Canada vs. Morocco - Oct. 10, 3PM EST - In Game Thread

[Floortom]

16 minutes ago, Keegan said:

Nice to see we're still kings of the back pass.  It's just so frustrating.. how many times do you see a Canadian team work the ball into a semi-dangerous position and then instead of trying to play a tough final ball (which is required at this level) the ball finds it's way back to our backline/keeper within a matter of seconds.  

At one point in the first half we intercepted a ball at the midfield, had a great counter opportunity with some of our attackers making forward runs. Instead, due to minor pressure on the ball, we made a 50 yard back pass to Borjan. Unbelievable. There were a few tweets about it from Squisz and other journalists. Can't remember if it was Straith or Piette

[Obinna]

48 minutes ago, Floortom said:

At this point I've resigned myself to the fact that piette is a mainstay. I have no idea why (perhaps he has comprising pictures of the Montagliani brothers) but it is what it is.

I'm okay with Piette being a mainstay, so long as he plays DM only. Why do we insist on playing him up the field? Like, I get we don't have a plethora of attacking midfielders, but when you do call one in, don't keep him on the bench behind Piette.

[Soccerpro]

How many 1-2's do you see around the opposition box in a typical CMNT game? Answer : 0

Its been that way since at least the early 90s when I started watching.

Marco Bustos at least has ideas and tries to play positively, as do other young players coming up in our youth program like Ballou Tabla and Alphonso Davies and even Jay Champan.

Most of our senior players? They have no idea how to be offensively dynamic. They never learned and now it's way too late.

[Gian-Luca]

44 minutes ago, Floortom said:

At one point in the first half we intercepted a ball at the midfield, had a great counter opportunity with some of our attackers making forward runs. Instead, due to minor pressure on the ball, we made a 50 yard back pass to Borjan. Unbelievable. There were a few tweets about it from Squisz and other journalists. Can't remember if it was Straith or Piette

If that is the same play I was talking about, it was Piette. I don't want to rag on the guy too much as he is only 21 and wasn't the reason we gave up 4 goals today but it was a definitely a frustrating play to watch and a sign that he isn't able to play an offensive midfield role as yet. We have enough other options who can (maybe not to the level that we'd like but far more than that). 

Oh and I should mention that since I had posted that I thought Tissot was poor in the first half against Mauritania, overall he was much better in that game than De Jong was tonight - I thought Marcel had a hugely off game by his standards (disappointing given that the previous game he played for us was one of his best).

[ray]

23 minutes ago, Soccerpro said:

How many 1-2's do you see around the opposition box in a typical CMNT game? Answer : 0

Its been that way since at least the early 90s when I started watching.

Marco Bustos at least has ideas and tries to play positively, as do other young players coming up in our youth program like Ballou Tabla and Alphonso Davies and even Jay Champan.

Most of our senior players? They have no idea how to be offensively dynamic. They never learned and now it's way too late.

Yeah, at this point I'm hoping to see a lot more of our youth in the lead up to and in the Gold Cup because at this point they can't offer much less than what was on display today.  Give a group of them some games to find their feet and take the most promising to the Gold Cup. 

[Northvansteve]

My random observations from the game:

Borjan: Has he always been injury-prone? Breaks his hand mid-game against Mexico and now hurts a leg. 

Edgar and James: neither were good. Very dumb penalties. The previous comment about diving in inside the 18 is very true of these CBs. Is that a habit that can be eliminated through training?

Aird: beaten cleanly at least once. He is barely acceptable as a RB at the MLS level, cannot play him here at the International level. Those mistakes are killers. He needs to play at Right Mid for him to be effective. His run in the second half was excellent and he showed really good interaction with the mids in the second half when we had mids on the field who could handle the ball.

Straith and Piette: depth players only at best. They cannot possibly be your starters at the international level. Way too much of this passing back to the keeper. Defensively very poor with lots of chasing around.  

Bustos and Osorio: offense came to life as soon as Bustos came on the field. You could see Osorio's play improve immediately as he finally had someone who could pass and receive a ball without giving it away. Would like to see these two play in mid for Canada going forward and see how they develop together as an attacking partnership. 

