Chances are you’ve seen them when you doomscroll through Instagram. Tarot readers. Armchair psychologists. Psychics. All telling you how, just by hitting the heart button, you can lift the curse that hangs over you. You’ll be happy. Healthy. The woman (or man) of your dreams will appear in your life at exactly 11:45 with a text message.
As the Canada men’s national soccer team continues to feel like a cursed squad while it prepares for the World Cup, maybe it’s time for coach Jesse Marsch to reach out.
Marsch announced today that midfielder Marcelo Flores, who recently chose to represent Canada over Mexico, ruptured his ACL playing for Tigres in the CONCACAF Champions Cup final against Toluca. He will miss the World Cup. For other teams, this would be devastating news. For Canada, it’s just another day.
Alphonso Davies continues to recover from a hamstring injury. He will join the team in Edmonton at 11 p.m. Sunday, but is still at the point where he will train on his own. Defender Moise Bombito is in a race to be fit enough to play 90 minutes after breaking his tibia. Centre back Derek Cornelius is coming back from a hamstring injury that derailed his domestic league season. Striker Promise David is coming back from a ruptured tendon. The list goes on.
The truth is, most of Canada’s defensive players are coming back from significant injuries. It’s a roster filled with question marks.
So, what’s the last thing this team needs? To play on a heavy pitch. But, that’s what will likely be in the cards when Canada plays Uzbekistan at Commonwealth Stadium Monday night. A temporary grass pitch has been laid down, and has been under a deluge of rain since Saturday night. The rain is expected to continue through to mid-week. That means we could be looking at a slog.
Obviously, when planning for the oppressively hot conditions of a North American World Cup in June and July, a team wants its preparation games to mimic those conditions. Instead, as the soccer adage goes, Canada and Uzbekistan will get Stoke City on a Wednesday.
“It looks pretty good from here, so hopefully it holds up,” said Marsch. “We were told that they were investing a lot into making sure that this would be a pitch that would play at a high level, so you know we’re hopeful that the rain, it’s still coming down, but it’s not so hard, and hopefully it won’t be puddling or anything. But we’ll use today to evaluate what the what the pitch feels like, and then make some decisions.”
The game plan is to split the squad and give most of the players 45 minutes of action. Defender Richie Laryea will be limited to 30 minutes as he recovers from, you guessed it, injury. But Marsch said a plan B may have to be in the works if the weather doesn’t cooperate.
“We’re going to be OK,” he said. “We’ll be prepared to pivot if the pitch is a little bit soggy. But I think both teams are in the same boat… we’ll be ready to adjust to the elements, and you know, we’re focused to maximize the most out of every day. We’re excited to be here in Edmonton. We know there’ll be a big crowd.”
This is the first of two friendlies Canada will play ahead of the June 12 World Cup opener in Toronto against Bosnia and Herzegovina. Uzbekistan is coached by Italian legend Fabio Cannavaro, once considered the best defender on the planet. So, surprise, surprise, Uzbekistan has got to the World Cup because, through Asian qualifying, it proved to be a hard team to break down. The Uzbeks gave up just 11 goals in 16 qualifying matches.
But if Canada has anything to overcome the gloomy skies and the Flores news, it’s the closeness of the players in the dressing room. Midfielder Stephen Eustaquio, coming off a knee problem that has affected his season with LAFC, said Canada’s spirit remains strong.
“There’s a lot of teams that don’t have a very good locker room, but at the same time they do things on the pitch that make them winners,” said Eustaquio, whose brother, Mauro, played for the now-defunct FC Edmonton. “But I think in our team we’re stronger because we like each other. I think we defend each other, we respect each other, we make ourselves accountable with each other, which is a very good thing. And then, sometimes, in games we have to dig deep, going after the result or trying to not concede goals, and I think that brotherhood, that friendship, that relationship that we have really makes us go through passing the point of bringing the three points to our team.
“My goal as one of the players, and one of the most experienced players, is just to keep that momentum going of everybody respecting each other, and these demands that Jesse talks about, have to make sure that everybody is on point because that’s the only thing that’s going to make us successful.”
On Sunday night, supporters from across Canada planned to gather at a Downtown bar for pre-match celebrations. Many of them are coming to Edmonton because they simply can’t afford four-digit tickets and hotel rooms in Toronto or Vancouver for the World Cup. As this is the city that hosted the two famed “Iceteca” qualifiers in 2021, with snowbanks on the sidelines stupefying the opposition from Costa Rica and Mexico, maybe a deluge is actually a bit of an improvement. This will be the people’s game, before Canada is sent off to a World Cup that many of us simply can’t afford.
“Can we put a snowbank?” Marsch joked. “Somebody can jump into it. I think our goal right now is to just make the people from Edmonton really happy that we’re here… we really want to put in a strong performance, to try to win and make the people from Edmonton proud, and just to have a good send off. We’re going to need everybody’s support at the World Cup…
“We’re very proud of the experience that these guys had in Edmonton years ago, and the idea of coming here, I think, was to play in one of the biggest stadiums — make sure there’s a lot of momentum around the team. I’ve been calling this the people’s team, and to do that, we really need to be in every market that we can possibly be in. Our captain, our best player, is from here. It’s a shame that he won’t be healthy to play, but this was a big motivation, too, is for everybody to celebrate Alphonso and celebrate the team, and now push us forward.”
Tarot readers be damned.
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