Canada is through to the third round of CONCACAF qualifying.
It wasn’t pretty – a second straight 0-0 draw against a Caribbean opponent clinched the deal – but the bottom line is the bottom line. The Red and White are through. They’ve played pretty before and lost. In World Cup qualifying, an ugly result is a million times better than an attractive moral victory.
There is clearly plenty of work to be done. Canada struggled to work the ball through the middle of the park and was playing far too deep in its own end. The attack has been naive over the past two games. Faced with teams packing the middle, Canada continues to throw hopeless crosses into the box towards undersized forwards. There is next to no creative thought in the passing game and the back-line, well, is damn lucky the quality of opposition is what it is.
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There are questions about Stephen Hart as well. Either he directed his players to play behind the ball and to force St. Kitts and Nevis to play with it on their feet, or he could not get his players to play aggressive. Either way, you can question him. It was St. Kitts and Nevis. Canada should not be playing not to lose against an Island of 50,000 people.
The post game discussion amongst fans will almost certainly and entirely be focused on the negatives from this match. That’s understandable. Supporters – especially Canadian supporters – are prone to see the negative. However, a little perspective is necessary.
They didn’t lose and they are going through. As stated, there is work to be done, but to try and draw any type of conclusion from games against these teams is a stretch. That Canada struggled to score against St. Kitts and Nevis is unfortunate, but there really is very little correlation between that and whether they will struggle to score against Panama. Big(ger) teams are shut down by minnows all the time. It’s probably a sign of the program’s growth that they didn’t actually lose tonight.
This call for balance will likely fall on deaf ears, but before you take to the comments section with new and creative insults ask yourself this: If Canada had won by five or six goals would that then have made you think that they were all set to walk all over the competition in the next round?
Of course not. You’d still see the issues and realize that there was work to do. It goes both ways. These games predict nothing.
But, they do determine who goes through to the next round.
In this case, it’s Canada.