Haber: cannot be your starter at the international level and probably shouldn't even be on the team at this point. Hamilton has begun to have success at MLS level and he must be your choice instead of Haber.

Frustrating game to watch. We need to drop the players who have no future on this team, and start promoting the guys who are the future: like Bustos and Aird. Yes they make mistakes but they have skill, can handle the ball, can make and receive a pass without giving it away and even have some athleticism.  C'mon Finlay - make some bold changes!!

[Floortom]

Bustos and Aird were really the only two players on the team who showed any ambition and ability to take on defenders. I know they both have significant weaknesses, but really hoping that they develop over the next two years because we need that quality on this team

[BCM]

56 minutes ago, Obinna said:

I'm okay with Piette being a mainstay, so long as he plays DM only. Why do we insist on playing him up the field? Like, I get we don't have a plethora of attacking midfielders, but when you do call one in, don't keep him on the bench behind Piette.

My biggest complaint on him today is his constant yapping, shrugs and sighs whenever a team mate made a bad decision or poor touch. It's childlike and can't help his teamates confidence. I actually didn't mind twice seeing him act like this, then within five seconds get the ball and due to a poor first touch immediately give it away. Karma. 

He was lazy and very poor today, but his attitude seemed worse. 

[jpg75]

1 hour ago, shermanator said:

[Vince193]

42 minutes ago, Northvansteve said:

My random observations from the game:

Borjan: Has he always been injury-prone? Breaks his hand mid-game against Mexico and now hurts a leg. 

Edgar and James: neither were good. Very dumb penalties. The previous comment about diving in inside the 18 is very true of these CBs. Is that a habit that can be eliminated through training?

Aird: beaten cleanly at least once. He is barely acceptable as a RB at the MLS level, cannot play him here at the International level. Those mistakes are killers. He needs to play at Right Mid for him to be effective. His run in the second half was excellent and he showed really good interaction with the mids in the second half when we had mids on the field who could handle the ball.

Straith and Piette: depth players only at best. They cannot possibly be your starters at the international level. Way too much of this passing back to the keeper. Defensively very poor with lots of chasing around.  

Bustos and Osorio: offense came to life as soon as Bustos came on the field. You could see Osorio's play improve immediately as he finally had someone who could pass and receive a ball without giving it away. Would like to see these two play in mid for Canada going forward and see how they develop together as an attacking partnership. 

Haber: cannot be your starter at the international level and probably shouldn't even be on the team at this point. Hamilton has begun to have success at MLS level and he must be your choice instead of Haber.

Frustrating game to watch. We need to drop the players who have no future on this team, and start promoting the guys who are the future: like Bustos and Aird. Yes they make mistakes but they have skill, can handle the ball, can make and receive a pass without giving it away and even have some athleticism.  C'mon Finlay - make some bold changes!!

I agree with it all. You want success at the international level? Straith, Piette and Haber are not your answers.

[Vince193]

5 hours ago, Unnamed Trialist said:

Piette is a full professional, check your facts. The rest, about his play, is fair game.

At a very low level.

[Gian-Luca]

19 minutes ago, Northvansteve said:

Bustos and Osorio: offense came to life as soon as Bustos came on the field. You could see Osorio's play improve immediately as he finally had someone who could pass and receive a ball without giving it away. Would like to see these two play in mid for Canada going forward and see how they develop together as an attacking partnership. 

 

The other part of the equation is who Bustos replaced......although it could have been Straith and I think the equation would have been the same (with Piette moving into Straith's position)

[Joe Keeper]

Oh boy, here goes...

For me, this was a step back kind of performance tonight. I am not accepting any excuses about this "only" being a B/C team. We were awful tonight.

The defending, especially, was just atrocious. I thought the first penalty was extremely harsh but we still looked like a bunch of Sunday leaguers out there. Edgar needs a solid partner. Henry is awful and James just looks out of depth. The type of fouls that led to the penalties each of them gave away in the two games speak volumes. The team just cannot execute basics either. Learn to clear your lines for a start, please. A good team knows when to play the ball out of the back and when to just clear it. Player positioning was also way off.

