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Canada-Azerbaijan June 3 1 EDT /10 PDT (R)


Blackdude

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2 hours ago, A_Gagne said:

Agreed. Penalty was a result of him being out of position after a run up the pitch... and generally not terribly impressive.

Re: Ouimette, I'm always prepared to give a player playing out of position a little bit of leeway. I put more blame on the coach than the player in these situations. 

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Watched the first half but was only half watching the second.  

It sucks to draw a team like Azerbaijan but at the same time it's a friendly with a less than full strength team.  With that considered we did alright, you could tell we had more talent but we made far too many mistakes and as usual could hold possession at half but couldn't dominate in the final third.  

Arfield is a dynamite addition.  We don't have depth like top 30 teams do so it's a drop off when we don't start Hutchinson, Johnson and/or Junior.  I also thought Edgar did well as an anchor man;

Hoilett-Hutchinson-Johnson-Arfield

-----------------Edgar-----------------

That's our best midfield IMO.  

 

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As usual there is a lot of ignorance in the comments here. Of course we should judge every team by their current FIFA ranking and one poor result against Andorra so we can cry that the sky is falling and Honduras will kick our ass and Floro is an idiot. 

Azerbijan is not the terrible team everyone thinks it is because of the FIFA ranking. In fact, if we absolutely have to go with the FIFA ranking, just two years ago they were at 73 which is higher than we are. And maybe some of you could have bothered to look at the reason they dropped so much in the last 2 years. They got stuck in a Euro qualification group of death with Italy, Norway, Croatia and Bulgaria. And even then they managed to tie each of Norway and Croatia once. Their results are a bit uneven but they are not a poor team. Most of their players play in the Azeri league but it is also not as poor as people think, I have watched some of their teams play Russian teams in pre-season friendlies. They also have a player in one of the better teams in the best 2nd division in the world, the 2nd Bundesliga. :) As well they also have a player on a team in the Spanish 2nd division that is currently in the promotion playoff to La Liga. Both played today. Even the Azeri league players are well trained, pass well and play a very homogenous style. Actually many of their players are the same level of players we have, what they lack are the top players like Arfield, Hoilett and Hutchinson of which we do not have very many either and only one of whom played for 90 minutes while one did not play at all. They had difficulty dealing with Arfield and then Hoillett when he subbed on but the rest of their players were not far off the level of our other players. They are a much stronger team than El Salvador who we also underrate and probably comparable to Guatemala in CONCACAF. And we tied them while not playing several of our starters on a bullshit penalty call while giving a lot of our players a run out (6 subs to 3 not counting their 2 subs at the end that they made to waste time) while they were clearly playing their first team and going for a result.

But carry on your bitching, Azerbijan sucks, Floroball is horrible, Estadio Olimpico in Honduras has some sort of force field that emasculates Canadian players and we will certainly lose unless Floro calls the Canadian magician Osorio who will defeat the evil magic. 

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I really enjoyed this. Nice litle ground set in the beautiful Austrian country side. The stand was built a couple of years ago and looked like a good template to copy across Canada. 

Thought our best players were Arfield,  Akindele and Hoilett. Thought Jakovic and Vitoria looked good but I couldn't tell if it was because they weren't tested or if they did such a good job that they didn't allow Azerbaijan to test them. Petrasso also looked good at times but he was on the opposite side in the first half so I didn't get to see him that closely. 

 

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7 hours ago, Grizzly said:

As usual there is a lot of ignorance in the comments here. Of course we should judge every team by their current FIFA ranking and one poor result against Andorra so we can cry that the sky is falling and Honduras will kick our ass and Floro is an idiot. 

Azerbijan is not the terrible team everyone thinks it is because of the FIFA ranking. In fact, if we absolutely have to go with the FIFA ranking, just two years ago they were at 73 which is higher than we are. And maybe some of you could have bothered to look at the reason they dropped so much in the last 2 years. They got stuck in a Euro qualification group of death with Italy, Norway, Croatia and Bulgaria. And even then they managed to tie each of Norway and Croatia once. Their results are a bit uneven but they are not a poor team. Most of their players play in the Azeri league but it is also not as poor as people think, I have watched some of their teams play Russian teams in pre-season friendlies. They also have a player in one of the better teams in the best 2nd division in the world, the 2nd Bundesliga. :) As well they also have a player on a team in the Spanish 2nd division that is currently in the promotion playoff to La Liga. Both played today. Even the Azeri league players are well trained, pass well and play a very homogenous style. Actually many of their players are the same level of players we have, what they lack are the top players like Arfield, Hoilett and Hutchinson of which we do not have very many either and only one of whom played for 90 minutes while one did not play at all. They had difficulty dealing with Arfield and then Hoillett when he subbed on but the rest of their players were not far off the level of our other players. They are a much stronger team than El Salvador who we also underrate and probably comparable to Guatemala in CONCACAF. And we tied them while not playing several of our starters on a bullshit penalty call while giving a lot of our players a run out (6 subs to 3 not counting their 2 subs at the end that they made to waste time) while they were clearly playing their first team and going for a result.

