The GBU: Canada - United States soccer

Photo: Natasha Kai celebrates her game-winning goal against Canada with teammate Amy Rodriguez (left). [Photo from the New York Daily News].

I've already posted a more thorough recap of this morning's Canada-U.S. Olympic soccer match over at Out of Left Field, but I figured I'd do a quick GBU breakdown here.

The Score: United States 2, Canada 1 in extra time.

How I Saw It: On the tube.

The Good:

-Karina LeBlanc: LeBlanc has been the backup keeper to Erin McLeod for quite some time now, but she showed no rust when called upon after McLeod was injured early on. LeBlanc made several tremendous saves for Canada, including at least two on breakaways and one diving one-handed stop right in front of the goal line. Given the amount of quality chances the Americans had, LeBlanc was a huge reason that the Canadians were even able to take the game to extra time. She only allowed one goal, which came on a six-yard Natasha Kai header that was unstoppable by any mortal keeper.

-Christine Sinclair: Canada's captain showed her considerable leadership skills, single-handedly pulling the red-and-white squad back into the game by manufacturing a stunning goal out of an empty void larger than my stomach when I haven't eaten in a couple days. Her goal came off the first shot and the first chance Canada had, and there really wasn't anything there: she had a live-ball shot at the net from about 25 yards out, but nine times out of 10 those amount to nothing. Sinclair got all of it including the remainder, though, and unleashed an absolute rocket that U.S. goalkeeper Hope Solo could only wave goodbye at. Without her goal, this wouldn't have been much of a contest.

The Bad:

-Natasha Kai: Note that this is not bad from an objective standpoint, but bad from a Canadian fan's perspective. As such, Kai belongs here for her amazing play. She came off the bench at the start of the extra time, and promptly displayed some blinding speed to sneak through the Canadian defence and head home the winning goal. That's a more sudden impact than anything Dirty Harry appeared in. Besides, the dance [New York Daily News] she performed as a goal celebration was also pretty impressive (and according to the awesome Dan Steinberg, it's just one of her many choreographed celebrations [DC Sports Bog, or Beijing Sports Smog as it's known these days]). Now I know what Tunison sees in her...

-Amy Rodriguez: Similar to Kai, Rodriguez turned in a performance that was good from every standpoint except a Canadian one. Playing as the lone American striker for most of the match, Rodriguez was a constant threat. Particularly impressive was where she got trapped deep in the Canadian zone, but raced back to steal the ball from a lackadaisical Candace Chapman before Chapman even knew she was there, creating a quality American scoring chance.

The Ugly:

-The thunderstorm: The stupid storm not only soaked the pitch and postponed the match for over an hour, it also may have cost the Canadians the match. The humidity it created was likely a primary factor in why the Canadians appeared so out of gas at the end of the match. Sure, humidity affects both sides, but the Americans scored right at the start of extra time off a great play by a sub: from there on in, they only had to defend, which takes far less energy. This combined with the next entry to really hurt the Canadians.

-The Canadian injuries: Losing Erin McLeod early on was a big blow. As previously mentioned, Karina LeBlanc did a fantastic job in relief and McLeod couldn't have stopped Kai's goal, but that forced Even Pellerud to spend one of his three substitutions early on on a player who didn't have to do a lot of running. Things got worse later on, when he had to bring off Melissa Tancredi in favour of Brittany Timko at halftime (I'm assuming that she re-aggravated her earlier injury and wasn't pulled due to performance), and then had to bring Timko off after she got injured towards the end of the game. Thus, all three of his subs had to be used to cover injuries, which makes it difficult to adjust tactics that aren't working or bring in fresh legs to try and generate some offense. At the end, all but one Canadian outfield player (the spot filled by Tancredi/Timko/Jonelle Filigno) had played a full 120 minutes. In the heat and humidity just after a thunderstorm, plus the natural smog and pollution levels in China, it's no wonder that the Canadians ran out of energy at the end.

