Both teams have cause to question the exact point of Tuesday's match. When Panama concentrated on kicking the ball rather than Canadian players they clearly enjoyed better chances. But whether it was their own ineptitude or the athleticism of Milan Borjan, they were unable to capitalize on them. Borjan’s showcase of excellent saves was the most positive aspect Canada can take from it’s final match of 2014. At 27, he’s our guy in goal and there is no question about it.
It was a Canada performance similar to those turned out in the latter stages of the Stephen Hart regime: tough to score against yes, but fluid midfield play, attacking soccer and shots toward the opposition goal (goals? lololo) remain beyond what this group of players appear capable of.
The positive spin on this result is that it was... a result. A result earned in the sweaty, hostile environs of Central America, a valuable point were it to have occurred in actual World Cup qualifying. The negative spin would be to raise a pertinent question: how many times would this approach work out of 10? Panama was unlucky not to have scored on one of their set-pieces. And you don’t need to be a paid researcher of Concacaf history to know that Canada finishing this game up a man puts the entire proceedings in bizzaro land. It should have been the other way around, given some of the wild studs-flailing challenges attempted by the visitors.
On social media, many pointed to the positive contributions of Russell Teibert and Jonathan Osorio after the duo made their eagerly anticipated entrance in the second half. Encouraging yes, but Canada still didn't manufacture a stellar scoring chance even after Panama's Anibal Godoy was sent off.
If you were really searching for positives you could point out Panama was two days from ploughing El Salvador in their own stadium. Eerily similar to how Colombia throttled El Salvador in October then immediately struggled to put hot moves together against Canada. By soccer transitive property, Canada is way better than El Salvador.
The best news from Tuesday was the U20 men's victory over the U.S. Those players aren't going to be a solution for the national team in the short-term however, and big challenges await next year. A spot in the 2016 Copa America is on the line in the Gold Cup seven months from now. And it also looks like Canada’s journey to the 2018 World Cup in Russia will kick off around the same time. David Hoilett or Lucas Cavallini might help offensively, but neither is a guarantee or even a game-changer with the potential impact Carlos Vela showed on his recent return to Mexico.
This isn’t meant to be a slaughterhouse of hopes and dreams. Canada manager Benito Floro is doing what he can with the technical ability of the players available. The immediate goal should be to grind out a quarterfinal placing in the Gold Cup and take advantage of the fact all the other teams competing for the Copa America spots are floundering. If that's the case, a 0-0 draw in Panama is a damn fine thing.
Perhaps scoring help will arrive by 2016 in the form of fence-sitters or the current U20 squad, and the painful to watch stinginess can be married with something resembling an attack. In the meantime supporters trundle on knowing what they've known since Canada was eliminated from the last World Cup - commitment levels aside, our guys possess limited flair. We can hope and pray they produce results, but they’re unlikely to have us standing and shouting 'bravo!' in the process.