Canada vs England in the fall

[Greatest Cockney Rip Off]

2 hours ago, BCM1555362349 said:

We always forget that the England U-19s had a Euro qualifier around the same time (and if I recall U-21 qualifiers too) so the team we beat wasn't the A team...Didn't fit our narrative. But anyway, that England team nevertheless had some good players on the pitch.

Must be nice to play Marcus Rashford who was already starting and scoring for Manchester and it not be your A team. 

[BCM]

4 hours ago, canta15 said:

Ok we tied England recently too in a youth game and again that did not help us in our qualifying efforts. Did England bring their B-team in that game too?

I'm not sure...but definitely for other game there were U19 qualifiers...point being, I was just saying we made way too much of that match.

I'll give you an example. My team, Ipswich Town, has a promising prospect named Andre Dozzell. He was just this week removed from the England U20 roster (going to a tournament in Toulon) and moved to the U19s - demotion? No, added to U19 Euro qualifiers. The U19 and U21 teams are the "go" teams. The U20 really is the B team for both. Sorry to say, but true.

[Greatest Cockney Rip Off]

The England u20 team is currently at the wit of World Cup. Are you say they dropped him from the World Cup squad for Euro qualifier?

[Obinna]

2 hours ago, dsqpr said:

Yes, an England B team would be very strong and Canada would still be heavy underdogs. But Rooney is still very much part of the first team squad and I really can't see him ever turning out for an England B team -- there is no point. England would send younger players on the fringe of the first team to give them a look.

Personally, I think even a match against England B would be a great draw for the fans and a very valuable match for us in terms of player development. And quite likely a more entertaining spectacle than vs. England "A".

I was being facetious regarding Rooney. A little tongue in cheek in light of the negative press surrounding his form this season. I do very much expect him to remain in the first choice England team, but yes a friendly against their B team would be a great test for us and get the fans out. I don't think it needs to be an official B team either, simply an understrength squad giving a look to their fringe players, who are all household names that'd bring the causal out. I think the EPL obsessed will still come out if it's Ashley Young in the lineup, rather than say Raheem Stirling.

[BCM]

2 hours ago, Greatest Cockney Rip Off said:

The England u20 team is currently at the wit of World Cup. Are you say they dropped him from the World Cup squad for Euro qualifier?

I suspect you know, and others may not, that England doesn't really have an U-20 team, except for WC qualifying. It regularly runs the U-19 and U-21 to match Euros but not the U-20 team. If out of the WC cycle, it's a B team if and when it ever comes together.

Dozell was switched from U-20 Toulon Tournament to U-19s for Euros.

[Fastfeet2]

5 hours ago, dsqpr said:

Yes, an England B team would be very strong and Canada would still be heavy underdogs. But Rooney is still very much part of the first team squad and I really can't see him ever turning out for an England B team -- there is no point. England would send younger players on the fringe of the first team to give them a look.

Personally, I think even a match against England B would be a great draw for the fans and a very valuable match for us in terms of player development. And quite likely a more entertaining spectacle than vs. England "A".

Why do you say this? Not being selected for the Scotland and France games would suggest otherwise.

[jpg75]

14 hours ago, -Hammer- said:

Because doing so consistently, frightfully exposes the weakness of our program, which in turns causes attendance to plummet against less well known teams, such as...well pretty much all of CONCAAF except the US and Mexico. It also doesn't exactly encourage fans to trade in their ancestral homeland's colors for their current homeland's.

You can't build your brand if you lose all the time, and especially not when you are encouraging people to support other popular brands. The short term benefit of cash, is seldom worth the long term effects you can have on the brand and program. You want people to support Canada on a consistent basis, not just come out and spend money and not buy merch when their ancestry comes into town.

At least the US can say, we are 23rd in the world. Yes, we'll probably lose a lot of the big power players, but we can at least make a show of it and occasionally pull one out of the hat. For us though, not as smart a choice.

A rare occasional big name is fine, but consistently, it's a terrible policy.

