Canada: See Thee Qualification Hopes Rise

Canada wrapped up their Round 2 qualifying campaign for the 2014 World Cup in Toronto last night with a healthy 4-0 victoria over St Kitts and Nevis.

It’s never easy playing two teams at the same time, as we saw in the no score, bore draw on Friday. St Kitts were easy to conquer but man, did Nevis put up a fight.

In the build up to the game, Canadian coach Stephen Hart said “We owe it to the fans to put on a good performance”. He, and the team, were certainly true to their word.

The reaction by some to Friday’s draw was a little strange. It was all doom and gloom in some quarters and you’d have thought that the Canadians tournament dreams were all over instead of securing the vital point which saw Canada qualify for the CONCACAF round three group games with a match left to spare.

Sure it wasn’t pretty, but it got the job done. It all reminded me of this famous quote from Blackpool manager Ian Holloway:

“To put it in gentleman’s terms, if you’ve been out for a night and you’re looking for a young lady and you pull one, some weeks they’re good looking and some weeks they’re not the best. Our performance today would have been not the best looking bird but at least we got her in the taxi. She wasn’t the best looking lady we ended up taking home but she was very pleasant and very nice, so thanks very much, let’s have a coffee.”

Last night’s clean sheet saw Canada’s shutout streak extended to 533 minutes, just eight minutes shy of the national record. Canada’s five consecutive clean sheets does tie the national record.

As something of an outsider (as a Scot now living in Canada and cheering them on), the positive signs are there, from what I’m seeing.

I personally don’t really care all that much what route my teams get to their destination, just as long as they make it in the end.

When I first moved over here in 2007, I found it surprising on the one hand at the lack of interest in the national team, but also not too shocked when considering the immigrant make-up of the country, the lack of exposure and I guess, ultimately, the lack of success on the major international stage.

A generation has passed since Canada last qualified for the World Cup, and that’s too long. Scotland are nearly getting to those levels, so I know how depressing it all is.

It’s been great to see the slow change of attitude from many to the Canadian national team these last few years and these qualifiers have seen an interest in Vancouver that I haven’t found here before and it’s been pleasing and refreshing to see.

The Vancouver Voyageurs, coupled with the Southsiders, have been promoting the hell out of their viewing parties and there’s been good numbers turning up at Doolins to watch the games, even for those on crappy online streams.

And of course it’s not just in Vancouver that we’re seeing this change of attitude and new found excitement in the national team.

Tuesday night’s attendance of 10,235 was the seventh consecutive attendance over 10,000 for a Canadian FIFA World Cup Qualifier home match. The streak includes all home qualification games from 2008 and 2011.

Canada’s home average attendance for the last two cycles of FIFA World Cup Qualifiers (2008-2011) is 47% greater than the average attendance recorded for the previous 11 cycles combined (1957-2004).

Hopefully great for the domestic game, as well as the national one.

Vancouver Whitecaps and Toronto FC have healthy and loyal support. The introduction of Montreal next season will bolster these numbers further.

There’s always been a loyal and fervent support here for the national team, but now that more and more people are getting used to watching domestic football on a regular basis, these numbers are growing.

If Vancouver (and Montreal) can actually start producing first team Canadian regulars, that will become household names, then this is a key to growing these numbers and interest further from my viewpoint.

Canada has booked six new dates on their road to the 2014 FIFA World Cup Finals in Brazil. Canada will now play six more group matches, this time against Honduras, Panama and Cuba from 8th June to 16th October next year.

Locations for home and away matches will only be announced in early 2012. Hopes are high that Vancouver might attract one of these games to BC Place, even if realistic expectations don’t match.

We would be prepared to wager that if we were to attract a game (or two) to the west coast, we’d be talking about way larger numbers attending than what’s been seen in Toronto and Montreal of late.

The dates and opponents for each of the matches are as follows:

8 June 2012 – Cuba v Canada
12 June 2012 – Canada v Honduras
7 September 2012 – Canada v Panama
11 September 2012 – Panama v Canada
12 October 2012 – Canada v Cuba
16 October 2012 – Honduras v Canada

The top two teams from each group will make up a final round of six teams, that will play 10 matches from 6th February to 15th October 2013. The top three teams from this final group will qualify for the 2014 FIFA World Cup, whilst the fourth-place team will advance to an intercontinental playoff.

The real frustrating aspect of it all is how long the CONCACAF process takes to play out.

Just when we’re all excited about the national team, we now have to wait nearly seven months before we see the guys kick a ball in competitive anger again. Let’s hope the excitement and passion we’ve seen these last few weeks just gets even stronger in that time.

