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WCQ - El Salvador vs. Canada, 17th Nov. 2015 GAME Thread


canadianfoot

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Well, I haven't had a chance to watch the game (other than a sprinkling of the first half), so I can't comment on the "hows" and "whys" of what happened. There seems to be a pretty strong split between the Vees that think we failed miserably and those who think we are still more than fine and should relax. To throw my two cents in, you would have to put me in the former, pessimistic camp. I really think we missed a major opportunity to put our program back on track.

Sure, if we were playing Costa Rica or Panama in horrendous hot/humid conditions with a twitchy Latin referee, I would have been thrilled to come away with a single point. But that wasn't the case...

1 - We played a third level team (El Salvador isn't Costa Rica or Panama).

2 - They didn't even play their first team squad. At the last minute, they had to scramble to grab ES-league depth players and talented-but-inexperienced kids. Image if we had to scramble at the last minute to field a team with NASL players (say Attakora, Mallan Roberts, Kyle Porter) mixed in with talented-but-inexperienced kids (say Petrasso, Gasparatto, F. Aird). That is who we played against (except the El Salvador version).

3 - We had an American referee, instead of a Central-American one. That was a dream scenario, regardless of people's opinion of him.

4 - Someone posted the game time weather report, which apparently was "22-degrees and feels like 23 with the humidity". Even if it was hotter and more humid than that, these were not the oppressive conditions that we've faced in the past.

5 - So, other than a horrible playing surface, we had nothing stopping us from getting that first key Central American win in ages (Belize notwithstanding). That would have lifted a huge weight off our shoulders.

Anyway - our inability to pressure these wide-eyed kids into the ground was a bit disappointing. Hopefully, 2016 offers a better outlook. Cheers to better times ahead!

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Good article by Sandor about the El Salvador match. Like Sandor I think a lot of people criticizing the result are underestimating the El Salvador team. They may be mediocre players but they are mediocre players with good ball control, good passing, a lot of speed and exceptional endurance (like all the Central American teams, running around in the heat and altitudes there makes them very fit). When the Impact has played against teams from El Salvador they always gave us a hard game. In the last Champions League we played against FAS and won at home 1-0 and on the road 3-2 and neither were easy games and they were also very good at capitalizing on any mistake. The difference between us and them was often the star players, for example, Di Viao scored 3 of our 4 goals. FAS had 4 players on the roster for the WCQ game of whom only one started and two came on as substitutes, ie. the other Salvadoran teams have a lot of similar level players. El Salvador has a lot of pretty good mediocre players what they lack and what separates them from Honduras, Panama and Costa Rica are 4 to 6 top players. The difference between the El Salvador A and B team is probably not that great. Yes a lot of their players are NASL level players but so are many of our players. Only Hoillet and Hutchinson are significantly superior players with a few guys like Johnson and Borjan and when fit Edgar being a bit superior to that level. The rest of our team is composed of European lower division and MLS depth players. I don't think there is any reason to assume we should come away with 3 points there. And Honduras seems to be at a low point with a team with a lot of average players and few stars and I am not sure the average Honduran player is that much better than the average El Salvador player when the star players Honduras usually has are removed. I could definitely see El Salvador take some points from Honduras especially at home.

http://the11.ca/2015/11/17/they-are-who-we-shoulda-thought-they-were-a-draw-in-el-salvador-a-decent-result-for-canada/ 

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1 - We played a third level team (El Salvador isn't Costa Rica or Panama).

That's interesting that you say that given that El Salvador drew Costa Rica 1-1 at the most recent Gold Cup.

Also, are you implying that we are not a third level team ourselves?

Maybe you're disappointed because your expectations are out of whack?

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That's interesting that you say that given that El Salvador drew Costa Rica 1-1 at the most recent Gold Cup.

Also, are you implying that we are not a third level team ourselves?

Maybe you're disappointed because your expectations are out of whack?

Hey El Hombre:  Fair points (and to Grizzly's post above as well), but yes, my expectation in this round was that we would finally be able to grow past being a third level team (Guatemala, El Salvador, Cuba, Haiti, etc...) and make the move up to the second tier (Panama, Jamaica, Trinidad, Honduras, maybe Costa Rica if you you think they can maintain their previous WC form) and compete for a spot in the ever-elusive Hex. Winning in El Salvador (after taking care of Honduras at home) would have gone a long way to achieving that but we didn't.

Was that too lofty (and out-of-whack) of a goal/expectation for me to have?

Our record against tier 2 and 3 CONCACAF nations doesn't come close to Costa Rica's, so their draw at the Gold Cup can be considered more of a one-off than our draw on Tuesday.

Cheers!

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The bein guys are generally straight shooters. They know they're talking to a sophisticated football audience and don't need to dumb it down for the unwashed masses that TSN/Sportsnet often do and don't need to be cheerleaders parroting sanctioned talking points like we see for NFL telecasts.

In their wrap up show, the panel was split on Canada like the Voyageurs. The young Irish bloke thought 4 points was incredible for Canada while Juan Pablo Angel thought ES was there for the taking. And the Canadian host Jeremy St Louis agreed with Angel.

I didn't watch the post-game, was more referring to the guys calling the match. It wasn't a huge bias or anything - there is much worse throughout the world of televised sport. It was minor, but noticeable. I'm not complaining either.

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