Since Canada easily shed the obstacle of St Vincent and the Grenadines on Friday (caught the first half but had to go to a barbeque), we’re now in the Group of Death, which usually isn’t a big deal, but seriously. This is ridiculous. This is how they compare.

Group A consists of the mighty USA, Trinidad and Tobago, Cuba, and Guatemala.
Group C consists of bloody Costa Rica, bloody Suriname, bloody El Salvador and bloody Haiti. Is this a joke?
And of course, we get stuck with Mexico, Jamaica and Honduras.

Sure, we can handle it. In the first half of our 4-1 win over St. Vinny, we showed lots of really good passing and counters, but the finishing touch was lacking (just ask DDR, he missed from about a yard and a half with no keeper in sight). But this is unfair.

That’s all I have to say for the moment. Sorry for being lazy and not motivated to write anything on this blog for the past couple of months. I’ll try my best to post more frequently, but no promises.

Kosh out suckas.

It’s a special week in at the desk of sports as we take a look at the action that the Canadian National Soccer team took place in.

GOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAALLLLLLLLLLLLL

Canada took on Brazil last week in a game in Seattle, United States oh the irony. Here are some of the highlights.

In the 4th minute Robinho gets football pie all over Stalteri’s shirt and slots the ball to Diego who scores…. 1-0 Brazil.

In the 11th minute Klukowski uses his foot like a tractor engine and gives a long ball that Friend is able to abuse into the back of the net with his grasshopper like jumping skills. 1-1 is the game

In the 44th minutes Fabiano is giving a cross and yes yes yes yessssss yessssss that was a goal, as it squeezes past Onstad. 2-1 Brazil

in the 55th minute… THWACKED that was liquid football as DeGuzman blasts a 25 footer into the back of the twine.

In the 63rd minute … Robinho steals the ball of a bad pass from DeGuzman and the proof is in the pudding and in this case the pudding is a goal for Robinho.

3-2 is your final score in an exciting offensive affair, that showed that the Canadian group has some flair to use for this upcoming World Cup Qualification Campaign.

On Wednesday Canada played a game against Panama in a secure stadium, ala it wasn’t televised, we don’t want those St. Vincent and the Grenadines people getting anymore info than they may already have.

In the 33rd minute Peters forced the Panama goalie to EAT that goal. 1-0 Canada

42nd minute Panama scores on a penalty shot… and Canada is brought back down to reality 1-1

48th minute Garces tells Sutton boof eat my goal, and puts in home giving Panama the 2-1 lead

In the 82nd minute Jazic saves the day and breaths life into Canada when he scores a goal to force a 2-2 draw.
That’s how the game ended and rather ironic as the FIFA rankings have them both tied at 60th in the world.

In other news along the Canadian men’s sports team front.

DeGuzman has a couple of knocks and has spent the week in Toronto getting treatment, according to news reports it is nothing serious and is just precautionary before the big qualification games next week.

The CSA has pretty much decided that if we get past St. Vincent and the Grenadines, that the home games for the round robin qualification will take place in Edmonton, Montreal and Toronto, here’s hoping that they get the tickets in the hand of the Canadian fans so that we can truly show the passion that we have in the country and not allow for what happened last time where we were upstaged by the countries we were competing against on home soil.

Also Mitchell and Carver (Toronto FC head coach) are not agreeing with the players schedule for the national team, though it does beg the question is a club team ever going to be happy for there players to play in international games where they can get injured and be useless… frankly it shouldn’t surprise any of us that they do disagree, if they didn’t it would mean Mitchell wasn’t asking enough from his players.

Also St. Vincent and the Grenadines matchup is now only 1 week away. I’m going to attempt to live blog it if I can find a feed for the game that I have access to and that family affairs don’t get in the way (apparently it’s father’s day). If not I would suspect that the Out of Touch blog will be covering it as well. If not I’m sure he will inform me otherwise.

So that’s what happened in this special week of Canadian soccer, hopefully you will join me soon as the qualification for the World Cup really gets under way.

Join me, Join me

In case you haven’t seen Alan Partridge bit I’ve linked it below, enjoy.

The game is going to take place on May 31st in the late afternoon, the same day that Toronto FC takes on the Beckham extravaganza at BMO field in Toronto.  So circle it on your calendar Canucks fans May 31st is the day for all of us to rejoice and enjoy a day of soccer… I would say I’ll be watching but I’ll be completing an 19 hour drive across Ontario.

So the question is not can Canada win… but how well they play against some of the most talented football players in the world. Also will they get star strucked, or will they give a workmanlike tough performance which will allow them to get ready for their qualification bid against Saint Vincent and Grenadines a couple weeks after the game.

For Canada this game is a big opportunity to play against one of the top teams in the world. For Brazil it will probably allow them to look at some of the younger talent that is in their system and see if they will be ready for the World Cup in 2010.

