I hope Herdman learns from this and works towards understanding how his teams may have "outhustled" their opposition so far, but they were picked a part by experienced veteran teams that know how to keep their emotions in check until its time to play.
Teams???? Lets not get carried away here. The Canadians lost to the Belgians due to their lack of finishing. Nothing else.
It’s 1 of 3 group stage games at the World Cup. Not 1 of 82 games in a NHL season. They had more than enough reasons to go out and give it to an inferior team after a 0-0 draw to Morocco.
Canada was clearly the underdog. No point in dissing their mothers. A better strategy would be saying "it's not going to get easier against Croatia but we know we deserve to be here and are going to try our best to beat them". Instead "were going to f*** em". Act like an underdog gives your team a chance to come out and have no pressure. Instead the coach put all the pressure on Canada to come out and beat them.
Silly to think a team would not be motivated for a World Cup match.
All the players on the Canadian National team are playing in top leagues whether it's in Europe or MLS, what we need is more players playing in them. The CPL is only 4 years old and most of those players are teenagers or in their early 20's, a number have already been transferred to European clubs, 4 years time our younger players already on Team Canada will be more experienced and presumably more players will have joined the National team. Also we had a 39 year old and a 35 year old in the starting lineup today, they will be both gone by the next World Cup.
That's not the point. All teams want to win. Being motivating to win because of being insulted is a different thing all together.
It was a rookie mistake on a global stage.
We out hustled Belgium but we didn't have that many high danger chances against Belgium. Belgium has one of the best keepers in the world and could afford to give up loads of shots. Its not like they planned it, but its a strategy they used (relying on Courtois to do his thing) until they found openings which they exploited.
If Herdman was trying to take pressure off the players, I think there could've been better ways to do it but we might have to agree to disagree there.
Sorry, what???
Well, I think the coach made massive tactical errors that didn’t make any sense. Atiba played way too much and was toast after the first goal, never mind the 3rd. The other fatal flaw was not reacting to the middle of the pitch, as Canada had Atiba and Eustaquio outnumbered by three Center mids
Let’s not forget that Canada should have been given another Penalty, when a Belgium back pass was ruled “offside” when Canada gained possession
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