Canada's "bad" defense

[Obinna]

I debated sticking this in the general cmnt discussion, but it deserves it's own thread.

Quite frankly, I am sick and tired of this lazy narrative. 

We have allowed exactly 1 goal so far in WCQ.

What happened to all these goals our terrible defense is leaking in?

Everyone mindlessly parrots the same old talking point, "Oh, Canada has a great attack, but the defense sucks", but what they REALLY mean is that on paper our defense is the weak point of our team.

News flash, the game is not played on paper, and defending is a team responsibility just as much as an individual responsibility.  

If you want to look down on the level of our opposition, at least say that our defense is "untested", because to say it is "bad" is objectively untrue. 

For the rest of this cycle I want to see this thread bumped every time we get a clean sheet, starting next Monday.

[Yohan]

Clean sheets against mostly minnows doesn't really count

[PopePouri]

During the 2019 Gold Cup, it was bleak. In 2021, not so much. 

Lots of exciting prospects coming through as well:

Ferdinand
Smith
Halbouni
Campagna

[Gian-Luca]

The addition of no nonsense defence-first defenders such as Johnston and Kennedy have helped solidly things back there. Main issue is that we are still thin at CB, with a couple in our pool (Ferreira and Cornelius) not getting many minutes lately (Caps prefer to bring in players off the bench who will rocket the ball into the corner of their own net with their first touch while under no pressure instead 😏)

[Obinna]

14 minutes ago, Yohan said:

Clean sheets against mostly minnows doesn't really count

Fine, then our defense is simply "untested" in the case of the minnows. You can't say our defense is "bad" when we aren't conceding any goals. That doesn't make any sense, but that is precisely what is being said about us, especially in the online discussions the American fans are having.

I don't expect them to show us any respect for clean sheets against Cayman Islands, Aruba, or even Suriname, but we should at least get a small mention for shutting out Haiti in back-to-back WCQ games. This was the same Haiti side that scored 3 goals against us to knock us out of the Gold Cup. Is this not a big improvement?

It may take shutting out the Americans in a few weeks to shut them up about our defense being weak. 

Edited July 5, 2021 by Obinna

[PopePouri]

Being thin at CB seems relative given the players we've called up. Johnston, Henry, Vitoria, Kennedy and Miller are all starting at a decent level. 

[gigi riva]

Our CB situation is  improving , ALL teams have a weak link somewere , look at some teams in the Euro both Spain and Italy lack that striker , for example 

[grigorio]

I don't really follow the Caps but how the heck did Cornelius go from starting CB to struggling mightily to get off the bench with a Canadian loving Raposo playing manager while Caps remain one of the worst teams in the league. 

[narduch]

In my opinion for this team to transcend its current status we need a keeper playing regularly and performing well in a top 5 league. 

[Obinna]

The knock I keep hearing on Vitoria from Americans is that he couldn't break into Philly's starting 11 when they were a bad team.

That may be how they remember it, but what I remember was that he was a starter, then got injured, then had trouble solidifying a starting spot after the injury, then his loan was finished. 

This is how it actually played out: https://www.transfermarkt.com/steven-vitoria/leistungsdatendetails/spieler/54716/plus/0?saison=&verein=25467&liga=&wettbewerb=&pos=&trainer_id=

In his 17 of his 18 games for the Union he played 90 minutes. 11 games he was out during injury. He was on the bench but did not play for 4 games (3 of them immediately after his injury, and the last day of the season he wasn't in the squad.

Seeing what actually transpired makes this sort of misremembering all the more annoying:

Just going to point out that Vitoria couldn't crack the Union's starting 11 5 seasons ago.....when Richie Marquez, and Ken Tribbett were beating him out......both of whom were younger than Vittoria at the time, and are now out of the game (after washing out in USL).

And those Union teams were f'n hot garbage. So if some on this board are skeptical of the magic Euro dust of the Portuguese First Division, this would be why. Along with the fact that Joao Pedro starts in the league, and couldn't stand out for LA Galaxy during his time in MLS either. Then there is Pedro Santos at the Crew, who is a merely average attacking midfielder.

[PopePouri]

11 minutes ago, narduch said:

In my opinion for this team to transcend its current status we need a keeper playing regularly and performing well in a top 5 league. 

Do the US or Mexico have that? Right now, the US are pinning their hopes on a 27 year old MLSer.

Edited July 5, 2021 by PopePouri

[narduch]

1 minute ago, PopePouri said:

Do the US or Mexico have that? Right now, the US are pinning their hopes on a 27 year old MLSer.

The US used to.

[Obinna]

2 minutes ago, narduch said:

The US used to.

So?

Who they "used to" have is meaningless today. We had a keeper playing regularly in the top 5 leagues if you go back far enough.

To say we need a keeper in the top 5 leagues is a strange take, considering the only team in the confederation with that is Costa Rica. 

Edited July 5, 2021 by Obinna

[RS]

14 minutes ago, Obinna said:

The knock I keep hearing on Vitoria from Americans is that he couldn't break into Philly's starting 11 when they were a bad team.

That may be how they remember it, but what I remember was that he was a starter, then got injured, then had trouble solidifying a starting spot after the injury, then his loan was finished. 

This is how it actually played out: https://www.transfermarkt.com/steven-vitoria/leistungsdatendetails/spieler/54716/plus/0?saison=&verein=25467&liga=&wettbewerb=&pos=&trainer_id=

In his 17 of his 18 games for the Union he played 90 minutes. 11 games he was out during injury. He was on the bench but did not play for 4 games (3 of them immediately after his injury, and the last day of the season he wasn't in the squad.

Seeing what actually transpired makes this sort of misremembering all the more annoying:

Just going to point out that Vitoria couldn't crack the Union's starting 11 5 seasons ago.....when Richie Marquez, and Ken Tribbett were beating him out......both of whom were younger than Vittoria at the time, and are now out of the game (after washing out in USL).