-The Canadian tactics: All of the above entries in the last two categories were problems, but not as significant as Pellerud's refusal to adapt his system when it was clear that it wasn't working. Canada spent most of the match sending long balls forward up the middle, losing the aerial battles for said long balls to the American central defenders, and then chasing back to try and regroup. There wasn't enough lateral support between the three strikers or enough vertical support between the forwards and the midfielders. It would have made much more sense to test the American defence on the ground or at the flanks after the long balls failed, but both areas were only lightly probed. In the second half, Pellerud switched from a 3-4-3 to a 3-5-2 with the addition of Timko, but he refused to attack on the wings and had both strikers (Sinclair and Kara Lang) play in a straight line in the middle of the park. If you run into a brick wall, don't keep bashing your head against it.

Angela Hucles' finishing: This entry is actually a positive for the Canadians, but it fits better under "Ugly" than "Good". Hucles did score the first goal of the game for the Americans, but she missed at least three other wide-open chances. I'm guessing there's a good reason that she's a midfielder and not a striker. As the CBC's Jason de Vos said, "Hucles has had four glorious opportunities today and has only managed to score on one of them."

Scott Russell's knowledge of Canadian soccer history:
I don't want to bash Russell too hard, because it must be incredibly difficult to serve as a multi-sport studio host and be expected to know everything about every sport. With that said, one of his halftime comments was just embarrassing for the state of Canadian women's soccer knowledge in this country. The good part was that he found a cool stat: today's match was apparently Christine Sinclair's 131th cap, which tied her for the all-time lead. The bad part was that he said it tied her with "Charmaine Cooper." That's Charmaine Hooper, Scott, and you really should know who she is if you're talking about Canadian women's soccer.

Related:
- My recap of the game [Out of Left Field].
- Jeff Blair's terrific game story, which includes the revelation that Kai's dance was supposedly based on an Eddie Murphy sketch about an ice-cream truck [The Globe and Mail].
- Lindsey Dolich has a good piece on the match, complete with ratings for the American players [ESPN Soccernet].

Breaking CSA news

The Canadian Soccer Association announced today that Peter Montopoli will serve as their new general secretary, a new position created to replace the chief executive officer's job and bring the title in line with other world nations. Montopoli's claim to fame is acting as the event director at last year's U-20 World Cup. The CSA press release plays up his impact there, stating, "As National Event Director for the 52-match tournament, he helped Canada 2007 draw close to 1.2-million spectators, engage 469.5-million cumulative television viewers, and spark $259-million in economic impact."

It's good to see the CSA finally filling some of the vacancies, but there's still several curious things about this announcement. First, it came out less than a week after the association appointed Stephen Hart as their new technical director, which seems to indicate that they've had the successful candidates in mind for both slots for the last while. If that is the case, it's curious that they'd announce Hart's appointment first, as his is the junior position. It would have made more sense to bring in the new general secretary first, and have him consult on the technical director's appointment. Even if the CSA wanted to hire their own man for the job, announcing the hirings in the reverse order would have at least created the impression of unity under the new general secretary, rather than having Montopoli start the job with someone else's hire already in place under him.

The Hart-Montopoli dynamic will be interesting to follow in days to come. Hopefully, Montopoli will respect Hart's soccer knowledge and give him a large amount of independence on the technical development side. There are plenty of business issues for Montopoli to look at, including the ongoing struggle to secure sponsors: he doesn't need to complicate things further by trying to impose his own vision. The CSA has several good people already in place, including Hart, men's head coach Dale Mitchell and women's head coach Even Pellerud: he should take full advantage of their talents. Nick Dasovic also did a great job as a contract coach with the U-23 Olympic team, pulling them past heavyweights Mexico and within a hair of qualification: he should be brought back in some role.

Another interesting element of this is how the message came out this time: the CSA pumped out a proper press release, and CP picked up on it with a story, which various news outlets then grabbed off the wire. Much more traditional, professional and effective than having it leak out through Gerry Dobson's blog.

What concerns me, though, is that Montopoli's main qualifications come from his work on the U-20 World Cup. Sure, it was a success in many ways: it set an attendance record, showcased some high-quality soccer, attracted plenty of tourists and got a lot of media coverage, which is a rarity for soccer events in this country. However, this event apparently somehow managed to lose a lot of money, raising questions about the losses that haven't been satisfactorily answered yet (to my knowledge at least). The CSA still hasn't shown that they're the best group to run soccer in this country, and hiring a head honcho whose main experience comes from running a tournament that should have made a huge profit but wound up in the red isn't a good step forward.