Well there you go, last line answered your own answer. If we did it once a year and got a cash grab it would not be a brand crasher or detrimental to the cause....which leads to my next observation: god your pessimistic! You're assuming we'd automatically lose to countries like Greece, Scotland, Serbia, Ireland etc.? Maybe Portugal, Brasil, Croatia, England but even then give us some credit that we might actually fight and put in a respectable performance.

[-Hammer-]

1 hour ago, jpg75 said:

Well there you go, last line answered your own answer. If we did it once a year and got a cash grab it would not be a brand crasher or detrimental to the cause....which leads to my next observation: god your pessimistic! You're assuming we'd automatically lose to countries like Greece, Scotland, Serbia, Ireland etc.? Maybe Portugal, Brasil, Croatia, England but even then give us some credit that we might actually fight and put in a respectable performance.

Except how many friendlies total per year do our men play at home? Last year, our men didn't have a single friendly at home, nor the year before. Now that may be excused because we did have world cup qualifiers, but all the friendlies were out of the country.

Going back to 2014, we had one vs Jamaica, the year before that, one at Commonwealth vs Costa Rica

So, let say we double the number of games. That's still half of the games being played far above our weight class. That doesn't really benefit the brand (especially if you have more opposing fans in the stadium then Canadian fans), an overwhelming mismatch doesn't really help with development or cohesion and it's a big cost of effort and resources to coordination and bring the team here compared to a team closer to us in terms and ranking and skill.

It's also not pessimistic when we have a very recent track record of losing to teams far inferior to the likes of most of the teams you mention. The whole point of a friendly is to get better as a team, tune it and find out what works and what doesn't. You lose that benefit when you have that big a gap in skill to deal with. Once ever 5 or 10 years is fine, not yearly.

[theaub]

It really means nothing

We can play some mid-tier team in a friendly, and win or lose no one even knows it happens so the gen pop still assumes we suck

Or we play a better team in a friendly, and there's like a 10% chance we do something respectable and a small amount of the gen pop thinks we suck slightly less.  Or we get clowned and everyone already thinks we suck anyways.  Its not like people can have a lower opinion of the MNT than they already do.

There is probably something to be said about actually trying to build some confidence from winning matches and getting some cheap FIFA points, but that's what this hypothetical League of Nations should do, at least for the first couple seasons as we play the scrub teams from the Caribbean.  Nothing wrong with scheduling some high profile friendlies along the way.

 

[jpg75]

1 hour ago, -Hammer- said:

Except how many friendlies total per year do our men play at home? Last year, our men didn't have a single friendly at home, nor the year before. Now that may be excused because we did have world cup qualifiers, but all the friendlies were out of the country.

Going back to 2014, we had one vs Jamaica, the year before that, one at Commonwealth vs Costa Rica

So, let say we double the number of games. That's still half of the games being played far above our weight class. That doesn't really benefit the brand (especially if you have more opposing fans in the stadium then Canadian fans), an overwhelming mismatch doesn't really help with development or cohesion and it's a big cost of effort and resources to coordination and bring the team here compared to a team closer to us in terms and ranking and skill.

It's also not pessimistic when we have a very recent track record of losing to teams far inferior to the likes of most of the teams you mention. The whole point of a friendly is to get better as a team, tune it and find out what works and what doesn't. You lose that benefit when you have that big a gap in skill to deal with. Once ever 5 or 10 years is fine, not yearly.

And your first two paragraphs illustrate the biggest problem we have: few home friendlies. So the problem isn't getting home games against strong opponents, it's getting them at all. I would argue the only way to ensure a positive financial result from hosting a game is to have asses supporting both teams in the stands. 10K to watch us play Curacao is not going to convince the CSA it's in it's financial interest to organize more home friendlies, but 40K to watch us play England or Portugal might.

[-Hammer-]

2 minutes ago, jpg75 said:

And your first two paragraphs illustrate the biggest problem we have: few home friendlies. So the problem isn't getting home games against strong opponents, it's getting them at all. I would argue the only way to ensure a positive financial result from hosting a game is to have asses supporting both teams in the stands. 10K to watch us play Curacao is not going to convince the CSA it's in it's financial interest to organize more home friendlies, but 40K to watch us play England or Portugal might.

