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It’s not every day that two Canadian national teams win in the span of a few hours, but that was the case last night as two squads of Les Rouges earned wins on opposite sides of the world. In Jamaica, the men’s under 20 team started off their CONCACAF World Cup qualifying tournament quite well on Saturday night, with a 3-1 win over Haiti. A few hours later at the BaoAn Cup in China, our women’s national team opened their tournament with a 2-1 win over Korea Republic.
Canada’s Jordan Hamilton scored in the 11th and 18th minute for the U20s, and Canada were running rampant on a very shaky Haitian back line. However, Haiti shocked Canada in the 29th minute when Canadian keeper Marco Carducci came for a cross but misjudged the flight of the ball and was bumped, allowing a Haitian forward to head the rebound into the back of the net.
See also: Gale highlights depth as Canada prepares to kick off CONCACAF U-20 Championship
“We looked to stretch them and get in behind them early and obviously took our chances,” said Head Coach Rob Gale. “I think, then, we probably took it a bit easy and got a little bit complacent but we responded. We were disappointed to concede a goal. We had to deal with that and regrouped at halftime.”
After a lull in action in which neither team created much offensively, Canada was awarded a penalty kick in the 70th minute, after Marco Bustos was hauled down by a Haitian defender in the box. Michael Petrasso converted the penalty. Truth be told, Canada could have had a handful of clear penalty kicks throughout the game called in their favour.
Bustos earned player of the game honours for Canada, and had this to say about the win: “In the beginning we took control of the game and we were moving the ball quickly. We sort of lost it towards the end [of the first half] and losing balls and not connecting as we should have but we regrouped at halftime and came out on fire. We created lots of chances. We could have scored more but we're happy with the three points.”
Next up for the under 20 men is their second group game on Monday (3pm ET/ 12pm PT) against Mexico, who are sure to provide a much more difficult challenge than Haiti. Mexico won their first game against Cuba 9-1. The tournament website can be found here.
As for the women’s national team, this four-nation tournament in China is another great opportunity to get experience playing consecutive games in a short period of time before June’s World Cup.
While Korea Republic opened the scoring in the 34th minute, Canada were able to pull things together and score two early second half goals, courtesy of forward Janine Beckie (51st minute) and centre back Kadeisha Buchanan (55th minute). This was Beckie’s first international goal in just her second senior team cap.
"We started really well, the first 20 minutes, Canada were dominant. But we made a mistake and we were punished like we were two years ago,” said Canadian head coach John Herdman. “In the second half, we let it go and we got out there and Korea Republic didn't get out of their half for 15 minutes. That's as strong a performance as I've seen these players put in over a sixty-minute period. It bodes well - I'm really happy, it showed some real resilience in coming back."
Just like the U20 men, CanWNT's next opponent is also Mexico, on January 13th (16.00 local / 3:00am ET / 12:00am PT). Again, it doesn’t look like there will be a stream to watch this game, as CCTV in China is only broadcasting China’s games. Of course, Canada drew China at the Women’s World Cup draw last month, so their meeting on January 15th will be quite interesting, and (cross your fingers!) there should be a stream for the match at 6:30 am ET/ 3:30am PT.
Highlights for both the CanM20 and CanWNT games from last night will likely be available sometime today on Canada Soccer's YouTube page.
All quotes courtesy of Canada Soccer.
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