CONCACAF U20 qualifying (for the cycle ending in 2025) + preparation & news

[Footyeh]

How soon before I'm allowed to make a negative post??😅

In all seriousness, job done.  I know how excited we tend to get when we win and I see ton's of people on social media raving about this team and hyping individual players, but there's honestly not much you can draw out these results other than our players are good against extremely weak opposition.  The play in general was not great, players showed great fight yes, but what did the team show that suggests they will be dangerous against the bigger nations, where's our key threats?  The Qualifiers is going to be a different animal.  We've seen it with the last U17 cycle, our two midfielders for example (Badwal and Biello) who many of us are speaking very highly of, were severely outmatched in their own age qualifying.  Now you're playing in a 2005/06 age group qualifying with even more seasoned and experienced players/teams than those Canada already struggled with at the 2006 age group.  I think we should all ease our expectations of this team.  Would love nothing more than to see our U20's back in the World Cup stage but knowing this pool, I feel we are going to be in for an extremely rough road come the summer.

Genuinely hope I'm wrong! 🙏

[Ivan]

2 hours ago, El Diego said:

I may be going overboard based on very limited viewings against some weak u20 sides, but Lopez could probably win the TFC starting striker job

Was thinking the same thing! Lopez or Morgan!  LOL

Edited February 28 by Ivan
Added the LOL so as to not be overly serious. 🙃

[Unnamed Trialist]

2 hours ago, Footyeh said:

How soon before I'm allowed to make a negative post??😅

In all seriousness, job done.  I know how excited we tend to get when we win and I see ton's of people on social media raving about this team and hyping individual players, but there's honestly not much you can draw out these results other than our players are good against extremely weak opposition.  The play in general was not great, players showed great fight yes, but what did the team show that suggests they will be dangerous against the bigger nations, where's our key threats?  The Qualifiers is going to be a different animal.  We've seen it with the last U17 cycle, our two midfielders for example (Badwal and Biello) who many of us are speaking very highly of, were severely outmatched in their own age qualifying.  Now you're playing in a 2005/06 age group qualifying with even more seasoned and experienced players/teams than those Canada already struggled with at the 2006 age group.  I think we should all ease our expectations of this team.  Would love nothing more than to see our U20's back in the World Cup stage but knowing this pool, I feel we are going to be in for an extremely rough road come the summer.

Genuinely hope I'm wrong! 🙏

I think we were better vs T&T than against SVG, where we were coasting and imprecise. We squandered balls dumbly and relied on schoolyard prowess in dribbling. There was a lot of ignoring the clear and obvious pass staring us in the face. We could play a lot better as a block. Even yesterday, only watching last 30 minutes, we didn't support each other well, we had players isolated. But we did stay intense, were fit, kept the clean sheet. The back was solid and the attacks had swagger. We have some positional depth. Fine, but probably not altogether enough for tougher opposition, as you say.

A decent coach could get a lot more out of these guys, I think you have to factor that in. I was back in my coaching mode screaming at my guys to fix this or that in both games I saw, second half chunks of each. But I'm not going to overly complain about Olivieri getting this job done as it was still a challenge.

[CanadaFan123]

I think it’s disingenuous to say we’ll struggle against tougher opponents unless someone here is a CONCACAF u20 expert. Aside from the obvious USA and Mexico, who is to say other nations have a stronger pool at this age? I think it’s doubtful to be honest.

We can improve for sure but this is the start of the cycle. I was impressed with the football we played on such a terrible pitch - I think our game will be more suited to Mexico. 

[Kadenge]

9 hours ago, Aird25 said:

Or one of the CPL clubs?

Apparently, he's already getting mins in Liga MX and will probably get more after his performances for Canada. It's possible but unlikely.

[Kadenge]

This squad had no prep and had to do so in the first 2 games. I've seen previous youth teams go down to so called minnows many a time. Our youth teams seldom look good regardless of the opposition. Would have to go back to the U17 team of Jayden, JRR, Kam, Priso etc. At least this squad totally outclassed their opposition. One step at a time. 