But carry on your bitching, Azerbijan sucks, Floroball is horrible, Estadio Olimpico in Honduras has some sort of force field that emasculates Canadian players and we will certainly lose unless Floro calls the Canadian magician Osorio who will defeat the evil magic. 

 

How are they much stronger than ES but not Guatemala?  Despite Guatemala's win against the US at home they are at best equal to ES.  They just got pumped 7-1 by Armenia when ES lost 4-0 to Armenia in the same window.  

I'd say Azerbaijan, ES and Guatemala are in the same category.  Nelson Bonilla actually finished 2nd in their league this season, outscoring all Azeri players.  These teams pull off the occasional upset which is probably more than we can say for ourselves, I don't think we could beat the USA at home or draw Norway.  Certainly not an embarrassment to draw or even lose to any of them but you gotta hope we get 3 points more times than not.  

 

 

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12 minutes ago, Keegan said:

 

How are they much stronger than ES but not Guatemala?  Despite Guatemala's win against the US at home they are at best equal to ES.  They just got pumped 7-1 by Armenia when ES lost 4-0 to Armenia in the same window.  

I'd say Azerbaijan, ES and Guatemala are in the same category.  Nelson Bonilla actually finished 2nd in their league this season, outscoring all Azeri players.  These teams pull off the occasional upset which is probably more than we can say for ourselves, I don't think we could beat the USA at home or draw Norway.  Certainly not an embarrassment to draw or even lose to any of them but you gotta hope we get 3 points more times than not.  

 

 

I think Guatemala has been a stronger team El Salvador in the last decade and seem to be a more skilled team from what I have seen of them. I would put Guatemala in the CONCACAF B team level like ourselves while El Salvador would be a C team. I think Azerbijan would also be a B team in CONCACAF. The big losses to Armenia by both Guatemala and El Salvador are one off results for all three teams not indicative of their usual level of play, ie. Armenia is not that good and Guatemala and ES are not that bad. Regardless that was just a point of comparison to a team that is generally given more respect in CONCACAF than El Salvador. My point still remains that the whole reaction here of "I don't know any of the Azeri players and they have a bad FIFA ranking so we should have kicked their ass and Floro sucks" reaction is false. If we look at Azerbijan's recent Euro qualifying results they are pretty respectable. They only got blown out in one game of the group stage to Croatia but then managed to tie Croatia in the other game. Even Italy only beat them 2-1 and 3-1 and that is with a full national team in an official competition. I don't think a tie on a BS penalty in which they played their first team and we did not play several of our best players is that bad of a result. 

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27 minutes ago, Grizzly said:

I think Guatemala has been a stronger team El Salvador in the last decade and seem to be a more skilled team from what I have seen of them. I would put Guatemala in the CONCACAF B team level like ourselves while El Salvador would be a C team. I think Azerbijan would also be a B team in CONCACAF. The big losses to Armenia by both Guatemala and El Salvador are one off results for all three teams not indicative of their usual level of play, ie. Armenia is not that good and Guatemala and ES are not that bad. Regardless that was just a point of comparison to a team that is generally given more respect in CONCACAF than El Salvador. My point still remains that the whole reaction here of "I don't know any of the Azeri players and they have a bad FIFA ranking so we should have kicked their ass and Floro sucks" reaction is false. If we look at Azerbijan's recent Euro qualifying results they are pretty respectable. They only got blown out in one game of the group stage to Croatia but then managed to tie Croatia in the other game. Even Italy only beat them 2-1 and 3-1 and that is with a full national team in an official competition. I don't think a tie on a BS penalty in which they played their first team and we did not play several of our best players is that bad of a result. 

Out of curiosity, what would your tier rankings be for each concacaf team?

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8 hours ago, Grizzly said:

As usual there is a lot of ignorance in the comments here. Of course we should judge every team by their current FIFA ranking and one poor result against Andorra so we can cry that the sky is falling and Honduras will kick our ass and Floro is an idiot. 

