Argentina offers insight into Team Canada

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This article was published 14/06/2024 (475 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

As anticipation has built for the 48th Copa América, which begins next week in the United States, some worthwhile analysis of the Canadian men’s soccer team has turned up in the Argentine press.

This is hardly surprising, as on any given day one can find in the sports sections and pages of tabloid daily Olé such minutiae as as Arturo Vidal’s Twitch account, Robinho’s lukewarm enjoyment of the post-secondary course he’s taking while in prison, and the rising cost of stickers for the Copa’s Panini album.

The appetite for futbol content in the land of the World Cup winners is insatiable, and with Argentina set to face Canada in the 2024 Copa América opener on Thursday (7:00 p.m., TSN), La Nacion’s website has posted a highlight reel of Canuck ‘keeper Maxime Crépeau’s saves in a recent friendly against the French.

Crépeau, whose performance likely displaced Dayne St. Clair as the starter to stare down Lionel Messi & Co. in Atlanta, is now “the Canadian figure who withstood the attacks of Mbappé and all of France.”

It’s the “all of France” part that gets you. Argentina’s us-vs.-everyone mentality tends to create enormous obstacles out of every opponent and storyline, the benefit being that in victory they’ve somehow overcome — or, in this case, conquered all of Canada and every Canadian ever, even the colossus that is the hero who held off the runners-up from Qatar.

La Albiceleste are taking Canada seriously, and by kick-off their supporters will know manager Jesse Marsch’s entire team in formation, the probable substitutions and circumstances that will see them introduced, and the roles their own players will be expected to perform in preventing an embarrassment similar to that of the Saudi Arabia defeat in Lusail.

That World Cup, by the way? It’s been set to the side for now. Head coach Lionel Scaloni is even being pressured to avoid the mistakes he made in Qatar, specifically concerning squad fitness and last-minute selection decisions.

It takes a certain kind of fanaticism to highlight “mistakes” from a successful world championship, and 18 months later at that. This is a country that expects results, that doesn’t want to leave it all to chance.

“Attention Argentina: Canada got a draw against France,” advised Olé this week, underlining a quite impressive draw in Bordeaux that, if it didn’t create a buzz in Canada itself, certainly generated interest elsewhere.

Marsch, appointed only last month, deployed a “well-planned 4-4-2,” the article asserted, adding that Scaloni should “take note.”

The North Americans had also been “solid at the back and had clear scoring chances,” remarked La Nacion, in its preamble to the Crépeau video. Even against the Netherlands on June 6, wrote the columnist Ariel Ruya, they played an impressive first half before coming apart in the second, eventually losing 4-0. Canada, he continued, often appeared “orderly, neat, sharp and aggressive.”

It was Marsch’s naivety in his substitutions, La Nacion observed, that proved his side’s undoing. The match report then offered brief assessments of each Canadian player.

Alphonso Davies — the team’s only top-tier talent; Liam Millar — impressive and unpredictable; strikers Jonathan David and Cyle Larin — no cohesion as a tandem. An adversary’s analysis can be enlightening, particularly when it brings considerable experience and expertise to the evaluation.

How should Canada unpack it?

Their first half in Rotterdam did, indeed, have some promise about it — promise that was fulfilled three days later in Nouvelle-Aquitaine. A nil-nil away to France, currently the number two-ranked team in the world, is always a meaningful result. Yet, Canada have now gone 180+ minutes without scoring.

With Marsch unlikely to deviate from his narrow, swarming 4-4-2 set-up, the David-Larin problem is one that looks set to persist.

Larin, who scored only three La Liga goals during the club season (and one since March), clearly lacked the pace, movement and first touch to make him an effective partner for David in the pair of recent friendlies. Perhaps the coaching staff can train him up in the few days before the Argentina clash. Although, a lack of depth in the position means he’s likely to start, anyway.

Tani Oluwaseyi, however, provides an intriguing option. The late-blooming striker has made a flying start to the campaign at Minnesota United, and at 6-2 his stature could both work as a foil to the 5-9 David and provide some much-needed height on attacking set-pieces.

Rather unhelpfully, all the talk about the forward duo distracts from the underlying issue: David needs to start scoring again. Despite bagging 19 goals for Lille in Ligue 1 this term – only Mbappé tallied more often – the 24-year-old has found the back of the net only twice for his country in slightly more than a year.

Canada can rely on sturdy defending, and apparently highlight-reel goalkeeping, when challenged by some of the sport’s best national teams. As Stephen Eustáquio and Ismaël Koné showed against France, the central midfield appears secure as well. Which is all well and good, although their Copa will be a short one if their attacking teammates can’t discover a goalscoring touch.

It’s to this conundrum — the dynamism in certain facets of play and futility in others — that La Nacion points when it says the Canadians come in “unpredictable packaging.” In other words, they’re a group that can make a stand and even snatch a result; or, as they showed against the Dutch, they can come completely undone in a matter of minutes.

They have “two faces.”

Canada’s Copa América, which also includes group stage games against Peru (June 25, 5 p.m., TSN) and Chile (June 29, 7 p.m., TSN), won’t progress into July — and a possible quarterfinal against either Mexico or Ecuador — unless that packaging tightens, those faces combine.

The Canadian men have earned some respect. Now they need some consistency to back it up.

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