[Ivan]

10 hours ago, Footyeh said:

How soon before I'm allowed to make a negative post??😅

In all seriousness, job done.  I know how excited we tend to get when we win and I see ton's of people on social media raving about this team and hyping individual players, but there's honestly not much you can draw out these results other than our players are good against extremely weak opposition.  The play in general was not great, players showed great fight yes, but what did the team show that suggests they will be dangerous against the bigger nations, where's our key threats?  The Qualifiers is going to be a different animal.  We've seen it with the last U17 cycle, our two midfielders for example (Badwal and Biello) who many of us are speaking very highly of, were severely outmatched in their own age qualifying.  Now you're playing in a 2005/06 age group qualifying with even more seasoned and experienced players/teams than those Canada already struggled with at the 2006 age group.  I think we should all ease our expectations of this team.  Would love nothing more than to see our U20's back in the World Cup stage but knowing this pool, I feel we are going to be in for an extremely rough road come the summer.

Genuinely hope I'm wrong! 🙏

Although I agree with the overall theme of your post, I'm going to push back on a couple items (even though you know way more about these players than I do! 😄)

First, yes, the competition was poor, but this age group have lost to quite a few minnows since we last qualified for an U20WC in 2007 (which we didn't have to qualify for).  Cuba a few times, DR, Guatamala, even St. Vincent (I think) a couple cycles ago.   The T & T team has been training together and playing games for over a month and we still thrashed them with no prep.  I have a little more hope with this group, so yes, I hope you're wrong! 😄

Second, I don't think Biello and Badwell were overmatched in U17WC qualifying at all in their age group.  In fact, I think they were two of our best players in Concacaf qualifying on a team that finished third.  The actual WC was a different story, but in fairness, our group consisted of 3 QFists, 2 SFists and a finalist.  I also think Biello outplayed Costa in these games (I know you don't rate Costa as high as others do).

The team is overall young though which has me worried about the next level.  

 

Edited February 28 by Ivan
grammar

[Aird25]

11 hours ago, narduch said:

Would be perfect for York United 

I imagine he would have played with Navarro in Vancouver while both at Pumas too. Wero Diaz would be a good vet to learn from 

[Aird25]

2 hours ago, Kadenge said:

Apparently, he's already getting mins in Liga MX and will probably get more after his performances for Canada. It's possible but unlikely.

It looks like 9 minutes so far but hopefully he's given more opportunities when he returns to club. CPL seems like a great option for a promising young Canadian to grab some serious minutes but if he's already beyond that level, even better 

[Aird25]

12 hours ago, Ian Kennett said:

Any highlights anywhere? I was not able to watch today. Thanks!

It's only the main actions but it gives you a sense of the match and the level of competition 

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=nr_lpxOaKdA

[VinceA]

This went a lot better than I thought. The nice thing is these three games will give these guys familiarity for the real dance in July.

[toontownman]

2 hours ago, VinceA said:

This went a lot better than I thought. The nice thing is these three games will give these guys familiarity for the real dance in July.

Reminded me of the full men's team journey to the WC and all that early crazy concacaf qualifying run against minnows and us crapping our pants everytime for zero reason in the end!

While they were all games we should have won easily and did, that confidence boost of dominating, scoring and more games playing together shaped the "brotherhood" and team identity.

Hopefully these three games have a similar effect for our lads.

[VinceA]

So what exactly do we know about Myles Morgan?

[Ivan]

10 minutes ago, VinceA said:

So what exactly do we know about Myles Morgan?

May be going to Brentford???  Quite the revelation though!

[Shway]

30 minutes ago, toontownman said:

Reminded me of the full men's team journey to the WC and all that early crazy concacaf qualifying run against minnows and us crapping our pants everytime for zero reason in the end!

While they were all games we should have won easily and did, that confidence boost of dominating, scoring and more games playing together shaped the "brotherhood" and team identity.

Hopefully these three games have a similar effect for our lads.

I like this thought.

It's hard to gauge this level for many reasons, but the main thing is that they dominated whatever was put in front of them...similar to the senior path as you mentioned.

I do wonder how this team can be stronger if guys like Tahid, Kane or LDF joined and who would be dropped. 

Mission accomplished. Great little warm up games, but we know at this age our boys typically struggle against the CR, Panama, Honduras, Mexico and USA...let's hope some things have changed.

