If you’re talking about the current group of Canadian players, this is the level they’ve been at for the past few years. They get a favourable draw as a host, so their group has gone about as predicted so far.
If you look a bit more historically it’s a different story. Their FIFA ranking ten years ago was #120.
Just to add to this statement:
From a graphic in The Athletic today, which is paywalled:
The chance of advancing to the Round of 32 as a third place team with 4 or more points is >99%.
With 3 points, the chance ranges from 32% to >99%, depending on goal differential. A -8 GD is 32%, while a +3 GD is >99%.
With 2 points, the chance is 4%.
Details:
Jordan Pickford was deserving of a card for taking out Prince Adu, but since he wasn’t the last defender - there were two England defenders in play - it should have been yellow, not red. There was no attempt to play the ball. There wasn’t even an attempt at pretending to attempt to play the ball. He just wanted to clear out the attacker, and that he did. Very much deserving of a caution.
Possibly the worst case of whining I’ve seen in a while. Almiron was not red carded because he was too fair skinned. He was red carded because he covered his mouth during an altercation to prevent the cameras from seeing him say something that brings the game into disrepute.
Bellingham’s case was quite different. There was no altercation or confrontation. Just two friends talking privately.
Is there a reason why racial and homophobic abuse should remain a part of football? Or should the players all be miked up so we can hear everything including their conversations deciding on how the free kick or corner is to be taken?
It’s been a decade or so since I hung up my whistle, but I used to work a lot of amateur and youth matches about 20 weekends a year. I got in the habit of checking in the teams that had a lot of Hispanic players in Spanish. Early in my refereeing career (if you could call it that), I’m sure they’d look at me and feel pretty confident that I couldn’t understand their chatter on the field. That was their mistake, and I sent off a number of players for foul and abusive language they didn’t think I understood. My mentor, however, always said that a good referee should have two objectives in mind. First, keep the play flowing as much as possible. Second, try to keep the players on the field, and only send off players who really demonstrate they need to be sent off. By checking them in and chatting with them in Spanish - or more accurately, Spanglish - they were on notice to keep it clean.
Should have been a penalty, the other two incidents show your bias. The goalie missed the ball but so did the attacker and the attacker had his studs raised. Bad goalkeeping though, and lucky the attacker missed the ball. The covering the mouth thing is only for confrontations. Might have been interesting had Ayew run to referee to complain however.
Apparently Juan Soto is the VAR ref for CAN/SUI. Wonder how the Mets feel about that.
Right on. All showered up, Stella Artois and dabs at the ready.
Did the ole call-in-sick thing with two of my clients.
Game on.
I hope I’m not seeing a lot of empty seats.
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Both sides just missed golden opportunities.
ETA: Canada/Switzerland
Yeah, it has been eventful so far.
Surely players will learn that stumbling to the ground and flinging your arms up is far less likely to succeed in this particular tournament…
A couple neat turns Canada has pulled off - one of them might have looked like a foul.
Are hydration breaks frowned upon, here? I myself am ok with them in this summer heat.
EDIT: BC Place is covered, though, so, maybe not a screamingly necessary hydration break, here.
I’m glad the ref yellow carded both of them - at the outset that’s what I thought too.
Not sure…I don’t think anyone’s commented on them in this thread.
Everybody hates them, they’re just another money grab for FIFA.
Bosnia and Herzegovina out there killing it. Two goals in the first 40 minutes or so.
Oh, as I type this, Qatar has just scored 1 back.
If you have to choose, this it the better of the games happening now. Wow.
If I could construct, in my imagination, the most vanilla football team possible, it would not be as vanilla as this Canada team. And I’m saying this while they are playing Switzerland - the second most vanilla team in the world.