And those Union teams were f'n hot garbage. So if some on this board are skeptical of the magic Euro dust of the Portuguese First Division, this would be why. Along with the fact that Joao Pedro starts in the league, and couldn't stand out for LA Galaxy during his time in MLS either. Then there is Pedro Santos at the Crew, who is a merely average attacking midfielder.

Not for nothing, but it's somewhat comforting to see "Robert Borden" having the same kinds of arguments in a completely different forum as he does here.

[PopePouri]

If we want to "transcend our current status", we just need one European prospect to hit. Either Halbouni or Smith jumps to Werder's or Nice's first team respectively. The latter may be on that path already. A jump to the Bundesliga for Kennedy would be nice as well.

 

Edited July 5, 2021 by PopePouri

[Free kick]

1 hour ago, Obinna said:

It may take shutting out the Americans in a few weeks to shut them up about our defense being weak. 

I never go and never have gone to american forums for soccer.  Nor any other kind of soccer medium that is primarily geared for american fans.  We are not going to get respect, and thats to be expected.

as for the topic at hand, defenders, it takes longer for CB’s to develop.  Plus a lot of the attributes for those roles require a great soft skills like leadership.   That makes its easier for a player who has been around for while. Someone who is over 28 or 30 in age

Edited July 5, 2021 by Free kick

[costarg]

2 hours ago, Obinna said:

I debated sticking this in the general cmnt discussion, but it deserves it's own thread.

Quite frankly, I am sick and tired of this lazy narrative. 

We have allowed exactly 1 goal so far in WCQ.

What happened to all these goals our terrible defense is leaking in?

Everyone mindlessly parrots the same old talking point, "Oh, Canada has a great attack, but the defense sucks", but what they REALLY mean is that on paper our defense is the weak point of our team.

News flash, the game is not played on paper, and defending is a team responsibility just as much as an individual responsibility.  

If you want to look down on the level of our opposition, at least say that our defense is "untested", because to say it is "bad" is objectively untrue. 

For the rest of this cycle I want to see this thread bumped every time we get a clean sheet, starting next Monday.

This was our lineup for our most important match in WC qualifying.  Pretty self explanatory and very telling as to why we're concerned with our backline.

---------11M - 22M
70M - 6M - 4M - 6M - 2M
----400k - 100k - 725k
--------2.6M

Edited July 5, 2021 by costarg

[Gian-Luca]

23 minutes ago, RS said:

Not for nothing, but it's somewhat comforting to see "Robert Borden" having the same kinds of arguments in a completely different forum as he does here.

Who is Robert Borden when he’s at home?

I have to admit that it was kind of weird reading a thread between Canadian and American fans where I was largely disagreeing with both of what they were having to say. 

Edited July 5, 2021 by Gian-Luca

[Gian-Luca]

11 minutes ago, Free kick said:

I never go and never have gone to american forums for soccer.  Nor any other kind of soccer medium that is primarily geared for american fans.  We are not going to get respect, and thats to be expected.

The MLS website guys tend to be more respectful than some of the posters on the forums or other areas of social media, whether or not that is because of the 3 CDN MLS teams. 

[Kent]

I think the "terrible defense" narrative is overblown as well. Even if you go back to 2019. In the Nations League group stage we gave up 4 goals, USA in our same group gave up 3. Not a huge difference. In the 2019 Gold Cup group stage Mexico and us gave up 3 goals in the group stage. Nobody says the USA or Mexico have terrible defense. Sure we gave up 3 goals to Haiti a game, but the same Haitian team scored 2 against Costa Rica. Not a huge difference, but nobody talks about Costa Rica having a terrible defense.

[Kent]

1 minute ago, Gian-Luca said:

The MLS website guys tend to be more respectful than some of the posters on the forums or other areas of social media, whether or not that is because of the 3 CDN MLS teams. 

I miss the comment section of the MLS website. It is the only place I had interactions with American fans (aside from that one guy that sometimes posts here, but he is mostly harmless so it isn't much fun).

[BrennanFan]

You cannot have an untested defence going into the last round of WCQ.  That in itself is a weakness.

Hopefully we can keep some clean sheets at the GC against the US and Jamaica/Costa Rica.  

I acknowledge that our new defence with Kennedy, Vitoria/Henry and Johnston is looking decent.  

[johnyb]

I think it's great that they are shitting on our defense. Hard to deny that on paper it's definitely our weak spot. Underestimating us will be their downfall.

[Obinna]

18 minutes ago, costarg said:

This was our lineup for our most important match in WC qualifying.  Pretty self explanatory and very telling as to why we're concerned with our backline.

---------11M - 22M
70M - 6M - 4M - 6M - 2M
----400k - 100k - 725k
--------2.6M

Should our midfield be a cause for concern with 500k Hutchinson in there?

Your post demonstrates my point. There comes a time when you must look at the real world defensive results and acknowledge the narrative has been overexaggerated. 

Edited July 5, 2021 by Obinna

[PopePouri]

19 minutes ago, costarg said:

This was our lineup for our most important match in WC qualifying.  Pretty self explanatory and very telling as to why we're concerned with our backline.

---------11M - 22M
70M - 6M - 4M - 6M - 2M
----400k - 100k - 725k
--------2.6M

It's worth noting the following:

1) Hutch isn't part of that team and he's considered 660k.
2) Defenders will always evaluated less than midfielders/strikers.
3) Transfermarkt won't always reflect the players form.

Obviously, our CB aren't as good as mid/strikers, but given the quality we have in those positions, it's not "bad". All the players we've called up are decent. They're certainly not USL level.

Edited July 5, 2021 by PopePouri