[El Diego]

17 minutes ago, VinceA said:

So what exactly do we know about Myles Morgan?

Listed as a midfielder on different sites, looks like he's played CM, CAM, and ST. Not huge but good in the air as evidenced by his goals in this tournament and the fact that his two goals for TFC II last season were both headers.

Not sure where exactly he came from, despite being in the TFC system I never really took notice of him. According to his profile on the Canada Soccer website, this is his first time playing for a Canadian NT.

[InglewoodJack]

Is Lopez capped to us for the entire competition or could he go and play for Mexico’s U20s this summer? 

[VinceA]

5 minutes ago, InglewoodJack said:

Is Lopez capped to us for the entire competition or could he go and play for Mexico’s U20s this summer? 

I'm assuming he's provisionally cap-tied because this is an official CONCACAF competition. 

[Bison44]

Just from a historical perspective, we should cruise thorugh qualifying, have mixed results (sometimes positive) in the championship round and havnt made the U-20WC in FOREVER but were regulars in the 2000's.  So cruising so far is good, but I would hope we at minimum put up a good fight and are in contention for that WC spot in the next round, best case scenario..qualify.  

As far as players go, we should hope tp see 3-4 of these kids make meaningful contributions to the senior team.  Going further back to get a clearer picture of where they ended up.....09-Straith, Haber, Eddie-bonsu, 11-Cavs, Oso, Tiebert, 13-Crepeau, Piette, Henry, James, 15 Adegugbe, larin, 17-Miller, Millar, St Clair, fraser.  Hard to say which ones will turn into big time pros, especially when LGF (and others) werent included yet.  But overall I feel pretty good, they looked good, seemed to be well coached and we had more attacking threats than we have had in awhile.   It could go all for shit, but no missteps so far and maybe we have won a few duals over to our side for once.   

[VinceA]

Just saw that David Edgar has either 24 or 27 caps for the Canada U20 team. How the heck does that happen lmao.

[InglewoodJack]

8 minutes ago, VinceA said:

I'm assuming he's provisionally cap-tied because this is an official CONCACAF competition. 

That counts even for youth tournaments? I didn’t know that. That’s huge then. So I guess if he plays for Mexico again, he’d have to file his one time switch and thus he’d be no longer eligible for us.

[Ivan]

4 minutes ago, VinceA said:

Just saw that David Edgar has either 24 or 27 caps for the Canada U20 team. How the heck does that happen lmao.

I think he played 3 cycles.  Including the U20WC the year we almost beat Spain.

[Ivan]

31 minutes ago, Shway said:

I like this thought.

It's hard to gauge this level for many reasons, but the main thing is that they dominated whatever was put in front of them...similar to the senior path as you mentioned.

I do wonder how this team can be stronger if guys like Tahid, Kane or LDF joined and who would be dropped. 

Mission accomplished. Great little warm up games, but we know at this age our boys typically struggle against the CR, Panama, Honduras, Mexico and USA...let's hope some things have changed.

Tahid's exclusion doesn't bother me as much now, given he's 2 years younger and the boys who played were standouts.  Doesn't mean he won't make the summer roster if he has a good start with VFC.

[VinceA]

3 minutes ago, Ivan said:

Tahid's exclusion doesn't bother me as much now, given he's 2 years younger and the boys who played were standouts.  Doesn't mean he won't make the summer roster if he has a good start with VFC.

I still think Kane warranted inclusion but we dominated so I can't complain too much. But he should be on the team in the summer if he's getting regular minutes with Forge.

[El Diego]

3 minutes ago, InglewoodJack said:

That counts even for youth tournaments? I didn’t know that. That’s huge then. So I guess if he plays for Mexico again, he’d have to file his one time switch and thus he’d be no longer eligible for us.

The one time switch label is a slight misnomer as there is a provision for a 'one time switch back'. This post summarizes:

I haven't reviewed the post in detail (not that I discount rydermike's interpretation) but the part on the one time switch and switch back tracks with how I remember it. With the way you've phrased it, the switch itself is not permanently binding on the player as he could theoretically switch back, but being fielded in a match after a switch is permanently binding. I don't know that any player has ever done a one time switch back.