Key events
Preamble
The children in the hall.
Hast.
Georges St-Pierre.
Sarah McLachlan.
Metric. (Trust me. Look them up on your favorite streaming service.)
Several loyal cast members of Saturday Night Live.
Many hockey players.
Canada has given so much to the world and asked for so little in return. They haven’t won an NHL championship in three decades and still haven’t.
Could they win the World Cup first before winning the Stanley Cup again?
Perhaps we shouldn’t go too far. But these Canadians are showing that their soccer prowess isn’t limited to controversial losses to the U.S. women’s team and the revenge they got. In the last World Cup qualifying cycle, the Canadian men finished first in Concacaf, defeated the U.S. and Mexico north of the border, and earned draws in Nashville and Mexico City.
And now, in this combined Concacaf-Conmebol spectacle, Canada is the last major North American nation standing. (Panama is the other remaining Concacaf team.)
Tonight’s opponent is even more surprising. Fifa has hosted the World Cup almost every four years since 1930 without Venezuela’s presence. In the last two qualifying rounds, Venezuela finished last in Conmebol’s brutal 10-team double round-robin. Tonight, they can match their best international performance ever by reaching the Copa América semi-finals for the second time, having last made it that far in 2011.
So this match will be a bit of a quickening after today’s spectacular Euro doubleheader, which saw four of the most glamorous national teams in the world play a game of “let’s see who can get closest to scoring without actually doing so.” But if you like underdog stories, you’ll undoubtedly enjoy this match regardless of the outcome.
Beau will be here shortly. In the meantime, here’s Jesse Marsch on the USMNT’s shortcomings in recent weeks:
Canada coach Jesse Marsh has expressed his disappointment with the US national team’s poor performance at the Copa América as his team prepares for its quarter-final against Venezuela on Friday.
The 50-year-old American coach led Canada to the last eight with a 1-0 win over Peru, finishing second in Group A behind defending champions Argentina. The US, however, failed to progress beyond the group stage after a 1-0 defeat to Uruguay.
“I would like to say I’m just focused on what we’re doing here in Canada, but obviously I’m also paying attention to the U.S. men’s national team, as I always do, and like you, I’m sad,” the coach said Thursday.
“I’m disappointed with the performance, the lack of discipline. There are a lot of things I think we’ve tried to embody about the game in the US, and we’ve always believed in this group of players.”
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