In a surprising turn of events, the Aspire training facility in Doha, Qatar is ill-equipped to handle a live television or webstream broadcast -- so, much to the chagrin of probably at least a few dozen people, the senior men's friendly between Canada and Belarus on Monday morning wasn't televised.
And actually, given that the CSA's video highlight package has beaten me to the punch on this occasion (and that I'm elbow-deep in planning my own wedding this weekend, and am not supposed to be wasting time on this stuff oh God please no one tell my fiancee), there isn't much purpose served by me concocting fanciful scenarios in which Pedro Pacheco transforms into a dragon or Stephen Hart skydives onto the middle of the pitch to dispatch bowls of hearty gazpacho.
So, instead, check out the video and some bare-bones information gleaned from the CSA's twitter feed during the game, which will hopefully hold you until the Gold Cup / the friendly against Costa Rica in Edmonton is confirmed / the team schedules a friendly against Greenland, to be played in Turkmenistan.
[PRBREAK][/PRBREAK]
Tomer Chencinski earned his first cap for the CanMNT in goal, behind a defensive backline of Marcel de Jong, Andre Hainault, Dejan Jakovic and David Edgar, back at the RB position he's become accustomed to playing for Canada. Stefan Cebara was another first-time starter for the nats in midfield (a few days after earning his first cap), surrounded by Will Johnson, Julian de Guzman, Atiba Hutchinson and (presumably up front) Randy Edwini-Bonsu and Tosaint Ricketts.
Much like against Japan, a tepid first half was (apparently) counterbalanced by a more spirited second half, though the chances that Canada was able to create all went for naught. As you can see in the video, lots of excitement, pushing and shoving, coaches getting sent off (or at least sent to plastic seating five feet behind the players' bench) and general good old Canadian truculence. Which would be awesome, if truculence won games. But, *checks final scoreline*, nope, not today.
The good news is, Canada's played four friendlies so far this year, and it's not even the end of March! The bad news is, all we've scraped from those games is one point and one goal. But does it really matter? I needn't repeat my blathering about where these friendlies fit into the bigger picture; it was all pretty well covered in the post-game article after the match against Japan.
We did learn that professional footballers are capable of playing for 90 minutes in Qatar without fainting of heat exhaustion, which is ultimately of no consequence for 2022 unless the morons at FIFA decide to actually put the tournament in the spring or winter. Or, y'know, they could let another decade of global warming make the already-intolerably stultifying conditions in Doha spike even worse, and watch from their air-conditioned luxury boxes as someone literally dies on the field. Their choice, I guess.
Whoops, I'm lapsing into unsolicited moralizing. Must be all the wedding stress. In lieu of my usual "fabricated synopsis" nonsense, why not take a stroll through the twitter feed of a CSA official who helpfully offered translated commentary from the Belarus side. It's at least 45% funnier than whatever I would have come up with, including the fact that the Canadian side was evidently "attacking the mass" at one point, whatever that means.
Maybe that's the key; maybe we just need to attack the mass better and everything will be OK.
Anyway, talk amongst yourselves about how this result is the apocalpyse for Canadian soccer; I need to get back to yardwork before the in-laws yell at me.