. He was a player but mainly an assistant coach for the UBC Men’s Soccer team for many, many years and started there while I was playing. In the one year he was head coach, when regular head coach Dick Mosher went on sabbatical for a year, he won a national championship.

Our families are very close so this has not been a pleasant time. I’m writing something longer about Shank but will be running it by his daughters when it’s done to make sure they’re okay with it.

There’s a Celebration of Life for Shank’s soccer community on July 22. If you’d like to attend please email me at [email protected].

Next BTP newsletter: Monday, July 21 (probably)