Yes, but the point you missed is that while yes, those individual games will sell, when you suddenly have CONCAAF play that you have to participate in, interest has waned for it, because the team has been constantly been throttled.

I will agree, more home friendlies is something we do need, but also given the cost of attracting a big name team, you have a lot of potential to lose money and the cost of bringing them in makes for a riskier margin then say a Caribbean club.

[jpg75]

3 minutes ago, -Hammer- said:

Yes, but the point you missed is that while yes, those individual games will sell, when you suddenly have CONCAAF play that you have to participate in, interest has waned for it, because the team has been constantly been throttled.

I will agree, more home friendlies is something we do need, but also given the cost of attracting a big name team, you have a lot of potential to lose money and the cost of bringing them in makes for a riskier margin then say a Caribbean club.

But you're assuming we'll get throttled. There is no guarantee we'll shit the bed, at least not every time. The 3-0 loss to Mexico in Vancouver was the first time we lost to them at home in 23 years. Our record at home (friendlies & qualifiers) the last 5-10 years or so has actually been somewhat respectable. Anyways, i'm sure we'll just end up agreeing to disagree.

[lazlo_80]

if this game is a go it's a huge opportunity for the Voyageurs and Canadian support in general. If the supporters sections is as incredible as it was in Vancouver during some of the qualifiers you're definitely going to have the opportunity to turn the heads of the English wannabe fans in attendance and win them over.

[-Hammer-]

18 minutes ago, jpg75 said:

But you're assuming we'll get throttled. There is no guarantee we'll shit the bed, at least not every time. The 3-0 loss to Mexico in Vancouver was the first time we lost to them at home in 23 years. Our record at home (friendlies & qualifiers) the last 5-10 years or so has actually been somewhat respectable. Anyways, i'm sure we'll just end up agreeing to disagree.

If we are going to use romantic, irrelevant figures, then how about the say Canada has only beat Mexico 3 times in the past 60 years with a record of 20-8-3.

How about Honduras who we have a losing record to the last decade, or Panama who we seem to only be able to draw, or Costa Rica? We barely find periodic success against these teams, never mind consistent success. What about the fact we haven't beaten the US since 1990? They are a comparable level of play (if not lower) to many of those teams you speak of, so that's a pretty big guarantee I would think.

I think you are right, we are going to end up agreeing to disagree on this one.

[jpg75]

8 minutes ago, -Hammer- said:

If we are going to use romantic, irrelevant figures, then how about the say Canada has only beat Mexico 3 times in the past 60 years with a record of 20-8-3.

How about Honduras who we have a losing record to the last decade, or Panama who we seem to only be able to draw, or Costa Rica? We barely find periodic success against these teams, never mind consistent success. What about the fact we haven't beaten the US since 1990? They are a comparable level of play (if not lower) to many of those teams you speak of, so that's a pretty big guarantee I would think.

I think you are right, we are going to end up agreeing to disagree on this one.

We are actually 2-1-1 at home against Honduras in the past decade. We beat Panama 1-0 in WCQ 5 years ago. We've played the US once at home since 1997 which was a respectable 0-0 draw in 2012. Costa Rica we lost to in Edmonton in 2011 (weak squad) and 2004 for WCQ. We drew them 1-1 in Toronto in 2007 and 2015 (GC), and beat them in GC in 2007 along with a few other GC draws over the years.

So honestly, do you really think we're going to be embarassed by the likes of Scotland (1-1 draw in March), Ireland, Serbia, Greece (1-0 in Greece)?

[-Hammer-]

1 minute ago, jpg75 said:

We are actually 2-1-1 at home against Honduras in the past decade. We beat Panama 1-0 in WCQ 5 years ago. We've played the US once at home since 1997 which was a respectable 0-0 draw in 2012. Costa Rica we lost to in Edmonton in 2011 (weak squad) and 2004 for WCQ. We drew them 1-1 in Toronto in 2007 and 2015 (GC), and beat them in GC in 2007 along with a few other GC draws over the years.

