Canada Braces For Crucial World Cup Clash With Qatar

The Canadian men’s national team is braced for what could be the biggest moment in the side’s history. Are you ready?

Having secured a first-ever point at the men’s World Cup with a 1-1 draw against Bosnia and Herzegovina in Toronto, Canada now face Qatar in a crucial second Group B match in Vancouver tonight. The standings are finely balanced: Qatar rescued a point with a late own-goal in their match against Switzerland, so all four teams sit on one point, having scored and conceded a single goal.

A win, all three points on Thursday will put any of the four sides in control of their own fate. A draw, or a loss, while not fatal, makes progressing to the knockout rounds that much more difficult.

Alphonso Davies is ready, so too in Moise Bombito. Alfie Jones is out with a muscle injury, but exactly what ‘available’ means is subject to interpretation.

“Yeah, he’s been in training this week, and he’ll be available tomorrow,” said Marsch of Davies during Wednesday night’s pre-match press conference.

“We’ll see how the match goes and then make a decision on how we would choose to use him.”

Massive news on the eve of a massive moment.

“Everyone understands the gravity of this home World Cup,” underlined Marsch, asked if this was indeed the biggest moment in Canadian soccer. “If I were to think of my time here and the history that I know about this program, the women’s gold medal game, winning that at the Olympics, was a huge moment. Our semifinal match at Copa América, the matches and experiences that they had in Qatar.”

“We know that every moment and every point matters and we’re focused on that. We’re focused on the match and about Qatar and what they’re good at and what we want to try to limit from them and how we want the game to look,” he continued. “In the first half against Bosnia the game looked more like what they wanted it to look like than what we wanted it to look like and so we have to make sure that from the beginning we set the tone and we play the kind of match that favours us from the start.”

Is it the biggest game?

“Yeah, because it’s the next one,” grinned Stephen Eustaquio on Tuesday. “We’ve been having tough games through our recent past, but this is one of the biggest games so far for me in the men’s national team. Everybody knows three points this next game puts us in a good stage to get out of the group.”

Quips aside, the players understand the gravity of the situation.

“Yeah, but we’re very calm, we’re very calm,” said the midfielder, mantra like.

And they know what to expect from the Qataris.

“It’s going to be a hard game – every game at the World Cup is hard,” said Eustaquio. “We’ve been seeing the latest results and it’s very surprising, but this is a game that we knew that, independent of the Bosnia result, we needed to win.”

“It’s going to be tough. We are going to have more time on the ball this game, but at the end Qatar wants to win as well,” he continued. “It’s going to be a very interesting game and we’re confident enough to go after the result.”

Qatar’s performance against Switzerland gave Canada a good glimpse of what to expect.

“That match is a perfect template, in terms of the mentality of the team, how they want to play,” said Alistair Johnston on Tuesday. “They’ve got some really talented players up front who are a little bit maverick in nature, they do their own thing it feels like, but at the same time, that group defends really well. Their manager has got them playing in a really compact shape, defending their box, they’re comfortable in defense, and they never feel like they’re out of a game, no matter how the game is going. The Swiss probably felt going into half-time that they should be up by multiple goals, they weren’t, and it came back to bite them.”

“That’s a good test of their mental capacity, it was a difficult game, but Qatar stayed in it. They knew it was only a one goal game until the very end and then they’re willing to put centre-backs up, to go and try and do things,” he highlighted.

“We know that we’re in for a difficult game and now with third placed teams getting out, if you’ve got a point after the first game, you’re feeling good. All you need is, potentially, one more result and you can get into the knockout stage. Everyone in this group is feeling we’ve got a chance here.”

‘Calm’ is the main touchstone Canada has been emphasizing since the group first got together in Charlotte for the pretournament camp. Nearly every conversation brings a mention. A close second has been ‘urgency.’

“Jesse speaks a lot about urgency,” said Ismael Kone, sitting beside Marsch in Wednesday’s presser. “In the way we play, set up a tempo, set up a rhythm that the opponent can’t follow.”

“We have a high speed team, a high pace team, very athletic, so we’re able to do stuff that teams cannot prepare for,” he continued. “The second half [against Bosnia we implemented] that, we played with more tempo, played with more urgency. We were down, so we needed a goal, I think you saw the difference between first half and second half. This is what all of us need to do.”

And with Cyle Larin having broken the ice with his goal against Bosnia, any butterflies or dark thoughts in the back of the mind have dissipated.

“Massive for Cyle, massive for the whole team,” said Johnston. “We were knocking on the door. We created big chances, but it just wasn’t going in. Sometimes, you look at those games, you go it’s just going to be one of these matches where no matter what, we could be here all day, all night, it’s just not going to go in.”

“But Cyle with a little moment of magic and it felt like, ‘Okay, the monkey is off the back now, let’s go, we can play our stuff and just keep getting ourselves into dangerous areas, and they’re going to go in,’” he continued. “It’s always nice when you see that first one go in a tournament. I remember Qatar, that Belgium game it felt like we had chances in that first half and it never came for us, so it’s good that we got that one out of the way.”

“Ideally, would have loved three points, of course, but everything’s to play for after those first round of results,” he added. “Now it’s really just important that we use this home crowd here in Vancouver, which I think is going to be pretty special, from what I’ve heard from a couple of guys who went to the Australia-Turkey game. Roof closed, full house, it’s going to be fun.”

Canada want that same drive to power them from the opening whistle.

“The urgency to just get that goal, that’s the thing,” urged Eustáquio. “We want to be the aggressors.”

“You guys know what happened in Qatar,” he reminded. “We knew that after that first game [against Belgium], it’s going to be very hard to get a result with Croatia, so it was very important for us to get this tie against Bosnia and now we get Qatar.”

“But we’re home, we’re not in Qatar, we’re home,” added Eustáquio. “That’s very important, for us to have our fans beside us. If everything goes well, we’re going to have good chances to win the game..”

In the aftermath of the draw with Bosnia, Jonathan David’s struggles were in the spotlight. Marsch emphasized how important the Juventus striker is to Canada, not just for the goals he can score, but for his overall role in the team.

Marsch continued to remind those who may have forgotten on Thursday: “The dude has scored a heck of a lot of goals, right?”

“He still scores goals for us and sets up plays and leads the team in goals and assists since I’ve been here – and probably minutes and dangerous chances and XG and every attacking category out there,” he listed. “Of course in the biggest games we want him to score and he will and he has and he won’t stop.”

“At the end of his career, he’s going to have, I don’t know, 60, 70 goals for the Canadian national team – he’s not done scoring people,” Marsch closed. “So get ready, put your seat belts on, and get ready.”