I whinge a lot about how Canada doesn’t play enough friendlies. So it was nice to see goal.com's Rudi Schuller sound the alarm recently too. The message is clear: the mens' national team plays its most important game in four years on September 7 and prior to that it needs a god damn friendly.
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At last word the CSA was working on said friendly, but national team manager Stephen Hart didn't optimistic about the 48-hour Fifa window that opens up around August 15. As always, the biggest obstacle is convincing European clubs to release players. It's even harder at the start of the season. But that hasn't stopped Mexico and the U.S. from scheduling a marquee friendly for August 15 at the 100,000 capacity Azteca Stadium in Mexico City.
The CSA lacks heft in these matters. It might be easier to play an August friendly in Europe, but that costs money. Another problem. Either way it will be interesting to see if the U.S. and Mexico can pry Clint Dempsey and Javier Hernandez away from their Premier League clubs for this game.
Panama's FA doesn't have a lot of money but it has already lined up a July friendly in Uruguay against that country's Olympic side. They're not waiting around for Fifa dates although I fully expect them to organize something for August 15. And I can’t think of a better way to prepare for Simeon Jackson and Dwayne de Rosario than by having your defenders spend an afternoon trying to stop Luis Suarez and Edinson Cavani.*
The Honduran U23 side is playing three friendlies to prepare for the Olympics, and that squad could have up to eight members of the senior team in it. Not to mention the same manager, the other Luis Suarez. They'll likely organize something in August too, so they won't be trying to turn over a cold engine come September.
Central American countries enjoy domestic leagues that are open to releasing players at weird times and generally operating in a manner that benefits the national teams. Another advantage Canada doesn't have.
In the Guardian recently, Barnay Ronay described the German team now romping through Euro 2012 as featuring “the hard-won chemistry of small well-grooved units functioning together across the pitch,” with an “established front three [that] move with a mutually empowering fluidity.” Those are not the things that get written about national teams that don't train between important qualifying matches.
International football has in many ways become a mug’s game for the coaches. (See Capello, Fabio.) It is increasingly difficult to get players released from their clubs for things like friendlies and training camps. Yet the public wants coaches to arrive at international tournaments with their squads immediately playing like Barcelona. Spain can circumvent this problem by simply fielding Barcelona, but if only we all could be so lucky.
The two paths to success in international football seem to be as follows: build quickly on existing club dynamics between players or fall back on a football tradition so deeply ingrained that the players produced from it can simply hit the ground running, with Uruguay being a good example.
Neither of those paths appear to be an option for Canada at the moment. So the least the CSA could do is have the team play as often as its opponents, which simply isn't happening.
One summer friendly isn't going to make or break a World Cup qualifying campaign but a consistent lack of playing together just might. Many Internet post-mortems would follow yet another early exit for Canada from World Cup qualifying. Questions about the lack of action during the summer of 2012 would be a good place to start writing.
*I'm assuming they'll be named as overage players.
Photo by alexindigo from Flickr