Azerbijan is not the terrible team everyone thinks it is because of the FIFA ranking. In fact, if we absolutely have to go with the FIFA ranking, just two years ago they were at 73 which is higher than we are. And maybe some of you could have bothered to look at the reason they dropped so much in the last 2 years...

Well posted.

I find it funny that there are people here that will scour fourth divisions all around the world for Canadian players and do all this research to find others with the most tenuous of relationships to Canada, however when it comes to researching our opponents will just latch on to the easiest narrative around.

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The problem with Grizzly's brilliant post is that it is pure theory and subterfuge, like spewing off baseball stats, and not based on seriously watching our performance. Abstract over real. We did not play with intensity, did not control phases completely controlable, made terrible decisions on the pitch, probably a couple per minute, did not play as a team, and did not seem to want it. Against a shit team like Azerbaijan, whatever you say otherwise. Azerbaijan is garbage.

Why some distant friendly between an Azeri team and Russian team should count, but not  a very recent draw of their national team against one of the worst teams in Europe, Andorra (who I have watched live more than once, thank you) makes absolutely no sense at all. Recent performance should matter more, and recently they are trash. We could not beat recently accredited trash. That was underpar and denying it to try to save face is a loser's paradigm. 

The simple question is this: can a performance like that take us anywhere near the HEX? We all know the answer. 

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11 hours ago, Grizzly said:

As usual there is a lot of ignorance in the comments here. Of course we should judge every team by their current FIFA ranking and one poor result against Andorra so we can cry that the sky is falling and Honduras will kick our ass and Floro is an idiot. 

Azerbijan is not the terrible team everyone thinks it is because of the FIFA ranking. In fact, if we absolutely have to go with the FIFA ranking, just two years ago they were at 73 which is higher than we are. And maybe some of you could have bothered to look at the reason they dropped so much in the last 2 years. They got stuck in a Euro qualification group of death with Italy, Norway, Croatia and Bulgaria. And even then they managed to tie each of Norway and Croatia once. Their results are a bit uneven but they are not a poor team. Most of their players play in the Azeri league but it is also not as poor as people think, I have watched some of their teams play Russian teams in pre-season friendlies. They also have a player in one of the better teams in the best 2nd division in the world, the 2nd Bundesliga. :) As well they also have a player on a team in the Spanish 2nd division that is currently in the promotion playoff to La Liga. Both played today. Even the Azeri league players are well trained, pass well and play a very homogenous style. Actually many of their players are the same level of players we have, what they lack are the top players like Arfield, Hoilett and Hutchinson of which we do not have very many either and only one of whom played for 90 minutes while one did not play at all. They had difficulty dealing with Arfield and then Hoillett when he subbed on but the rest of their players were not far off the level of our other players. They are a much stronger team than El Salvador who we also underrate and probably comparable to Guatemala in CONCACAF. And we tied them while not playing several of our starters on a bullshit penalty call while giving a lot of our players a run out (6 subs to 3 not counting their 2 subs at the end that they made to waste time) while they were clearly playing their first team and going for a result.

But carry on your bitching, Azerbijan sucks, Floroball is horrible, Estadio Olimpico in Honduras has some sort of force field that emasculates Canadian players and we will certainly lose unless Floro calls the Canadian magician Osorio who will defeat the evil magic. 

Funny. I thought the bitching and freaking out was relatively quiet this time around compared to reactions in the past.

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9 minutes ago, lazlo_80 said:

Funny. I thought the bitching and freaking out was relatively quiet this time around compared to reactions in the past.

Grizzly wants us all to be a bunch of cowering brown-nosers because according to his expert third-hand opinion, Azerbaijan, one of his speciality areas, is really a lot better than us idiots all thought, and we are all wrong to think we should have beaten them.

This is all very ethereal I get it: ignore what you think you saw, disrespect your own observational capacity, forget the fact you may know something about football--we drew a really great Azerbaijain team and should be very pleased. That sensation deep in the pit of your stomach of being generally disgusted with what you saw is totally unreliable. We are just going to have to join the illuminati and ignore it.

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I am also of the opinion that the goal should have been a victory. Were we complete shit? No. The 1st half was okay. But the 2nd was pretty weak and I think overall we should be a bit disappointed in the performance.

I guess the subs would have had something to do with it. We had a better team out there in the 1st half.

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5 hours ago, Unnamed Trialist said:

The problem with Grizzly's brilliant post is that it is pure theory and subterfuge, like spewing off baseball stats, and not based on seriously watching our performance.

