by Gian-Luca
We haven't heard it from the CSA just yet, but according to the Macedonian Football Federation at http://macedonianfootball.com/200910151643/news/friendlies-against-canad... Canada will be playing against Macedonia in Macedonia on November 14th, one of two international dates in November. It will be Canada's first match since the Gold Cup Quarter-Final way back in July, and there are rumours circulating on the net that Canada might also be playing on the 18th of November (the other FIFA date that month) as apparently they have put in an offer to play the Czech Republic that day and the Czech's are mulling it over. This will be a decent game for Canada - Macedonia proving no slouch at home recent months having beaten Scotland and Iceland there in the recent World Cup Qualifiers along with drawing Norway and narrowly losing to Holland.
Canada has played Macedonia before - a 1-0 victory back at the old Varsity Stadium in Toronto back in May 1998. And if you thought that July 2009 to November 2009 seems like a long gap, the game against Macedonia in May 1998 was Canada's first since the previous November after they had crashed out of World Cup Qualifying (unbelievably, the last time we have made it as far as the final round of six teams), and would not play again until the following April (!) when Holger's Heroes drew 1-1 in Northern Ireland. The 1998 match against Macedonia featured Niall Thompson heading in a corner kick, which if memory serves, was taken by Richard Hastings earning his first cap. Paul Stalteri played striker, with Robbie Aristodemo and Jeff Clarke as the engines running the Canadian midfield and Tony Menezes making his debut in the back four. The telecast was on Rogers Community Television (Toronto only!) and featured a completely bewildered Ed Jovanovski being interviewed at half-time about a sport he clearly knew nothing about by former Global Sportsline soccer personality Peter Irvine. (Jovanovski was there attending the match with his father, a former soccer pro and an immigrant to Canada from Macedonia.)
So much has changed since 1998 - although one thing that likely won't is that Canada will have again have an interim coach at the helm when facing Macedonia. Then it was Bruce Twamley, and I'm assuming it will still be Stephen Hart on the 14th given the complete lack of news or even any rumours about who the new permanent head coach might be (assuming of course it is not the player's choice, Stephen Hart).
Predicting who the coach will be is quite easy, predicting what the squad will be like is less so at this present time. Presumably it will be European-based, but a number of former European-based players (Gerba, De Guzman) have moved back to North America to play in MLS, although most of them are not confirmed to be in the MLS playoffs at the present time and could be available come mid-November. Of the Euro-based players, there are an alarming number who aren't playing regular first team ball, including David Edgar, and all three Euro-based keepers (Stamatoplous, Wagenaar and Hirshfeld). With Sutton not playing at all and no Canadian starting keepers on any of Canada's three pro clubs, if Hart wants to take a Canadian keeper getting regular playing time, he'll probably have to go down the Euro-club youth level or ask Onstad to come out of international retirement yet again. On the other hand there is a young Canuck keeper getting some decent playing time for Nimes in the French 2nd Division. His name is Haidar Al-Shaibani and he has not previously played for Canada. Perhaps its time to change that - with Ass-smear Begovic having been officially capped by Bosnia and no other keeper under the age of 40 playing first team ball, I don't see what we have to lose by calling him.
On the good news front, Iain Hume is healthy once again again so it would be nice to see him make his return to the Canadian national team. Assuming we can find an internet stream showing the match of course.......