So honestly, do you really think we're going to be embarassed by the likes of Scotland (1-1 draw in March), Ireland, Serbia, Greece (1-0 in Greece)?

Honduras - and are 2-5-1 total in the past decade

Panama - And then lost to them in the same year and drew them then next 3 times.

Costa Rica - So won once a decade ago and have drawn or lost since.

US - Still haven't beaten them once, and given how many of our friendlies end up in the US and it's proximity it wouldn't be a huge away disadvantage either.

All of those teams are inferior to the likes of England, Brazil, Spain that you mentioned earlier. As far as Greece, Scotland and Ireland and Serbia? All around the same level or better (especially Ireland and Greece) then the likes of Honduras and Panama who we either draw or lose to consistently. You are better off pulling play from other CONCAAF nations who are not only close to your level of play, but who you are likely to actually play in the future when it counts.

 

[harrycoyster]

3 minutes ago, -Hammer- said:

Honduras - and are 2-5-1 total in the past decade

Panama - And then lost to them in the same year and drew them then next 3 times.

Costa Rica - So won once a decade ago and have drawn or lost since.

US - Still haven't beaten them once, and given how many of our friendlies end up in the US and it's proximity it wouldn't be a huge away disadvantage either.

All of those teams are inferior to the likes of England, Brazil, Spain that you mentioned earlier. As far as Greece, Scotland and Ireland and Serbia? All around the same level or better (especially Ireland and Greece) then the likes of Honduras and Panama who we either draw or lose to consistently. You are better off pulling play from other CONCAAF nations who are not only close to your level of play, but who you are likely to actually play in the future when it counts.

 

I personally don't see the point of playing Ireland, Serbia or Scotland when our biggest failing is time and time again adapting to the Central American style of play. As many friendlies against Central America as possible please.

[jpg75]

45 minutes ago, -Hammer- said:

Honduras - and are 2-5-1 total in the past decade

Panama - And then lost to them in the same year and drew them then next 3 times.

Costa Rica - So won once a decade ago and have drawn or lost since.

US - Still haven't beaten them once, and given how many of our friendlies end up in the US and it's proximity it wouldn't be a huge away disadvantage either.

All of those teams are inferior to the likes of England, Brazil, Spain that you mentioned earlier. As far as Greece, Scotland and Ireland and Serbia? All around the same level or better (especially Ireland and Greece) then the likes of Honduras and Panama who we either draw or lose to consistently. You are better off pulling play from other CONCAAF nations who are not only close to your level of play, but who you are likely to actually play in the future when it counts.

 

We are talking about staging home friendlies, i don't find road results with those countries to be relevant.

I did mention Scotland, Ireland, Greece and Serbia go look back at my previous posts. I also mentioned Brasil, Portugal, England, Croatia...not Spain. I would include Chile and Iran, both of those countries have medium-sized diasporas here and may travel as well. Haiti in Montreal, Japan or Korea in Vancouver, Poland/Ukraine in Edmonton (i'm open to debate on the relative financial success of any of these options).

edit: Holy crap, i can't believe i forgot about Italy. That's an obvious big draw.

[jpg75]

27 minutes ago, harrycoyster said:

I personally don't see the point of playing Ireland, Serbia or Scotland when our biggest failing is time and time again adapting to the Central American style of play. As many friendlies against Central America as possible please.

$$$$

edit: i feel the need to elaborate because there seems to be an opinion on this board we need more CA friendlies and that the CSA has failed at this.

First of all, when it comes to road friendlies it's a two-way street, if the home team does not want to invite you there is nothing you can do about it. Panama is the only CA country to invite us for a road friendly in atleast 20 years.

Second, those nations have much better partners to choose from from both a soccer and financial perspective. Why play Canada when you can play Paraguay or Colombia?