However Grizzly's post had more substance and actual analysis than this half-assed gem:

22 hours ago, Unnamed Trialist said:

That was a team that Andorra tied last week, I mean,

Did you also want to mention that they lost to Italy 2-1 and 3-1 in Euro qualifying last year?  Or that they held Croatia and Norway to 0-0 draws?  Pretty decent results for a "trash" team.

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15 hours ago, El Hombre said:

However Grizzly's post had more substance and actual analysis than this half-assed gem:

Did you also want to mention that they lost to Italy 2-1 and 3-1 in Euro qualifying last year?  Or that they held Croatia and Norway to 0-0 draws?  Pretty decent results for a "trash" team.

Here is the logic on this board:

Azerbaijan drew Norway, and Norway are pretty good, so us doing the same is pretty good. We should be happy.

Azerbaijan drew Andorra, and Andorra are a joke, probably the worst team in Europe. But us doing the same does not mean we are a joke and as bad as the worst team in Europe. No, we are NOT a joke.

The reason is this: Canada fans have the special right to use only data that fits into the "happy" paradigm; everything else should be hereby eliminated.

We would not want to be happy AND a joke at the same time, that would be embarrassing.

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This was a friendly so for me the result is less important than the performance. 

How was the performance? Not bad. Arfield added some extra quality in the centre of the park, like I expected. His touches were cleaner and his decision making was quicker than anyone else. Akindele had a good game. I thought Petrasso showed some good flashes but when Hoilett came on you can see the difference he makes. Both players ran at defenders but Hoilett was just much more of a handful. He was just a consistent threat whereas Petrasso wasn't, but that's not to take away from him, I thought he did well in his first appearance. Ricketts brought a lot of energy and a high work rate. Never had any terrible turnovers. I thought he did okay in that CF role. I liked Edgar as a DM but him and Straith were very similar in their play. An experiment from Floro to start them both, no doubt. Vitoria and Jakovic did well and while some passing was misplaced, they controlled our opponent and looked comfortable and confident. What more can you ask for. Vitoria in particular showed to be very mature in his handling of several situations on the pitch. I would be surprised at this point if he's not a starting CB for us moving forward. I think his partner will be Jakovic as well, for what it's worth. Henry was okay but I would like to see Aird sooner rather than later. If WCQ resumed tomorrow though I would go with Henry over an unproven Aird. 

As an aside, I watched Costa Rica and Paraguay live in hot humid Orlando yesterday. Quality wise it was no better than this game. Turnovers and misplaced passing was the order of the day. 

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I read somewhere (side hand Twitter convo I think) that AZE were carrying 29 players and fielded a much different team for the Andorra game than the Canada game. Seems that this is pretty accurate as only 4 players started both games. This is not to excuse our poor performance (atrocious passing ... so many giveaways), but I'm not convinced the Andorra result and this result are as comparable as other recent results where AZE was playing a stronger lineup. None of the 7 players that played vs Andorra and not Canada started vs either Bulgaria or Italy in their last two qualifiers. 5 of the players that started vs Canada started both games vs Italy and Bulgaria (2 also started vs Andorra). Having said all that, it looks like four of AZE starters for their Euro qualifiers didn't play against Canada nor Andorra. I'm not going to dig deep enough to find out what AZE's entire depth situation is, but I think it's safe to say that they fielded a stronger side vs Canada (either full A squad or B+ at worst) than they did vs Andorra (B or likely C squad with a few A players).

Just to clarify, still not an excuse. But these 'transitive property' comparisons either to say Canada did well or poorly, rarely tell even a fraction of the story.

AZE Starting XI vs Canada - Agaev, Guliyev, Medvedev, Pashaev, Mirzabekov, Garayev, Israfilov, Nazarov, Izmailov, Aleskerov, Ramazanov

AZE starting 11 vs Andorra - 

Nazirov, Guliyev, Nagiyev, Abishov, Budak, Mirzabekov, Mammadov, Ramazanov, Sattarli, Nazarov, Nazirov

 
 
 
 
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I didn't watch the game. Did we deserve the win? I know the penalty was a little bad. The results in friendlies don't matter that much as long as we take away our problems from those games and improve on them.

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30 minutes ago, canta15 said:

I didn't watch the game. Did we deserve the win? I know the penalty was a little bad. The results in friendlies don't matter that much as long as we take away our problems from those games and improve on them.

I wouldn't say we deserved the win as we played fairly disjointedly and poorly. 1 - 1 was probably fair. We created slightly more than they (subjectively) but squandered lots of opportunities by losing possession and blowing the key pass. Perhaps this shouldn't be surprising with the lineup we had on the field, but I don't think there can be valid excuses for missing a guy with a pass who is 6yds away or for trying to pass the ball through an opponent who is not really standing where you want to pass the ball anyway. It was frustrating to watch. 

