Canada on the Marsch, again
Someday I will stop making some version of the Jesse Marsch pun in the headline about a Canada Soccer story. But not today.
You can be forgiven for not knowing or caring about the Nations League. It wasn’t that long ago that the international soccer calendar had long lulls between major events like the World Cup and regional tournaments like the Copa America, filling those months with the odd exhibition match — or friendly, in the vernacular — so that national team players could stay vaguely acquainted with one another.
The Nations League was an attempt to give a little more structure to the friendlies, adding a competitive element to the exhibition season even though no one really cared who won or lost Nations League outings. But for the Canadian men’s national team, the CONCACAF Nations League is, suddenly, kind of a big deal. On Friday night in Suriname, Canada won the first leg of their quarter-final by a 1-0 score, meaning Tuesday night’s home leg offers an excellent chance to progress to the semis.
How excellent a chance? In the first leg, Suriname managed zero shots on the Canadian goal and only had two shot attempts over 90-plus minutes. Canada had 13 attempts and five shots on target, but that disparity didn’t really tell the story. Suriname bunkered down and tried to escape with a 0-0 draw, and almost did, until Junior Hoillett came on to score a late winner. Suriname will now have play a little in Toronto to try to come back from a goal down, which in theory should open things up for Canada, which is exactly what still-relatively-new head coach Jesse Marsch wants.
(Sidenote: Gold star if you knew that Suriname is not in Central America but in South America. It’s right there next to Guyana, east of Venezuela and north of Brazil. Why does it play in the Central/North American federation instead of South America? Great question. It’s much cheaper and easier for travel — although not when a trip to Toronto is required — and they are much less likely to get absolutely trounced by powers like Brazil and Argentina.)
The funny thing about Marsch’s time in charge is that he was clear right off the jump when taking the job last spring that his main goal was to get the team ready for the 2026 World Cup. It’s not that results didn’t matter, but he had the luxury of coaching a team that had already qualified as one of the co-hosts, so he could focus on implementing his style and bringing in new players.
And then he went and got pretty good results anyway. Canada played a good half against the Netherlands (before losing) and then drew with France, and then rolled into a low-expectations Copa America where they managed to get all the way to the semi-finals, losing to eventual champions Argentina. The United States, meanwhile, went out of that tournament early and fired their coach, while Mexico remains in a years-long state of crisis. They lost 1-0 to Honduras in the first leg of their Nations League quarter-final and someone threw something from the stands that hit the Mexican coach in the head and drew blood. (Quite a lot of it, too.) Canada, in other words, is the only one of the three World Cup hosts that has their shit together at the moment. The Americans, though, have just beaten Jamaica in their Nations League QF, which sets up the possibility of a neighbourly showdown before this tournament is over.
That would be something. The rise of the Canadian men under John Herdman coincided with a fallow period for the U.S. (and Mexico), but the Americans just might be onto something under new head coach Mauricio Pochettino, the Argentine who was last seen in charge of Chelsea in the Premier League. Marsch, meanwhile, had been a contender for the U.S. job, was passed over, and has since made noises about how he wouldn’t want the job anyway because he thinks USA Soccer is a bit of a mess.
All of which is to say, a Nations League showdown between Canada and the United States would give some serious heft to a competition that doesn’t really have any. A chance for Canada to prove that its recent performances in the rivalry weren’t a weird fluke, and a chance for America to reassert its historical dominance in what has generally been a one-sided affair.
Canada, of course, has to get by Suriname first on Tuesday night. Good luck to the lads, I say.