The midfield had some promise and stepped up with some tempo calming passing at sporadic times through the game. However, they coughed the ball up too many times to count and in dangerous places. The midfield line also sat way too deep and close to the defense giving Morocco all the time they needed to pass and run off the ball. Ultimately this all contributed to the goals.

At forward, Haber is depth only. We really need to start blooding some new guys or young players soon.

On the whole this was a tepid and extremely passive style of game play and execution by Canada. Once again, we only really showed intent to possess and attack once we were down 2 or 3 goals. Will we ever learn to dictate the tempo of a game  and not just try to soak it all up and run damage control? Learning to transition between offense and defense is sorely needed and has been lacking for some time. Overall our passing, crossing and through balls need major work. If we could improve these things, the whole team improves bit by bit.

I say all of this out of disappointment. Even the team we fielded tonight could have played Morocco a bit closer. I think they are a bit better than what they showed. They had enough time do some better prep for this game with all the time in camp they had together. This Morocco team are certainly better on paper, but I was not completely impressed with them , especially on defense. However, Bounou, the keeper has got some skilled hands. I thought he was a calming presence for Morocco at the back. Too bad this guy got away.

Truthfully, after tonight's game, I hope we are not going to give the interim too many more camps. We need to start a search for a permanent coach now. It will be a waste of time to let an interim have the Gold Cup. We need to send a message in that tournament after the WCQ bomb.

We can and must do a lot better than tonight.

 

 

[Ansem]

23 minutes ago, dsqpr said:

I think a lot of us put too much emphasis on single results. This is understandable as we don't play very often but the bottom line is you can't read too much into one result. You can have a good win one week and then exactly the same team can have a bad loss the next. That's football. To evaluate how we are doing, you need to look at a bunch of matches. This was a poor result but I don't care too much. We were missing our three best players and when I look at our relatively recent results I see crucial WCQ home wins over Honduras and El Salvador but a continuing failure to get good results in Central America. So there is good news as well as bad and overall I think we are doing OK with the players we have.

I disagree.

That loss just exposed further our biggest flaw... NO DEPTH. This makes us unbelievably inconsistent and we're always left wondering which team's going to show up while countries like Iceland, Australia, Honduras and Jamaica knows exactly what to expect.

This poor level of play is due to our players not playing enough at the highest level or playing consistently at lower level...pick your poison. We will suck until we get our own league.

Even then, it will take time to build the depth to compensate like in this case, top 3 players being absent. You can't win without depth. I'm not saying that CPL will turn us into Portugal, but it can turn us into Iceland and Australia and produce players capable of executing everything the coach asked them to do at the very least. Right now, we can't even get the basics right, so there's no way you can win. That stuff is perfected at club level and only by playing often that you get better. Last time I checked, we have very gifted athletes in Canada, we just need somewhere for them to play often and get better.

[red card]

This loss shows why proper structure, shape and discipline are important. Our players aren't fast thinkers or have good vision, so the more things are automated, the less they have to worry about. While Canada would have still lost, it wouldn't have been this scoreline under Floro. 

It also shows interim managers and Canadian managers with no pedigree will not be enough to instill structure and discipline amongst these group of players. They aren't that good but don't seem to be self-aware they aren't that good.

[El Hombre]

1 hour ago, Ansem said:

This poor level of play is due to our players not playing enough at the highest level or playing consistently at lower level...pick your poison. We will suck until we get our own league.

These two ideas do not compute together.

I haven't been paying attention to the CPL discussion, but people aren't really expecting it to rival MLS in terms of quality are they?

[Ansem]

2 minutes ago, El Hombre said:

These two ideas do not compute together.

I haven't been paying attention to the CPL discussion, but people aren't really expecting it to rival MLS in terms of quality are they?

Not at first but could be up there depending on the domestic ratio imposed by the CSA. MLS is overrated in case you didn't know

[Complete Homer]

8 minutes ago, El Hombre said:

These two ideas do not compute together.

I haven't been paying attention to the CPL discussion, but people aren't really expecting it to rival MLS in terms of quality are they?

3rd best CONCACAF league could be achievable, years down the road. Probably best case scenario though. 

[El Hombre]

35 minutes ago, Ansem said:

Not at first but could be up there depending on the domestic ratio imposed by the CSA. MLS is overrated in case you didn't know

I think you're dreaming.

