Sam Posted January 23, 2009 Share Posted January 23, 2009 Canada to play Cyprus in May friendly Canada’s men’s national team has announced that it will play an international friendly match against Cyprus this 30 May 2008. The match will be an important part of the national team’s preparations for the 2009 CONCACAF Gold Cup which takes place this summer. This will be the first-ever international meeting between Canada and Cyprus. Further details on the match and the Canadian team will be announced in the coming months. The full schedule for this summer’s 2009 CONCACAF Gold Cup has yet to be announced. Twelve teams will participate in the tournament, including Canada who won the confederation championship in 2000. At the most recent CONCACAF Gold Cup in 2007, Canada reached the semi-final round before falling 1:2 to USA. Canada’s Julian de Guzman won the tournament’s Most Valuable Player award while de Guzman, Richard Hastings and Paul Stalteri were all named All Stars. http://canadasoccer.com/eng/media/viewArtical.asp?Press_ID=3489 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
loyola Posted January 23, 2009 Share Posted January 23, 2009 No information as where the game will take place, Canada or Cyprus? I expect it will be in Canada since it's pre-GC but we never know. Good news anyways. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
loyola Posted January 23, 2009 Share Posted January 23, 2009 No information as where the game will take place, Canada or Cyprus? I expect it will be in Canada since it's pre-GC but we never know. Good news anyways. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sam Posted January 23, 2009 Author Share Posted January 23, 2009 quote:Originally posted by loyola No information as where the game will take place, Canada or Cyprus? I expect it will be in Canada since it's pre-GC but we never know. Good news anyways. just sent the CSA an email asking this... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
loyola Posted January 23, 2009 Share Posted January 23, 2009 Is there other FIFA dates between Feb 11 (I assume we won't play on that day) and May 30th? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
youllneverwalkalone Posted January 23, 2009 Share Posted January 23, 2009 There's usually one at the end of March. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sam Posted January 23, 2009 Author Share Posted January 23, 2009 quote:Originally posted by youllneverwalkalone There's usually one at the end of March. Yep - there's one at the end of march/ start of April. Its a WCQ date for most countries ... but what that means is that there are two match days - one on the weekend and the other midweek. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sam Posted January 23, 2009 Author Share Posted January 23, 2009 Just got confirmation from the CSA - the game will be played in Cyprus Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jpg75 Posted January 23, 2009 Share Posted January 23, 2009 It's pretty much a 99.9% foregone conclu$ion that any announced friendlie$ will alway$ feature u$ a$ the vi$iting team. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Keegan Posted January 23, 2009 Share Posted January 23, 2009 If you are going to play an away match why the great vs. Cyprus? So we can embarrass ourselves even more? Mitchell has two wins, both vs. St. Vincent... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
N-A Posted January 23, 2009 Share Posted January 23, 2009 Cyprus in May sounds like a good trip for any European Voyageurs. I might be tempted to go if I can afford it just hope we don't lose the match if I go. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
loyola Posted January 23, 2009 Share Posted January 23, 2009 Cyprus recently won against Belaruss and almost held Italy to a draw until a last minute goal in WCQ. I think it's not a bad choice for a friendly and it's not like teams are lining up to play Canada. So you take every opportunities that you have. I don't get why there's always people complaining about the choice of opponent. We've struggled against Estonia, SA B team, Iceland, so what would be the point of playing against France or Russia with what should be a really inexperienced squad? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
FootieFool Posted January 23, 2009 Share Posted January 23, 2009 quote:...this 30 May 2008. Classic CSA Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Toronto MB Posted January 23, 2009 Share Posted January 23, 2009 Nothing cheaper than $500.00 CAD out of London at the moment. That would put the Cyprus match out of reach for me at the minute. Would almost be cheaper to fly back to the States for the GC. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
loyola Posted January 23, 2009 Share Posted January 23, 2009 quote:Originally posted by Toronto MB Nothing cheaper than $500.00 CAD out of London at the moment. That would put the Cyprus match out of reach for me at the minute. Would almost be cheaper to fly back to the States for the GC. I tried kayak.com with some dates around the game and I've found tickets Depart/Return between 217 $ (May 29th to June 4th I think) and 340 $ (May 29th and 31th) with Cyprus Airways. I think you should be able to find tickets in that range. Good luck! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
I_AM_CANADIAN Posted January 23, 2009 Share Posted January 23, 2009 This just shows a complete lack of ambition from the CSA, once again. You're never going to improve playing the likes of Cyprus. As the likes of Sutton and Brennan have said, the USA started to improve when they started playing higher-ranked opposition. Obviously they have political clout we don't, but we should able to book friendlies against opposition tougher than Cyprus FFS. All but three of the players in the squad for the qualifier against Italy played in the Cypriot league. Luck is one thing (the good showing against Italy), real quality is something else. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
loyola Posted January 23, 2009 Share Posted January 23, 2009 Sutton, Brennan and the players aren't good enough to get results against Estonia, Iceland, Jamaica and others but we should play Russia, Nigeria and Italy all the time? The players have to prove they are good enough for that kind of challenge. The USA have much more talent than we do, you can't compare the two situation. They rarely loses in CONCACAF, they are the class of the region with Mexico and they have tons of decent players with the MLS while we have maybe 20 players who could be judge good enough for that league. Differents situations.... I don't have a problem with scheduling higher teams than us (like we did with Costa Rica, South Africa and Brazil) but we have (and the players too) to stop complaining about the quality of our opposition when we aren't even good enough to beat them. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
