Concacaf Gold CupCanada vs El Salvador (Crew Stadium)Columbus, Ohio
7 July 2009
7 pm ET / 8 pm CT / 4 pm PT
Live on
Rogers Sportsnet.caEast 8PM Atlantic
West 4 PM Pacific Time
Internet:
24th minute, video feed once found (If you have one, post in comments)
Well tonight is the night where Canada can continue to work on increasing the winning streak that they already have going on. Currently at 4 unbeaten games (take that Dale Mitchell), we can now safely say that Stephen Hart can get more out of his players than Mitchell every did. I would personally like to thank sportsnet to showing the game again only in two zones. I don't care how much you like baseball, sell the bloody rights to either the baseball game or soccer game to someone else to show in that area. It's unbelievable how they can continue to only serve half the public with their shows. That being said, I will not be able to do the liveblog tonight, thank fully I found myself going to watch this two blokes instead.

I promise i will avoid writing about walking 500 hundred miles in my post here, though I am tempted to walk the 500 miles to the sportsnet upper management to give them a good kick in the pants.
Anyways moving on, because of the disaster of a game that was played last night between Mexico and Panama (1-1 score and 4 red cards and a fan throwing contest), we can now officially say Canada has qualified for the quarterfinals. Which has already made this tournament ten times better than our qualification setup for the world cup was. Again it just reminds us that we should be in top 2 of our group when we qualify, or so the Gold Cup tells us.
So tonight we get to determine what place we shall fall, depending on the result, so let's put our prognostic cap on and take a gander at what this may be.
Canada wins tonight or draws: They will finish first in the group. This means they will play the 2nd place opponent in group B (looks to be either Haiti or Honduras), I would suspect it would end up being Honduras as they have the easier last game matchup when they face Grenada, not the easiest of matchups, but one that is do able in terms of getting a victory and moving to the semi finals.
Canada loses by 2 goals and less than what El Salvador makes up against Jamaica: This will push Costa Rica to 1st, Canada to 2nd and El Salvador to 3rd. This would mean we would face 2nd place in group C. Which by the way is a horrible group, Mexico looks terrible and could quite lose to Guadeloupe and set up a 2nd round clash with Canada. While Mexico doesn't look good, i still wouldn't want to face them with a bunch of rabid Mexican fans around. Yes I'm going to give Guadeloupe the win, the scrappy French colony has look liked it wants to win and cause a raucous again, much like 2007.
Canada loses by 2 or more goals, and El Salvador scores a pile: This will drop us to 3rd and give us a nightmarish matchup with the United States. Best to avoid this now and just hope we can meet them in the semi finals and get our revenge from them then.
So really a draw or a win tonight versus Costa Rica would be the best, save the Canadians from worrying too much about the scoreboard in the other game. Finished 2nd would be nice as it would avoid the Americans until the finals, the only team that has looked tough so far. But hey, Canada never likes to do it the easy way.
The matchup issues at handI'm just going to go over a couple of points of what might make it trouble for Canada tonight against Costa Rica and leave it like that.
The Turf: For the first time they are going to playing on artificial turf. The players hate it, De Guzman really hates it, and the Costa Rica players practice on this stuff at their facility. Giving them an advantage.The Fans: The game is in Miami, which will have a very pro Costa Rica crowd out. Though Canada has had to deal with that all tournament, but this may be the loudest it has been yet. Another advantage Costa Rica. The Players: From Stephen Hart's comments, it seems that their are some injuries at hand in which he will maybe give some players a rest. Again with already being qualified Canada does not have the pressure to go out and get the win... though if they were smart they would go get it, just to keep the wheels turning. Cards: 4 Canadian players have yellow cards so far, expect them either not play very long, or be very generous with the space they provide Costa Rica tonight. With cards getting wiped at the end of this round robin Canadian players will be extra cautious tonight.Anyways my prediction for tonight is a draw will take place between the two teams.
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