Copa America: Canada vs Argentina - Tuesday, July 9th - 8pm Eastern / 5pm Pacific - NYC area

[74 Whitecap]

3 minutes ago, eramosat said:

for sure, this rating is based on something other than overall effectiveness.

call it...closing  the BIGGEST gap to overall top notch play.

Staq is awesome, undeniably our best player, and most important.  But also no question, he's the starter.

By contrast...Bombito andCornelius showing what they did?  That's + 0.1 on a national ranking scale...and maybe a couple more+0.1s.  It was a tremendously wonderful tournament for those 2, and Canada fans should be dancing because of their results!

100% agreed. That gap at the back since the World Cup has been an anchor on our fortunes, so those performances at this level were huge.

[Cheeta]

4 minutes ago, Corazon said:

Pretty shocking is right.  South American football is quite aggressive relative to other competitions but for someone who watches football regularly, everything Argentina did out there is no different than what I watch on a daily basis around the world.  I'm shocked at the people being shocked by this. 

Sidenote: As great of a player that De Paul is, he is over the top in any competition, club or country.

Right?  Point stands though. 

Perception is perception and it's incredible how often the uneducated eye is still able to articulate to the more learned an obvious truth which has been hiding in plain sight.

Just saying.

[Corazon]

I think our defenders have been a revelation this tournament, particularly Bombito & Cornelius.  Both Johnston and Davies have played some of the best ball for Canada as well.  At the same time, our attack has struggled this tournament.  There are many reasons contributing to this but I do want to reiterate these small fields tend to favour defenders over attackers.  So twofold, these small fields allow for compact defenses giving our defenders an advantage and strong attacking teams like Argentina a disadvantage.  And vice versa, our attackers were forced to play against compact defenses and on small fields that don't allow for our speed and space to really show our attacking strengths.  On larger fields, play will open up and our defenders will have to be sharper and our attack will hopefully start scoring more again.

Edited July 10 by Corazon

[jonovision]

Just now, Corazon said:

I think our defenders have been a revelation this tournament, particularly Bombito & Cornelius.  Both Johnston and Davies have played some of the best ball for Canada as well.  At the same time, our attack has struggled this tournament.

In other words, we still don't have a clear answer of where Davies can be most effectively deployed for Canada.

[ensco]

So my big sum up is:

We played very well. Maybe not our best, because we couldn’t score, but that was a function of the caliber of competition.

I also feel like we were pretty lucky to be here. The reds in the Peru and Chile games were “lucky” breaks - in that non-Conmebol teams have mostly not gotten these calls. But the summary is not only that we got some luck -we took advantage of it (no small thing!)

I also feel damn proud that Argentina never embarrassed us, and getting to play them twice was an honour. 

The hard part, the reason this is sticking in my throat a bit, and I feel regret, is: it might be many years before we get another shot like this, a chance to beat a top team for the highest stakes. We may not be back at this particular poker table for a long time.

We all know that, while we didn’t “deserve” to win tonight, we actually, maybe, could have, if we had just done a little bit more, gotten that early goal on one of the Shaff counters, just gotten a couple of breaks generally…

Edited July 10 by ensco

[canadasoccer20]

Proud of the guys. Semis in the Copa is about the ceiling I had them going into this tourney. Lot to like. The way I look at it we lost to Argentina twice and were undefeated around teams of our level. Lot to look forward to ahead. 

Underrated part of this run was the following it got. Lot of my non-soccer friends/family were tuning in and that is a great start. I feel like we going to look back at this tourney 10-15 years from now and be so thankful it was put together. Culture has been changed. 

[DoyleG]

1 hour ago, kacbru said:

Bizarre how posters you never see in this thread only turn up if the CPL is mentioned... 

Neckbeards these days.

[AvroArrow]

Millar runs and runs and runs, but it's that final pass or final shot that seems to be lacking.  There always seems to be a bit of a delay or a pause, and then the opponent catches up.

A bit of a missed opportunity for him at the Copa so far.  Hope he proves me wrong in the third place game.

Would have been nice to have Tajon.

[AvroArrow]

Kone had likely his best game of the tournament.  The give aways that were present in previous games weren't there.  He made some nice runs.

The kicking the ball at the Argentina player got a big laugh out of the non-soccer fans I was watching with.

[grigorio]

15 minutes ago, AvroArrow said:

Kone had likely his best game of the tournament.  The give aways that were present in previous games weren't there.  He made some nice runs.

The kicking the ball at the Argentina player got a big laugh out of the non-soccer fans I was watching with.

Didn’t he directly give the ball away leading to Argentina’s second goal? I was in stadium so couldn’t really tell and there were no replays but looked like Koné?

[rkomar]

I'm not disappointed that we lost.  I'm not even really disappointed that we didn't score a goal.  However, I'm really disappointed that so few of our shots ended up on goal.  All that hard work frittered away in the final effort.

[Pomoxis]

2 minutes ago, grigorio said:

Didn’t he directly give the ball away leading to Argentina’s second goal? I was in stadium so couldn’t really tell and there were no replays but looked like Koné?