As for the penalty, it seemed a poor call to me, but those issues don't arise when you dominate a game (something that was well within our capabilities IMHO), reduce giveaways, create chances, and take them. Anyway, now I'm just starting to vent ... always a sign for me to just shut up :)

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On June 4, 2016 at 0:12 AM, Grizzly said:

As usual there is a lot of ignorance in the comments here. Of course we should judge every team by their current FIFA ranking and one poor result against Andorra so we can cry that the sky is falling and Honduras will kick our ass and Floro is an idiot. 

Azerbijan is not the terrible team everyone thinks it is because of the FIFA ranking. In fact, if we absolutely have to go with the FIFA ranking, just two years ago they were at 73 which is higher than we are. And maybe some of you could have bothered to look at the reason they dropped so much in the last 2 years. They got stuck in a Euro qualification group of death with Italy, Norway, Croatia and Bulgaria. And even then they managed to tie each of Norway and Croatia once. Their results are a bit uneven but they are not a poor team. Most of their players play in the Azeri league but it is also not as poor as people think, I have watched some of their teams play Russian teams in pre-season friendlies. They also have a player in one of the better teams in the best 2nd division in the world, the 2nd Bundesliga. :) As well they also have a player on a team in the Spanish 2nd division that is currently in the promotion playoff to La Liga. Both played today. Even the Azeri league players are well trained, pass well and play a very homogenous style. Actually many of their players are the same level of players we have, what they lack are the top players like Arfield, Hoilett and Hutchinson of which we do not have very many either and only one of whom played for 90 minutes while one did not play at all. They had difficulty dealing with Arfield and then Hoillett when he subbed on but the rest of their players were not far off the level of our other players. They are a much stronger team than El Salvador who we also underrate and probably comparable to Guatemala in CONCACAF. And we tied them while not playing several of our starters on a bullshit penalty call while giving a lot of our players a run out (6 subs to 3 not counting their 2 subs at the end that they made to waste time) while they were clearly playing their first team and going for a result.

But carry on your bitching, Azerbijan sucks, Floroball is horrible, Estadio Olimpico in Honduras has some sort of force field that emasculates Canadian players and we will certainly lose unless Floro calls the Canadian magician Osorio who will defeat the evil magic. 

Let me just break it down like this nice and simple:

WE ARE F@&$ING DOOMED!!!

You can't beat Azerbaijan or beat El Salvador B team there's no way you'll get 3 pts less 1pt on the road vs H. 1pt at home vs ES A team is a likely result. Am I being a negative Nancy? Nope. Just realistic. Why can't some of you stop drinking the Kool Aid and smell the Timmies??? Some of these players Floro has playing have no business on the national team. Seriously JDG?!? Good guy but he's freaking old, slow, out of shape, injured and in the NASL! Add the other names of players who 1) are in 2nd div, don't play much or 2) don't play at all. Canada is not a club team it's our country's (best) team! Players shouldn't be getting more minutes with the national team then their club or Unattached FC! 

All I needed to see was the first 2 minutes with yet another short corner! WTF!!!

To hell with Floroball and his selection. Bloody stubborn old fart. If people are content with this then CSA will never change. 

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15 minutes ago, Moldy9 said:

Let me just break it down like this nice and simple:

WE ARE F@&$ING DOOMED!!!

You can't beat Azerbaijan or beat El Salvador B team there's no way you'll get 3 pts less 1pt on the road vs H. 1pt at home vs ES A team is a likely result. Am I being a negative Nancy? Nope. Just realistic. Why can't some of you stop drinking the Kool Aid and smell the Timmies??? Some of these players Floro has playing have no business on the national team. Seriously JDG?!? Good guy but he's freaking old and injured and in the NASL!

All I needed to see was the first 2 minutes with yet another short corner! WTF!!!

To hell with Floroball and his selection. 

The USA won all 3 of their friendlies leading up to Copa America, by a combined score of 10 to 1, and then dropped their opener to Colombia on Friday.

The sky isn't falling.

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Colombia is a world class team. USA has just realized they're not in their CONCACRAP sandbox anymore. 

We've all had enough time to assess Floro now we can form opinions. If you ask me the plane never took off. Draws don't get you anywhere. 

youre right the sky isn't falling ... we are all just in space. Our heads are above the clouds. When you don't get oxygen you start to hallucinate and get confused. 

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