Don't look now, but ...

THE STEPHEN HART ERA
Date	Opponent	Location	Type	CAN	Opp	Result
09/04/06	Jamaica	Montreal	Friendly	1	0	Win
10/08/06	Jamaica	Kingston	Friendly	1	2	Loss
11/15/06	Hungary	Szekesfehervar	Friendly	0	1	Loss
03/25/07	Bermuda	Hamilton, Ber.	Friendly	3	0	Win
06/01/07	Venezuela	Maracaibo	Friendly	2	2	Draw
06/06/07	Costa Rica	Miami	Gold Cup	2	1	Win
06/09/07	Guadeloupe	Miami	Gold Cup	1	2	Loss
06/11/07	Haiti	Miami	Gold Cup	2	0	Win
06/16/07	Guatemala	Foxboro, MA	Gold Cup	3	0	Win
06/21/07	USA	Chicago	Gold Cup	1	2	Loss
05/30/09	Cyprus	Larnaca	Friendly	1	0	Win
06/30/09	Guatemala	Oxnard, CA	Friendly	3	0	Win
07/03/09	Jamaica	Los Angeles	Gold Cup	1	0	Win
07/07/09	El Salvador	Columbus, OH	Gold Cup	1	0	Win
07/10/09	Costa Rica	Miami	Gold Cup	2	2	Draw
Totals				24	12
		Wins	9
		Draws	2
		Losses	4

Stephen Hart may not be the permanent solution as men's head coach. But he is putting together quite the resumé right now. A fair question: were Dale Mitchell's pre-hiring qualifications for MNT manager (2 qualifications for U20 WC with decent results in the competition, and a miserable 2007 U20 WC after no qualifying) better than Hart's current curriculum vitae?

You can point out that Hart has only been at the helm for friendlies and the less-than-prestigious Gold Cup, but he also wins. Which you couldn't say about Mitchell.

By the by, Hart has now coached exactly as many Canada matches as Mitchell ever did. In those matches, the GF-GA differentials for each: Hart -- 24-12; Mitchell -- 20-25.

Some people have pointed to an improved attacking style of play under Hart, but more impressive has been his ability to organize a back four when given time with the team (Stalteri-Hainault-Hastings-Klukowski at GC 2007; Stalteri-McKenna-Jakovic-Klukowski in GC 2009). Remember that Canada did manage to score in every WCQ game in 2008, but leaked goals all over the place.

I'll say it now: If Stephen Hart is the man in charge at the beginning of the next round of World Cup qualifying (only 3 long years away), I won't necessarily lose my shit.

Gold Cup Goals Pool: After the group stage

I am returned to civilization, windburnt and sore in the paddling muscles, but otherwise intact. Needless to say, one of my first acts upon returning was to queue up a download of the Canada-Costa Rica match without learning of the result (now old hat for me; leave a post in the comments if you want to acquire this skill).

The weeklong break between the group stage and quarterfinals will allow me (and the headhunter, if he wants to share posting duties for the remainder of the tournament) to stretch out some of my thoughts and numbers.

Entry	Goals
P	11
Kevin Elder	10
Andrew Bates	10
J	9
M@	8

The full details are available in a highly unreadable format here.

After taking an early lead, M@ has stumbled a bit and our grad student friend (and owner of the Radzinski doll) takes the lead. A tight race, to be sure, and unlikely to be decided before the final.

Speaking of the final, it happens to fall on the date upon which I will be making another (work-related) excursion, this time into the semi-wilderness of southwestern Manitoba. If Canada should advance that far, I will be kicking myself harder than usual.


Tomorrow: I'll chime in with some analysis, quantitative and qualitative, of the group stage, and particularly the matches that I actually watched, against El Salvador and Costa Rica.

Hurricane Canada acquires target... Honduras

Well, I know on the boards around none of us predicted that Canada would come out of the group stages undefeated, and sitting on top of the standings of Group A with 7 points. But look now... that is exactly where we sit at today in the Gold Cup tournament. We have not been in this position since 2000 (remember that year, that year where we won the tournament) and all of a sudden things are looking a little sunny side up.

Calm before the storm

So let's turn this into a storm front or weather related project. I've decided that Canada is like a Hurricane coming into this gold cup and hear me out on why I think this. First off, we had the initial storm that was brewing last year where we failed to qualify for the world cup, after some dubious coaching and in doing so ran a few players off the team. Then it sort of just fizzled away. We had silence, calmness, not much happening for Canadian soccer players in general and in terms of figuring out how to proceed with the men's national team.


Brewing storm

First game in the gold cup and we play a pretty good game against Jamaica and get ourselves a goal in the first half to give ourselves a 1-0 lead. We hang on for the win and gather confidence from the victory and the Team Canada storm has begun to build.

The storm is coming together

Our next game we play the fiesty El Salvador squad, which we play our best game of the round robin, we control the game and this storm gets to form into a tropical cyclone, there is movement.

Finally the big test, versus Costa Rica, we go down quickly when Sutton boots the ball to midfield into the feet of a Costa Rica player, who turns the ball up quickly to the striker, who catches Sutton away from his goal and loops the ball over him as he trips and falls to the ground. We come back and place one of the best crosses in a long time... for a second I thought I was watching the Dutch team cross a ball in, as it was a brilliant cross and a beauty finish to knot the game at 1. Then we score another one and Costa Rica comes back with one more. 2-2 at the end of the 1st half. We keep the score like that to get a draw using a B rated squad. The storm has now fully organized, each member has gotten more comfortable with one another and Hurricane Canada is here.

