Good Monday morning Caps fans. Hope you all had a restful and relaxing weekend full of pumpkin spice nourishment and pumpkin patches — it is fall now, after all.
Canada had no problem falling into a 2-0 win over Qatar in Vienna, looking quite comfortable while doing so.
Cyle Larin made up for his relative lack of minutes for Club Brugge and scored off a Sam Adekugbe cross, allaying fears that his struggles to find minutes in Belgium will affect his form for country. Jonathan David, his strike partner, scored the other goal, with both coming inside 13 minutes.
A number of midfield players either boosted their stock — Ismael Kone — or showed their good form for club will translate into momentum for Canada as well heading into Qatar — Samuel Piette and Stephen Eustaquio.
Of course, Canada will need to do this against better teams than Qatar (though their performance in continental competitions in recent years show they won’t be a slouch as the host nation). Their test against Uruguay in Bratislava on Tuesday will be the bigger one, against an opponent more representative of the types of team Canada will want to be hanging with.
The bar looks mighty high — Belgium and Croatia won their UEFA Nations League tune up and Morocco won their first friendly over Chile 2-0.
In any event, at least your team looked convincing in their pre World Cup match, as the less said about the US performance against Japan the better (though I think you’ve officially become a soccer nation when you freak out about a pre-World Cup friendly performance).
A round up of player ratings from the Canada/Qatar match
In celebrating his goal, Jonathan David covered up the Nike logo, an apparent expression of disgruntlement with how the apparel company handled Canada’s World Cup kits
Meanwhile, the national team is still waiting on a response from Canada Soccer on an offer they made weeks ago
As MLS NEXT One winds down for the year, there is a laundry list of things for the league to look at improving
Ballou Tabla scored a banger for Atletico Ottawa over the weekend and it reminded me he was in the CPL now
GOLAZO
— OneSoccer (@onesoccer) September 24, 2022
Hello soccer world. This is @CPLsoccer (not #MLS)
In this league, we have a saying#CANPL. BANGERS. ONLY.
Here's the latest, by Ballou Tabla of @AtletiOttawa
Cheers ❤️ pic.twitter.com/7gZXJCSZ1n