Canada and Estonia have played once before in March 2003, in which the smaller nation came out on top with a score of 2-1. Canada will hopefully use this game to help figure out the exact lineup they wish to use in their FIFA World Cup CONCACAF 2nd Round qualification for the 2010 World Cup. Since the game is in Europe they will have almost all of there European players on there roster for this game. Estonia is currently ranked 129th in the FIFA rankings while Canada is right now in 62nd place, squished between Cyprus and Belarus respectively.

General lineup as released by the CSA is as follows:

CANADA
1 - G - Lars Hirschfeld - Edmonton, AB - ROM / CFR Cluj
2 - D - Daniel Imhof - Smithers, BC - GER / VfL Bochum
3 - D - Mike Klukowski - Oshawa, ON - BEL / Club Brugge KV
4 - D - Andre Hainault - Hudson, QC - CZE / Sparta Praha
5 - D - Kevin McKenna - Calgary, AB - GER / 1. FC Koln
6 - M - Julian de Guzman - Scarborough, ON - ESP / Deportivo La Coruna
7 - D/M - Paul Stalteri - Brampton, ON - ENG / Fulham FC
8 - D/M - Marcel deJong - Newmarket, ON - NED / Roda JC
9 - M/F - Tomasz Radzinski - Toronto, ON - GRE / Skoda Xanthi
10 - F - Rob Friend - Kelowna, BC - GER / Borussia Monchengladbach
11 - D - Richard Hastings - Vancouver, BC - SCO / Inverness CT
12 - M - Issey Nakajima-Farran - Calgary, AB - DEN / FC Nordsjolland
13 - D/M - Atiba Hutchinson - Brampton, ON - DEN / F.C. Kobenhavn
14 - M/F - Dwayne De Rosario - Scarborough, ON - MLS / Houston Dynamo
15 - D/M - Josh Simpson - Victoria, BC - GER / FC Kaiserslautern
16 - F - Ali Gerba - Montreal, QC - GER / FC Ingolstadt
17 - M/F - Iain Hume - Brampton, ON - ENG / Leicester City
20 - M - Patrice Bernier - Brossard, QC - GER / FC Kaiserslautern
22 - G - Kenny Stamatopoulos - Markham, ON - NOR / Tromso I.L.

It should be noted that only Dwayne De Rosario is the only player currently playing in America that is going across the pond to play the game. Also to note Jim Brennan is not on the roster and I would be honest in saying that it should be no surprise, reminder you cannot talk badly of the CSA, they are great, they can do nothing wrong, running the federation in regions rather than nationally is the way to expand the program. Okay the bitterness ends now.

Hopefully I’ll be able to figure out a starting lineup in the next coming days and post it before the game. As per the norm is anyone has a link for the game post it, as soccer fans we can all benefit of it, and if it’s found I’ll try and do a live blog.

So what’s at stake here, well it’s basically a winner take all to go breath the freshest air in the world at the Olympics in China. Canada hasn’t qualified for the Olympics since 1984, while the US and Mexico are the usual suspects to qualify. This year Mexico stumbled twice to allow Guatemela and Canada into the next round, Guatemala won their game against Mexico, while Canada tied but Canada made it by having an extra goal differential ahead of Mexico. Thank you Guatemala for that 5-0 victory to secure 2nd place over Mexico.

Well this means we get to have a rematch of that gold cup semifinal from this summer, in which we clearly got screwed by the Mexican official. As of this time I can’t find out who exactly is referring the game, I’ll attempt to look some more, but so far no luck, but I highly expect it to somehow be a Mexican(pure irony suggests it). So the all mighty US against the cash strapped Canucks (reminder they almost didn’t make it to the tournament due to lack of funds on the part of the CSA), in a one match winner take all to the Olympics, wouldn’t it be grand if we won it on a botched offside call. I would think so.

So do the U23’s have a chance? Well the US tied Cuba before half the team defected to the States and beat Honduras and Haiti by 1-0 scores. So it hasn’t been the most compelling US team, and the chance is there for Canada to get the win. It will be up to Will Johnson’s tournament leading 3 goals to lead the way for the Canadians.

If anyone has a link to the game on the web could you post it. I don’t think any of the big networks in Canada are covering the game.

Fuck.

Predictably, Jonathan hasn’t spoken to the media since making the decision. To be frank, I don’t think much can be written about the situation without knowing what he has to tell. Of course, there was the bit last week when he told us that he hadn’t made up his mind at all, and he was focusing on his ever-blossoming career at Feyenoord Rotterdam.

Yeah, it pisses me off. Frankly, I couldn’t care less about my country. I’m about as nationalist as a lamppost. But I support the national team with all my heart. If I were at a certain level of talent, I would have the choice to play for Scotland, where my mother’s father was born. And yet I wouldn’t. Why? Well, I was born and raised in Canada, and I’m Canadian, and I don’t see why I would play for anyone else, even if I had a Brazilian grandmother, an Italian grandfather, a French grandmother, an English grandfather, an Argentinian mother and a Nigerian father.

Sure, I guess what I have to think doesn’t really have anything to do with De Guzman’s choice, but whatever. I’ll probably have more objective things to say once he speaks out. Or not. Oh well.