Hurricane Canada in all its glory

Highlights from the Costa Rica vs Canada Game

So tonight we acquired the target, and it is Honduras. Our vast nation, with plenty of trees and water to dump on Honduras is ready to take the next step and qualify for the semi finals of the Gold Cup.


Target Acquired


The big question in the end is, will anyone be able to see the hurricane coming, or will the boards be up once again around Sportsnet network?

Canada vs Costa Rica Preview

Concacaf Gold Cup
Canada vs El Salvador (Crew Stadium)

Columbus, Ohio
7 July 2009
7 pm ET / 8 pm CT / 4 pm PT

Live on Rogers Sportsnet.ca
East 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 hand


I'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.

If you want more preview information you can always check out this fabulous links
World Cup Canada Blog
Canucks Abroad on Twitter
Voyaguers Website

Just checking in

I'm back at home base for 24 hours before I head out on another excursion. Time for a few important items:

Gold Cup Goals Pool Standings

Entry	Goals
M@	7
Andrew Bates	6
Kevin Elder	4
P	4
J	4

All of us picked Ali Gerba, so that part was a wash. M@ also had two goals from Romero in El Salvador's win over Costa Rica, and picked 2 of the 6 different Americans to score in the tournament.

Canada in first place in Group A
Awesome. All I saw of the Jamaica match was the one-minute highlight package they showed on Sportsnet which suggested that Canada might not have given a good 90-minute effort. But I managed to download the El Salvador match without learning of the result and was pleased with what I saw.

Canada often tends to play down to the level of their opponents, but against El Salvador they showed that they were a class above. The finishing still needs work, but the midfield display by Julian de Guzman and especially Atiba Hutchinson was dominant. The only players who played a below-average match for Canada, for my money, were Josh Simpson and Greg Sutton.


Because it doesn't get old . . .

Ali Gerba celebrating yet another goal.

I'll be back on Monday with more coverage, a more detailed summary of the goals pool, and hopefully some photos of fish I catch on the weekend.

And again, many thanks to Headhunting Canuck for keeping the place up and running while I'm away.

Canada vs El Salvador Live Blog

Well click on the link below and join the blog. Bring your best joke, or your drink of choice to the party tonight.



Tonight's Beer of the Night


Now the Mill St. Wit Beer is a smooth summer beer and always needs an addition of the following below. Cheers and enjoy the game.

Gold Cup Game 2 Preview

Concacaf Gold Cup
Canada vs El Salvador (Crew Stadium)

Columbus, Ohio
7 July 2009
9 pm ET / 8 pm CT / 6 pm PT

Live on Rogers Sportsnet.ca
East 10PM Atlantic
Ontario 9 PM
West 6 PM Pacific Time
Internet: Liveblog here, video feed once found (If you have one, post in comments)

Well Canada got themselves a victory to start off these tournament on a strong note and the squad will look to put their best foot forward going into this next match with El Salvador. With El Salvador's win over Costa Rica on Friday night, the two squads expected to do the poorest in the group will face off in a chance to be alone in 1st place and qualified for the next round.


Canada's first game against Jamaica was a well deserved victory, though the play wasn't as clean or offensive as one would have liked to see. The team controlled play at various times, but also broke done a couple of times to allow Jamaica some quality chances. Greg Sutton kept the team in the game early on in the 2nd half, which allowed for Ali Gerba to slot one home for the Canucks for the victory.

Stalteri spoke on Monday with reporters and stated what is needed to be imporved on for tonight's match up versus El Salvador.

"Tactically, we weren't spot on but we were close."

"We will need to maintain possession of the ball, rather than chase the ball defensively as we did a bit too much of that against Jamaica"

Stephen Hart said in practice on Monday that his player are quietly confident group.

"You can see the players are bubbly and enjoying the practices, and for me that's how I judge the mood of everything,"

Canada will be making one roster change for tonight's game against El Salvador as Kevin Harmse is slightly injured and stayed in Los Angeles to work on regaining his match fitness level.


Tonight's matchup will be a battle of the middle field battle, as El Salvador will try to go up the middle against Canada to begin their play. Jamaica tried this last game and was stuck to trying to work the wings and were for the most part slowed down through the middle. Canada will have a destinct height advantage against El Salvador backs and will look to get some quality crosses into the box. Look for Canada to try spring it outside with their 4-3-3 formation and try to get the crosses in.

Canada will need to be careful with their match fitness level, as they still need to play the full 90 minutes, they took a few minutes off in the 2nd half and Stephen Hart noticed it and has addressed it before the matchup tonight against El Salvador, especially since they are an extremely quick squad.
So come join us out of the rain for tonight's matchup against El Salvador... I'll be live blogging it starting around 8:45 EST. We can only hope sportsnet gets over their idea of tape delaying matchups by 5 minutes.

Bringing back the old contest... I have gotten back to the beautiful people idea. This time I did some research, so we have both contestants from the 2008 Miss Universe. You can decide for yourselves what you think.

vs

What they are saying elsewhere on the intraweb.
Sportsnet Preview
World Cup Canada Blog Preview
24th Minute: Interview with Stephen Hart, and de Guzman
Some Canadian Guys: El Salvadorian Straws
The Voyageurs

Liveblog Canada vs Jamaica Gold Cup

Get your youtube on

Watch this space.


Top notch coverage of Canada's team at the Gold Cup, and a preview video shot in Winnipeg a stone's throw from my pad by a couple of intrepid reporters.