11 minutes ago, Complete Homer said:

3rd best CONCACAF league could be achievable, years down the road. Probably best case scenario though. 

I agree on 3rd best.  However, there are no guarantees that it'll be any better than the "low level" some of our current players are playing at.

I think a league will be valuable and may help a handful of players at the MNT level but I also think that this is yet another in a long line of "missing links" that have been floated around this board for the last 15 years.  I seriously doubt it will have the impact some are expecting.

[Ansem]

1 minute ago, El Hombre said:

I think you're dreaming.

I won't presume to guess how much quality football you watch but if you were to strip MLS of their DPs, it would rapidly become an embarrassing show to watch. It's no coincidence they are still being laughed at in Europe and considered a retirement league. MLS are leagues below Liga MX. I'm not even convinced that MLS is better than the Costa Rican league, they have more money but the talent is debatable....IMHO

With that being said, I said "up there" in quality, not above MLS and that's years down the road. That will also depend on the ratio the league will impose for domestic players. Realistically, I expect NASL level with increase in quality over the years. CPL aiming for 3rd best league in CONCACAF is the goal and it's realistic.

[Complete Homer]

5 minutes ago, El Hombre said:

I think you're dreaming.

I agree on 3rd best.  However, there are no guarantees that it'll be any better than the "low level" some of our current players are playing at.

I think a league will be valuable and may help a handful of players at the MNT level but I also think that this is yet another in a long line of "missing links" that have been floated around this board for the last 15 years.  I seriously doubt it will have the impact some are expecting.

I think any real improvement would be a couple decades down the road, simply from at least doubling the number of pro academies and giving upper tier kids a reason to stick with it beyond an NCAA scholarship. But again, all academies produce garbage the first few years, and real pool additions would likely be 10-20 years out

Short term might be a minor boost, from fewer Unattached FC players, fewer early retirements, etc. 

[Obinna]

15 minutes ago, Ansem said:

I won't presume to guess how much quality football you watch but if you were to strip MLS of their DPs, it would rapidly become an embarrassing show to watch. It's no coincidence they are still being laughed at in Europe and considered a retirement league. MLS are leagues below Liga MX. I'm not even convinced that MLS is better than the Costa Rican league, they have more money but the talent is debatable....IMHO

With that being said, I said "up there" in quality, not above MLS and that's years down the road. That will also depend on the ratio the league will impose for domestic players. Realistically, I expect NASL level with increase in quality over the years. CPL aiming for 3rd best league in CONCACAF is the goal and it's realistic.

I won't presume you're a euro snob based on your avatar picture. 

[jpg75]

1 hour ago, red card said:

This loss shows why proper structure, shape and discipline are important. Our players aren't fast thinkers or have good vision, so the more things are automated, the less they have to worry about. While Canada would have still lost, it wouldn't have been this scoreline under Floro. 

You know what else wouldn't have happened under Floro? Beating Mauritania.

[BearcatSA]

On ‎10‎/‎11‎/‎2016 at 0:59 PM, Keegan said:

We've had a few disappointing moves that missed the final ball or shot.  This reminds me a lot of the friendly against Greece in 2011 where we had a pretty makeshift lineup and we lost 1-0 because even though we couldn't produce anything the other side couldn't either.  

Occean up top, Simpson on the left, a Norwich City Jackson on the right, DeRo in front of Hutchinson and Johnson in midfield:  I wouldn't necessarily call that a makeshift lineup in the attacking six (though DeRo and Johnson were still in preseason).

[Unnamed Trialist]

20 hours ago, Vince193 said:

At a very low level.

His team is in a promotion playoff spot in Spain 2B, which would put the team at League One level, simple as that. Spain 2B at the top is like League One, and at the dregs, like League Two lower down. 

We have a lot of players no one would make this clearly erronous and uninformed statement about who are playing at the same level, anyone not in top flight in Scandinavia for example. About a dozen players in NASL in total have the level to handle the tier above where Piette is, 2A. Look at Fisk, could not score and did not shine one tier lower in Spain, now NASL player of the week, a bright light. You figure it out.