The most striking thing about the view from Ecuador is how little attention was paid to this match. A Thursday evening check of the web portals for the two biggest newspapers in the country found the match report buried deep within the football sections of each.
News about another corruption scandal in Italian football, the domestic league and Lio Messi allegedly being punched by some random kid outside an Argentinian restaurant dominated the headline stacks.
Granted, it was 20 hours after the final whistle, but it still appears this game mattered more to Ecuadorian immigrants and their extended family in Toronto than it did to people who actually live in Ecuador.
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For Ecuadorian media this match evidently was what it was: a largely meaningless tuneup for a national team missing two of its most high-profile players in Antonio Valencia and Felipe Caicedo. The second-last chance to practice live before the Copa America.
I played around with a few Google searches and couldn't find any other local coverage in terms of blogs, betting sites, etc., but I'm willing to accept that I don't know a great deal about the Ecuadorian football team in general and even less about how to follow it online. Still I'm disappointed. I expected to find the sort of wild and flowery metaphors that fill out soccer journalism in Spain.
A paltry five comments sat underneath the story in El Comercio - a wire pickup from Reuters' Spanish language service. It lead on how this was Ecuador's penultimate friendly before July's Copa America.
Reuters said the Ecuadorians started by controlling the ball well in midfield, but were unable to generate quality chances. It said Terry Dunfield's goal came when "Ecuador appeared to be in its best moment, with its [Canada] almost immobile." It also said that his goal caused the Canadian fans to that "filled the stands" to "burst into yelling." There was no mention made about how the Canadian fans only occupied two sections of the stadium.
The report devoted two paragraphs at the bottom to account for the controversial injury-time equalizer. Unsurprisingly for a wire report, it was a straight-ahead description.
The five commenters were unified in their desire to see Reinaldo Rueda turfed as Ecuador manager. In the words of one, "...managing a team in South America is not the same as managing one in Central America. Central America doesn't have a Brazil or an Uruguay." Said another, who admitted he didn't even watch the match, Este señor Rueda no está a la altura de los jugadores que tenemos. Or, this Mr. Reuda is not at the level of the players we have.
The report in El Universo at least appeared to have been written by someone on staff. It was headlined Descuido les quitó el triunfo a la Tri ante Canadá or roughly "Carelessness took the victory from la Tri against Canada." Which it most certainly did.
Hilariously, this account said that Canada started by controlling the ball well and cutting down the Ecuadorian buildup. It said Canada had no major problems in the first half save for a couple of plays generated by Christian Benitez.
Again, only one paragraph was devoted to the game's wild finish, with the writer describing the events that led to Ricketts' goal a "careless blunder" on the part of Ecuador. Neither report made even passing mention to the huge majority of Ecuadorian fans filling BMO Field.