Welcome to the first installment of the Concacaf Diaries. The goal of this series is to bring CSN readers up to speed on news and developments related to Canada’s main rivals in World Cup qualifying. CSN already does an amazing job covering the domestic soccer scene, and this will be my humble attempt to plug some of the remaining gaps by pulling together the best of the Web’s disparate coverage of the mens’ national team rivals, much of it originally produced in Spanish.
The coming months are important ones for Canadian soccer -- two crucial World Cup qualifiers in June, and the pre-Olympic tournament for the U23’s coming up later this month. Feel free to pitch into the comment section with ideas or suggestions about websites or news sources you use to scout Canada’s rivals, if you are already doing so.
And with that...
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Honduran manager Luis Fernando Suarez sounded an alarm on Monday about the lack of recent production from his forwards on the national team. But he also came up with a solution. Micro-cycles.
And by that he meant special mini-training sessions twice a week for a group of players that includes Jerry Bengston, Ruben Licona, Juan Ramon Mejia and Roger Rojas. Tuesday in Tegucigalpa and Wednesdays in San Pedro Sula.
The brilliant bit about this - at least from a Honduran perspective - is not only that the manager enjoys the luxury of a solid core of domestically based players, but that the clubs are happy to release them during the week. I don’t know if this is a common thing in Central American football, but I can hardly imagine, say, Chelsea or Manchester United allowing their stars to attend invite-only, mid-week training sessions with the England manager simply because they can’t score in friendlies.
It’s also interesting to note that the Suarez will also lead the Honduran U23 side at the Olympic qualifying tournament this month. I don’t know yet how many members of that youth team will make their way into the senior side for World Cup qualifying come June, but it is a wonderful way to integrate younger players in the national setup.
Compare all this to the situation facing Canada manager Stephen Hart, who struggles to pull players like teeth from clubs scattered on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean. It's hard to build cohesion in attack by throwing players together a few times a year.
So while group-stage rivals Honduras will be preparing for World Cup qualifying by playing a major tournament and holding bi-weekly specialized training sessions, the Canadian men will reconvene in June to play one friendly against the U.S. and then jump straight into two matches that will largely determine whether or not they can advance to the final round for Concacaf qualifying for the first time since 1997.