He made a good play to be in position and stretch out to intercept the cut back pass, but in his rush to clear it he unfortunately played back into the middle. I'm not sure if his body position after the interception would have allowed him to clear in a different direction.

[anthony7]

1 hour ago, AvroArrow said:

Millar runs and runs and runs, but it's that final pass or final shot that seems to be lacking.  There always seems to be a bit of a delay or a pause, and then the opponent catches up.

A bit of a missed opportunity for him at the Copa so far.  Hope he proves me wrong in the third place game.

Would have been nice to have Tajon.

He’s a 3rd choice left winger. They need to find that player who is better than Shaffelburg. Maybe Koleosho commits. That would be the best case scenario right now. Or maybe Nelson or Corbeneau improve significantly. But who knows. 🤔

Edited July 10 by anthony7

[scullion44]

Is Adekugbe still good enough for the NT? I haven’t followed him at all since he left Turkey. I wish we tried Richie at LB to let Davies play on the right further up the pitch, I think that could have been interesting. 

[anthony7]

16 minutes ago, scullion44 said:

Is Adekugbe still good enough for the NT? I haven’t followed him at all since he left Turkey. I wish we tried Richie at LB to let Davies play on the right further up the pitch, I think that could have been interesting. 

Yes, just was not fit in time. I believe he was carrying an injury.

Edited July 10 by anthony7

[nolando]

43 minutes ago, scullion44 said:

 I wish we tried Richie at LB to let Davies play on the right further up the pitch, I think that could have been interesting. 

Exactly what my 14 y/o soccerholic son was requesting.

[nolando]

29 minutes ago, anthony7 said:

Yes, just was not fit in time. I believe he was carrying an injury.

He hasn't been fully fit for absolutely ages.

[Ozzie_the_parrot]

2 hours ago, DoyleG said:

Neckbeards these days.

^^^don't remember this guy showing much concern over the welfare of FC Edmonton in the CanPL subforum when they were in their second terminal death spiral. In that general context, one of the more bizarre things I can remember in recent years was Paul Beirne still expecting that the Voyageurs would provide FC Edmonton with a significant crowd boost when they were in town for a CMNT game. That was even after being involved with Canadian soccer for around 15 years and after his supporters group cronies from the TFC launch era had exhibited pretty much zero interest in York 9/United after the league launched.  

[Pasta88]

I’m still upset about the ball incorrectly being called out early in the second half. Shaffelburg was on the break and the Argentina players had mostly stopped playing (before the whistle), so it could’ve been a big chance. If you’re not sure it’s out then don’t call it out, especially in a VAR world. Hurts more that they scored a couple minutes later.

[Cheeta]

6 hours ago, AvroArrow said:

Kone had likely his best game of the tournament.  The give aways that were present in previous games weren't there.  He made some nice runs.

The kicking the ball at the Argentina player got a big laugh out of the non-soccer fans I was watching with.

It got a big laugh out of the soccer fans I was watching with.

Hell, I laughed.

Edited July 10 by Cheeta

[Kingston]

8 hours ago, ensco said:

The hard part, the reason this is sticking in my throat a bit, and I feel regret, is: it might be many years before we get another shot like this, a chance to beat a top team for the highest stakes. We may not be back at this particular poker table for a long time.

Fear not - we'll be at this table again in 2026.

[Kingston]

7 hours ago, Pomoxis said:

He made a good play to be in position and stretch out to intercept the cut back pass, but in his rush to clear it he unfortunately played back into the middle. I'm not sure if his body position after the interception would have allowed him to clear in a different direction.

What he needed to do was to clean that ball - just crush it 50 m without worrying about what direction it was travelling in.

[narduch]

8 hours ago, ensco said:

So my big sum up is:

We played very well. Maybe not our best, because we couldn’t score, but that was a function of the caliber of competition.

I also feel like we were pretty lucky to be here. The reds in the Peru and Chile games were “lucky” breaks - in that non-Conmebol teams have mostly not gotten these calls. But the summary is not only that we got some luck -we took advantage of it (no small thing!)

I also feel damn proud that Argentina never embarrassed us, and getting to play them twice was an honour. 

The hard part, the reason this is sticking in my throat a bit, and I feel regret, is: it might be many years before we get another shot like this, a chance to beat a top team for the highest stakes. We may not be back at this particular poker table for a long time.

We all know that, while we didn’t “deserve” to win tonight, we actually, maybe, could have, if we had just done a little bit more, gotten that early goal on one of the Shaff counters, just gotten a couple of breaks generally…

Great post.

Next year's Gold Cup is supposed to have guest nations. I hope we get to play some other big opponents.

Going to be interesting to see how the World Cup Group Stage draw goes. With 48 teams and 12 groups, Pots 3 and 4 could be very watered down. We may not face anyone of consequence until the knock-outs.

Really its a shame that most WCQ groups have even amount of teams, coupled with Euro Nations League. Because of this it is actually difficult to obtain friendly opponents of significance (take a look at what is available for the October window, mostly teams ranked under 140 left).

[Joe MacCarthy]

 

[Joe MacCarthy]