Come on you Canucks!

Of course, the Canadian Soccer Association’s website is not at all useful, so forgive me if you feel I don’t have a Match Of The Day-esque recap for you all, but we Canadian bloggers are deprived of resources like you would not imagine.

What I can tell you at the moment is that the final score was a whopping two goals to nil, with both goals being scored by guys who had never before tallied for Canada, first Montreal’s Charles Gbeke on ten minutes and then Calgary’s Issey Nakajima-Farran on forty minutes. Interestingly, Issey used to play for Vejle as recently as last season.

Player-wise, it’s obvious that the training camp was not chock-full of the best Canada has to offer. Mind you, there were only a few players who could hope to get a start in a Gold Cup match present. We’ve got no clue what the formation was like, but the CSA was nice enough to tell us who started, so here’s more or less what it could have looked like.

—————Sutton (Wagenaar, 46′)——————-
-Cann / Serioux (Ribeiro 65′) / Reda / Pozniak (Jakovic 60′)-
Harmse (Rosenlund 43′) / Williams (P. Nakajima-Farran 80′)
———I. Nakajima-Farran / De Rosario / Nash———-
—————–Gbeke (Simpson 75′)——————–

Basically, this camp was just to have a gander at what Canadian talent was available on our lovely continent. On paper, it looks pretty bad. But with two wins and not a goal conceded, could my skepticism be uncalled for?

So suffice to say last night there was no way of watching the game. So let’s fast forward to today. I expected that there would be some information coming out from the big sports websites, even if it’s an AP writer writing the same story for all of them. Nope not a glimmer of hope on that one. Then I figured well maybe the CSA would tell me something… oh wait it’s the CSA and there ineptitude at not being able to tell me when the game occurs in the first place, or what happens after the game (This is part anger, part frustration at trying to find anything on the intrawebs). Oh by the way I have been now pointed you to a lineup card about it on the CSA website, but wonderfully it takes forever to access, if you have 2 hours to burn and would like to try I have giving you the link to open it up. http://www.canadasoccer.com/documents/Match_trackers/20080130_CanadaMartinique_match.pdf

Anyways I would like to thank thescore.ca which was the only website that had anything on the game, and that was in the footy blog (Canada vs Martinique)… thank goodness it showed up in some forum. Which means I can pass along a bit of information though most of it was untruthful as it decided to bash the CSA like I am doing right now.

Firstly Canada won 1-0…. yes that’s right we won the game, which was expected of us, but it is the first time we have beat Martinique in their stadium and no extra time was needed. Your goal scorer was none other than Dwayne De Rosario. The rest of the starting roster is as follows:

1 Pat Onstad
2 Tyler Rosenlund
3 Paris Nakajima-Farran
4 Adrian Cann
5 Marco Reda
6 Adrian Serioux
10 Martin Nash
11 Charles Gbeke
13 Chris Pozniak
14 Dwayne De Rosario
17 Dave Simpson

And that’s about all the information I can find, if I find any video floating around on youtube I will post it up, if you find anything else. Let me know here on the blog, I’ll be happy to add it. Again congrats to Canada on the win, hopefully next time a bit more information will be more forth coming from the CSA.

But never threat, we found a solution to holding at training camp in Fort Lauderdale and give it meaning by ending it with another friendly. So who’s the lucky opponent, that’s going to listen to a bunch of rowdy snow canucks chant against them in their home country *I’m assuming that is the only group of Canadians down south*.

Well it’s none other than Martinique, the French owned island in the eastern Carribean Sea.  It currently has a population of 401, 000, or about the size of Regina in Saskatchewan.  The game will happen in Martinique on January 30th at 8:00 PM EST in the capital so aptly named Fort-de-France.

So how has Canada fared when playing them before, well currently they are 1 win and 1 draw against them, both coming during the gold cup. A 2 - 1 win in the 2002 Gold Cup quaterfinals, the victory coming on penalty kicks, and in 1993  a 1 - 1 draw occurred. So suffice to say a draw would be a likely expectation.

Hopefully in the coming days I’ll come across the expected roster for this matchup for both squads, but currently haven’t unearthed the information.  Until then, happy Canadian soccer, and Beaver Tails are delicious.

Canada Soccer announced on their official website a few days ago that the National Team would be conducting an eleven-day camp in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, starting this week, mainly for North America-based players. At the bitter end of said camp, the Canucks will take on the mighty Saint Lucia, 180th in the world according to FIFA.

February 2nd is the date, Castries the place, which is the capital city of Saint Lucia. This match comes four days before the hosts’ first-round World Cup qualifier (!) against the equally omnipresent Turks and Caicos.

At this point, I know zilch about their national team, except their number nine, Earl Jean (fortunately, the only player on the team with his own Wikipedia page) spent time with Leça FC, now of the Portuguese second division, as well as Plymouth and Rotherham. Listen, I think I hear crickets…

I’ll have more about the actual training camp roster when I get my hands on it. Until then, be excellent to each other. Kosh out!