Wales vs Canada - Friday April 9th, Leckwith Stadium, Cardiff - 1pm Eastern / 10am Pacific

[Olympique_de_Marseille]

Wales vs Canada
Friday, April 9th 2021
Leckwith Stadium, Cardiff (a small stadium right beside the Cardiff City stadium)
1pm Eastern / 10am Pacific (6pm local)

Broadcast:
OneSoccer in Canada
BBC Sport website and BBC iPlayer in the UK

https://www.faw.cymru/en/news/venue-canada-match-confirmed/
https://www.faw.cymru/en/wales/match-centre/wales-v-canada-9th-april-2021/
https://www.bbc.com/sport/football/56325571

https://canadasoccer.com/news/canada-soccers-womens-national-team-to-face-wales-in-womens-international-friendly-match/

First match for new the new Wales head coach Gemma Grainger, who will name her squad on March 31st.

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Personal speculation:

Given that Cloé Lacasse ( http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cloé_Lacasse , https://twitter.com/cloe_lacasse ) recently retweeted this Canada Soccer Tweet:

she may get her first call-up for this match. She plays in a weak league but was top scorer: 

http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/2019–20_Campeonato_Nacional_Feminino

Edited March 27, 2021 by Olympique_de_Marseille

[Olympique_de_Marseille]

The Welsh have announced their squad:

https://www.faw.cymru/en/news/cymru-squad-announced-face-canada-and-denmark

 

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Besides Cloé Lacasse, I wonder if Rylee Foster might get the call?

[narduch]

One Soccer is showing this game for free on their Youtube channel.

[Olympique_de_Marseille]

Looking forward to this match.

Wales has little attacking power but has become a hard team to break down over the last 4 years. Very sharp defensively.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2019_FIFA_Women's_World_Cup_qualification_–_UEFA_Group_1

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/UEFA_Women's_Euro_2022_qualifying_Group_C

[narduch]

 

[toontownman]

Looks like you can only watch it on OneSoccer's Youtube. Doesn't appear on the website or App for me. 

 

[narduch]

That's weird.

[narduch]

Lets go.

 

[Olympique_de_Marseille]

The Welsh lineup:

There are a lot of veterans, Fishlock, Ingle, Harding, Green and Rowe.  One first time (new) player in Ceri Holland. I can't say I really know their players, but it looks like they are going with a strong lineup.

Edited April 9, 2021 by Olympique_de_Marseille

[narduch]

Interesting its the BBC feed

[narduch]

Canada up 1-0 at the half.

 

[_Vic_]

Not much on the scoreboard but lots of positives in the first half. Gilles, Quinn, Caryle, Rose, Fleming, Labbe, Zadorsky all fantastic. Sinclair too before she got injured.

For the first 35 minutes Wales were a kick out blindly up the pitch side but grew into better play and possession in the last 10 minutes if the half.

Tough to bag goals against a team that sits so many in their box. But the quality of our players is there, you can see it regardless.

Huitema seems a bit lost. When you are young and playing up front you better be pressing like a demon and getting stuck in and terrorizing defenders. She seems to have no interest in either.

 

Edited April 9, 2021 by _Vic_
Typo

[rkomar]

We squandered a lot of excellent goal scoring chances in the last quarter of the game.  Great through balls setting up the goal opportunities, followed by abysmal execution by our attackers resulting in no shot on net.  That's really the only thing that bothered me in the match.

[Olympique_de_Marseille]

1 hour ago, narduch said:

Interesting its the BBC feed

I think that this was the easiest thing given that they also wanted to broadcast the Lille match from the start (they paid a lot of money for Ligue1!) and that BBC was streaming the game anyways (easy access with a VPN or piracy risk). Might as well take their BBC stream and put it on YouTube.

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1 hour ago, _Vic_ said:

Huitema seems a bit lost. 

The crazy thing is, she was top scorer at Olympic Qualifying and yet now there is a small risk that she won't make the final 18 for the Olympic Games themselves. If Viens or Lacasse show they can step up their game, it will make roster selection difficult.

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Defensively, we let too many good Welsh crosses into our box. If that had been England, we would have been punished. I don't have a clear tactical solution but there seems to be some weakness there. Thoughts?

Edited April 9, 2021 by Olympique_de_Marseille

[toontownman]

Ahhhhhh the ability to pause and rewind. Can they not just stream everything through YouTube lol.

Nice to see Viens score. Hope she finds her feet at this level.

[_Vic_]

Still haven't seen enough of Viens to get a good read yet but she seems like a real footballer (as opposed to athlete, quick-twitch fibre pinball, run fast, etc). Not enough of those in the women's game and hopeful. She had a nice head flick over her head and tried to spin onto it in their box, didn't work but savvy move.

What do you do when your game has gone cold? It's natural, it happens to everyone. You get out there and bust your ass. And then bust it some more. Sure if you're Neymar or Mo Salah and you have so much skill that you don't even have to defend. But when you're nowhere near that level and achieving nothing going forward, you need something else to keep yourself on the field. No one gets a free pass.

Thought the second half was a big heap of random. Both teams seemed to string a couple passes, then a turnover, rinse and repeat for three-quarters of an hour. When you're subbing a half a dozen players you're not going to have much team  rhythm, your interest is more in player evaluation. Luckily some early goals provided that opportunity.

[_Vic_]

4 hours ago, Olympique_de_Marseille said:

Defensively, we let too many good Welsh crosses into our box. If that had been England, we would have been punished. I don't have a clear tactical solution but there seems to be some weakness there. Thoughts?

I don't think that was the case in the first half before we threw the lineup all three sheets to the wind. But yes, I agree England would likely have punished us. Labbe has improved a lot coming off her line which would negate a lot of the opportunities, she would force them farther out past the six and in the women's game that usually means it takes a header placed into the corners because not many attackers can snap and drive a ball with their head. And you also have to beat Vanessa Gilles to the ball, and good luck with that.

Nikita Parris on the right would normally mean trouble but Gabrielle Carle has wheels. If Parris is on, she's a days work and then some, good way to measure yourself. And she'll have good support, our back central four are pretty formidable.

Forgot to mention earlier, Quinn was insanely next-level out there today, like they called Davies - a cheat code.

[Olympique_de_Marseille]

2 minutes ago, _Vic_ said:

I don't think that was the case in the first half before we threw the lineup all three sheets to the wind. But yes, I agree England would likely have punished us.

Yes, that comment was related to the 2nd half.

[_Vic_]

Also today - England had almost 2/3 of the possession and was 526 passes to France's 328. And with 83% pass accuracy rate to France's 69%. But they got spanked 3-1 and will be some pissed and with something to prove Tuesday.

Playing Canada after France will make them feel like slow motion and they have weeks on the ball, for us going from Wales to England will feel like the game is in on fast-forward. Tough scenario to meet a team, any kind of result keeping the game close will take a mental piece de resistance.