loyola Posted January 23, 2009 Share Posted January 23, 2009 quote:Originally posted by I_AM_CANADIAN All but three of the players in the squad for the qualifier against Italy played in the Cypriot league. Luck is one thing (the good showing against Italy), real quality is something else. I'm not sure you know what you are talking about. Cyprus dominated this game and Italy needed Buffon to be at his best to get the win. Cyprus was good enough to play some positive soccer against the World Champs. If you look at their overall results in the last 2 years, you'll see they are no pushovers. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
I_AM_CANADIAN Posted January 23, 2009 Share Posted January 23, 2009 ...Which would be why, despite being in a region that plays far more matches than teams in our region do, they still manage to be 94th in the rankings. You don't seem to get what I'm saying here; no, right now we're not good enough to get results against the likes of Estonia, Iceland and Jamaica. And do you think continually playing those teams over and over is going to make us improve? You play better teams, you learn more. It's just logical that, if we were to play five or six matches against the likes of Spain, Argentina and Italy, we'd find playing Estonia a hell of a lot easier. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
loyola Posted January 23, 2009 Share Posted January 23, 2009 quote:Originally posted by I_AM_CANADIAN ...Which would be why, despite being in a region that plays far more matches than teams in our region do, they still manage to be 94th in the rankings. You don't seem to get what I'm saying here; no, right now we're not good enough to get results against the likes of Estonia, Iceland and Jamaica. And do you think continually playing those teams over and over is going to make us improve? You play better teams, you learn more. It's just logical that, if we were to play five or six matches against the likes of Spain, Argentina and Italy, we'd find playing Estonia a hell of a lot easier. I guess our midfield play would developp really well against Argentina and Italy....we would learn how to defend and how to limit damages but we wouldn't learn much playing against world powers. By your logic, if Samoa was always playing the top 10 teams they would become the Oceanian power. I doubt your logic has any merit. BTW, Jamaica hasn't played a world power in the last 2 years. Their friendlies were against Salvador, Grenada, T&T, SVG, Guatemala, CR, Indonesia, Vietnam and Malaysia....and they still finished 8 pts ahead of us in WCQ. BTW, take a look at the 2008 Euro group for Cyprus and tell me Canada would've got 15 pts in that group when we can't even manage more than 2 pts against Honduras, Mexico and Jamaica.... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
David C. Posted January 23, 2009 Share Posted January 23, 2009 quote:Originally posted by I_AM_CANADIAN ...right now we're not good enough to get results against the likes of Estonia, Iceland and Jamaica. And do you think continually playing those teams over and over is going to make us improve? You play better teams, you learn more. It's just logical that, if we were to play five or six matches against the likes of Spain, Argentina and Italy, we'd find playing Estonia a hell of a lot easier. Funny, I'm actually of the opposite view. From what I've seen, we are capable of raising our game in glamour matches (Spain, Brasil et al), only to fall flat in qualifying against teams that we should beat. "Learning" doesn't seem to be our problem. "Getting motivated" may be the key. In a way, I wonder if we'd be better off to avoid scheduling glamour matches and focus our team's preparation and evaluation against "beatable" competition. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
loyola Posted January 23, 2009 Share Posted January 23, 2009 quote:Originally posted by David C. Funny, I'm actually of the opposite view. From what I've seen, we are capable of raising our game in glamour matches (Spain, Brasil et al), only to fall flat in qualifying against teams that we should beat. "Learning" doesn't seem to be our problem. "Getting motivated" may be more accurate. In a way, I wonder if we'd be better off to avoid scheduling glamour matches and focus our team's preparation and evaluation against "beatable" competition. Amen. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Ed Posted January 23, 2009 Share Posted January 23, 2009 To add to that, we need to back in the top 6 from a ranking perspective. To do that, we need to play and win. Preferably against CONCACAF teams. We might learn how to consistently beat teams that we are expected to beat. You can laugh at the FIFA rankings at your peril as it is precisely those same rankings that killed us in the WCQ semis. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
loyola Posted January 23, 2009 Share Posted January 23, 2009 New press release with some information about the 1984 Canada vs Cyprus game.... Men's National Team 23 January 2009 Canada to play in Cyprus this May Julian de Guzman Photo: Pépé Canada’s men’s national team has announced that it will play an international friendly match against Cyprus this 30 May 2009. The match, which will take place in Cyprus, will be an important part of Canada’s preparations for the 2009 CONCACAF Gold Cup which takes place this summer. This will be the second international meeting between Canada and Cyprus. Canada played to a 0:0 draw with Cyprus on 30 October 1984. Further details on the 2009 match and the Canadian team will be announced in the coming months. The full schedule for this summer’s 2009 CONCACAF Gold Cup has yet to be announced. Twelve teams will participate in the tournament, including Canada who won the confederation championship in 2000. At the most recent CONCACAF Gold Cup in 2007, Canada reached the semi-final round before falling 1:2 to USA. Canada’s Julian de Guzman won the tournament’s Most Valuable Player award while de Guzman, Richard Hastings and Paul Stalteri were all named All Stars. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jpg75 Posted January 23, 2009 Share Posted January 23, 2009 I'd say based on the recent form/results of Cyprus that we're going to get our asses kicked: October 7, 2006 UEFA EURO 2008 qualifying Nicosia,Cyprus Cyprus - Republic of Ireland 5 - 2 November 15, 2006 UEFA EURO 2008 qualifying Nicosia, Cyprus Cyprus - Germany 1 - 1 October 13, 2007 UEFA EURO 2008 qualifying Nicosia, Cyprus Cyprus - Wales 3 - 1 October 17, 2007 UEFA EURO 2008 qualifying Dublin, Ireland Republic of Ireland - Cyprus 1 - 1 So far in 2010 Qualfying they've lost at home to Italy 1-2, drew in Georgia 1-1 and lost in Dublin 1-0. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts
Archived
This topic is now archived and is closed to further replies.