With Tuesday night’s victory, Canada’s all-time record in FIFA World Cup Qualifiers improves to 40 wins, 31 draws and 30 losses in 101 matches. let’s hope we can add to this and get the total number of wins to 50.

Get that and I can hear the samba music and feel the sand between my toes already.

I still have my dream of heading down to Brazil to see both Canada and Scotland in the 2014 Finals.

Dum spiro, spero. While I breathe, I hope.

Whitecaps Internationalists Talk 2014 World Cup

Football fans around the world were glued to their televisions today to watch the draw for the 2014 World Cup qualifiers.

It was a mixed draw for me.

Scotland have a really tough road ahead of them if they are going to make it to Brazil. We do perform best when our backs are against the wall, but at this stage it looks like our best hope of qualification could be a new Balkans war breaking out.

Canada seem to have a great chance of making it to the final ‘hex’ stage and then everything is up for grabs.

I’m still living in the hope that I can head down to Rio to watch at least one of my teams taking part in the tournament, twenty years after I went to my first World Cup finals in the US.

It’s not just football fans around the globe that are getting excited at what lies ahead. The players are too and that includes Vancouver Whitecaps’ internationalists.

AFTN caught up with a few of our international stars after the LA Galaxy game and talked to them about something a bit cheerier than that game – the road to Brazil.

Kiwi defender Michael Boxall, and the Oceania qualification path, was the first stop on our world tour.

Boxall had represented New Zealand at youth, U-20, U-23 and A levels before this year, including at the 2007 U-20 World Cup in Canada and the 2008 Olympics in China.

March 25th saw him earn his first full international cap, playing the second half of a friendly against China, and he has earned two more international Caps in recent months.

Drawn against Papua New Guinea, the Soloman Islands and Fiji, we asked him how he saw New Zealand’s qualifying campaign progressing:

“It’s quite a way away. It’s not going to be until June before we actually start the qualifying. We’ve just got to take it one step at a time.

We know there’s not exactly powerhouses in our confederation, but there are still teams that you have to show up and beat. Take it one step at a time and see how everything unfolds after that.”

Last qualifying campaign, AFTN’s adopted Oceanic faves, New Caledonia, ran the Kiwis closest (although not really that close if truth be told). Does Michael see that being the same situation again?

“I don’t know too much about any of the island teams right now. We have to be confident in ourselves to be able to overcome anything that the island nations can throw at us and then move on past that”

Moving on past that is never easy for New Zealand. If/when they wrap up the Oceania champions spot, they will face a two legged playoff with the fourth place CONCACAF nation, a route which pleased Michael:

“I’m pretty glad that we managed to avoid the South Americans”

And how would he feel if that playoff game was against Canada?

“That would be pretty exciting and obviously not a very long flight if I had to play in Canada.”

We expressed our concerns that he has to face Papua New Guinea and joked with him about him being on the wrong end of cannibalism and not returning to MLS, before wishing him well in the forthcoming campaign.

With four African nations being represented by the current Caps squad, continental rivalries will soon start to come to the fore.

None more so than the potential group clash between Mustapha Jarju’s Gambian side and Nizar Khalfan’s Tanzania (assuming the latter take care of Chad in the preliminaries).

We asked Mustapha about this possible match-up and what he felt about the Gambia’s chances:

“(laughs) Yeah, my team-mate is going to be excited because he’s in a very good team.

For us, we are a very young team and I hope we get the chance to go and play against the very good teams. There is a chance.”

Before even thinking that far ahead, Mustapha is concentrating on his country’s African Nations Cup qualifying campaign, which is delicately balanced:

“We have two games coming up, one home and one away, and if we get good results, we qualify for the African Cup of Nations and then we can prepare for the qualification games for the World Cup.”

One African country which is familiar to fans around the world is Ghana and the Black Stars have qualified for the last two World Cup Finals. For U-20 internationalist Gershon Koffie, what does he hope for the Ghanaian qualifying campaign?

“I just want to keep working hard and hopefully get a call up.

It doesn’t matter what group we end up in, we just have to keep working hard and things will fall into place.”

I’m sure there will be a few Vancouverite’s taking more interest in African qualifiers over the next few years.

We wish all of our internationalists well. Maybe not so much Atiba Harris, whose St Kitts & Nevis side face Canada in the first round CONCACAF qualifying group, but to the rest, most certainly!

Yes it will mean that we’ll lose some of our top players for international duty but you can’t not want our Caps to go and try and get their countries World Cup glory.

And if we can see some of them grace the Brazilian pitches in front of a global audience in 2014, then all the better.