Thirdly, Guatemala and El Salvador play the bulk of their games in the US, Honduras play some there too. Panama and Costa Rica seem to be the only ones who still play most home friendlies at home.

Fourth, it's not an either-or, zero sum prop. We can play a lucrative home game against a Euro team and still play some CONCACAF teams.

[-Hammer-]

2 hours ago, jpg75 said:

We are talking about staging home friendlies, i don't find road results with those countries to be relevant.

I did mention Scotland, Ireland, Greece and Serbia go look back at my previous posts. I also mentioned Brasil, Portugal, England, Croatia...not Spain. I would include Chile and Iran, both of those countries have medium-sized diasporas here and may travel as well. Haiti in Montreal, Japan or Korea in Vancouver, Poland/Ukraine in Edmonton (i'm open to debate on the relative financial success of any of these options).

edit: Holy crap, i can't believe i forgot about Italy. That's an obvious big draw.

I'm agreeing to disagree at this point. I'd much rather our team benefit from playing teams at our level and building the brand to the nation, then hotshotting it and encouraging the immigrated to stick with their team from across the pond.

[-Hammer-]

12 minutes ago, dsqpr said:

Are you saying we should never try to arrange a friendly with a big name team in case we lose money?

No, if you had read previous posts, I said we shouldn't be arranging friendlies of this nature because it hurts Canada's ability to build it's MNT brand and attract fans (You said it yourself, there would be massive English support in Toronto. Likely far more then half of BMO cheering for England. That has terrible optics. What new fan wants to jump on Canada's bandwagon after that kind of experience?), that the short term financial benefit of these matches comes at the cost of more long term indifference towards playing our more common played CONCAAF rivals, that it doesn't help to build cohesion or skill to play against a vastly superior team, that it doesn't give us needed experience against other CONCAAF teams and because it's a much tighter margin to make a profit vs a lesser known team, given the travel costs and dealing with the much more affluential associations.

..and even then, I'm not saying that we shouldn't ever do so. I'm saying it we shouldn't be doing it yearly. It should be a once, maybe every 5 to 10 year thing.

[GuillermoDelQuarto]

On 5/31/2017 at 3:20 PM, shermanator said:

Fuck Toronto, let's put it in Edmonton and get 55K+ in the stands.

for once, we agree

[Guest]

I feel like with the Nations League coming up we will probably only be able to schedule 1 or 2 friendlies a year. I think we'd get enough concacaf games in so it will be fine to schedule against a big team if we can in order to attact some support from casuals. Even if they are European snobs, some will actually like watching Canada play and come back for more in more important games. They will add to our fan base

[jpg75]

22 minutes ago, canta15 said:

Even if they are European snobs, some will actually like watching Canada play and come back for more in more important games. They will add to our fan base

This. Many V's can attest that once you get the closet fans, snobs or anti-soccer types out to a Canada game they tend to enjoy themselves and do sometimes come back for more.

[Fastfeet2]

37 minutes ago, dsqpr said:

There has certainly been some press making that point but I disagree. Friendlies are one thing but when the chips are down for a crucial WCQ, I think Rooney's ton of caps and half ton of goals will be in the squad, don't you? He is only 31 FFS, hardly well past it! And he brings something different to the attack.

His league appearances for Man U. have been limited this season by boring boring Morinho-ball and that has impacted his England position but I think we will see him move on and resume regular first team football somewhere.

I agree with Rooney bringing something else to the attack. Hes a unique striker, and his amount of goals for club and country speak volumes to his ability. 

I would agrue his performances for both club and country as of late have been far below Rooney standards. I think with him losing a few yards of pace, it really hurt his game and now he's having a bit of difficulty adjusting his game. 

Me personally, I would always make room for an experienced head like Rooney, but he has some serious work to do if he wants meaningful minutes imo. Kane, Rashford, Vardy, Welbeck (when fit) and Sturridge (when fit) are top quality strikers, and Rooneys rep will only keep him around for so long. 

He needs to lose a good 10 pounds and handle his body according to his age if he wants to turn things around and score goals week in week out again.