Canada’s cultural reset

Opinion

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This article was published 22/03/2024 (535 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

The kits are new, the general secretary is new and the squad hasn’t been this young since 2019. There’s a theme here, and it’s one the Canadian men’s soccer team will want to perpetuate when they play on this, the first weekend of spring.

A “cultural reset” is what interim head coach Mauro Biello is calling it, though “renewal” is a more poetic descriptor given the season, and “regeneration” a more accurate one.

Ahead of Saturday’s playoff encounter with Trinidad and Tobago (3 p.m., One Soccer) – the winner of which will qualify for the summer’s Copa America — Biello has been training a squad that includes just 15 of the 26 internationals who represented their country at the last World Cup.

As if to further emphasize the proverbial new leaf, five of the starters from Canada’s final Group F match were not called up for the week’s preparations. (A sixth, Jonathan Osorio, withdrew due to injury.) Notable among the omissions were goalkeeper Milan Borjan, the incumbent captain, and longtime defender Steven Vitoria, who turned 37 in January.

The shake-up has yielded a roster whose average age is 24.7 — green by any standards. When they face the Soca Warriors at Toyota Stadium in Frisco, Texas (home to FC Dallas), they’ll be debuting new Nike kits that feature two-tone reds and 13 pinstripes, representative of the country’s 10 provinces and three territories.

Among those sporting them will be Jacen Russell-Rowe of reigning Major League Soccer champions Columbus Crew, CF Montreal pass-master Mathieu Choiniere and Motherwell forward Theo Bair, whose 11 goals have him fifth in Scottish Premiership scoring. (Former Valour FC goalkeeper Jonathan Sirois, now with Montreal, is also in the squad.)

What they have in common — and this is a meaningful departure from previous selection criteria — is that they are players in form, fully deserving of their places in the group.

Now, Canadian soccer being Canadian soccer, it’s tempting to question Biello’s rationale for the rather sudden and quite comprehensive makeover.

Has he made some much-required changes? Yes, absolutely — though whether he complements them with tactical adjustments following November’s disastrous defeat to Jamaica is yet to be seen. Might he be revealing some personal desperation? Perhaps. He remains, after all, head coach on an only interim basis, and failure to qualify for a major tournament such as the Copa America would tend to cost an interim head coach their job.

That said, if Biello is, indeed, rolling the dice on his future with the national team, he’s doing the program a favour in the process. Of course, he could well end up extending his tenure no matter Saturday’s result.

Canada Soccer’s new general secretary, Kevin Blue, is barely a week into his mandate, and the governing body has been adamant that the hiring process for a permanent head coach will only officially commence under the incoming leadership team.

In other words, the search hasn’t yet begun in earnest. If Mr. Blue — the former Golf Canada head — is granted the benefit of the doubt, it is one that will look long and hard for a candidate willing to coach a World Cup co-host for next to nothing.

Which means Biello isn’t going anywhere in the short term and will almost certainly be in charge when the Copa America begins in June, regardless of his side’s participation in the joint CONCACAF-CONMEBOL event.

Assuming Canada beats Trinidad and Tobago, they will kick off the tournament against Lionel Messi and World Cup champions Argentina. Matches against Chile and Peru will follow. It’s a standard of competition the team so desperately need, and one its leading players, such as Alphonso Davies, Jonathan David and Stephen Eustaquio, so hungrily crave.

The Jamaica debacle, as well as October’s thrashing by Japan, would seem to indicate a triumph in Texas is far from guaranteed. Those defeats, however, were in the autumn. This is spring — and the perfect opportunity for Canada’s men’s national team to start fresh.

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