Canada draws with Venezuela 2-2
Got a chance to catch the Canada-Venezuela friendly that Sportsnet broadcast Saturday morning, my first look at the Canadian senior men’s side since the 2006 World Cup qualifying run.
The game started off great as Venezuela seemed completely disorganized for the first few minutes. And Dwayne DeRosario capitalized on it, scoring his 8th international goal for Canada, heading in a beautiful cross from Rob Friend and drawing first blood.
After that the game seemed to slip away from Canada. By the middle of the first half, Venezuela had scored 2 quick goals and we went into the half down 2-1. It was a last minute strike by Ali Gerba that secured the draw.
All in all not a bad result by the Canadians, but not the kind of game you want to see from the team opening the Gold Cup against Costa Rica on Wednesday.
With the wealth of talent we currently have in the midfield with DeGuzman, Saltari and Hutchinson, we should be able to control the ball better and retain some possession. As well, we didn’t really pressure the Venezuelan defense, especially at the end of the game when we had nothing to lose. As time was running out, you could see Venezuela just eating up the seconds on the clock passing back and forth back and forth with no pressure being put on them that might have forced them to cough up the ball.
Granted, the boys have had very limited time playing together, and you could see Stephen Hart playing with the lineup a bit. I think Saltari started the game playing up, but floated back to end the game at right back, which was a good thing because our defense seemed woefully out of step for most of the game.
Despite the rumors and hyper security measures that made the pitch unavailable to the Canadians for practice the night before, Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez did not make an appearance.
