Canada vs Cuba. Pre-Game Links and Miscellany

Well, it's less than 48 hours until Canada plays again, and we've still only got one article up here at Waking the Red, It's a bit feeble really. My real work has suddenly got very busy, Dave's been dealing with moving and getting married on Saturday (congrats to Dave and Lauren, in lieu of gifts please donate goals to Canada.) and thus it's all a bit slacky really. Anyway we'll hopefully rectify that over the next few days as best we can, previews, WTR Live, reports and all that usual stuff. In the meantime here's some of what we've missed over the last few days, and what other sites who've actually got the time to do this right have done.

First up, the Voyageurs are still selling tickets, currently for section 111 after selling out the entire South end, for pick up pre game at Gossip, which is where the pre game drinks are happening again. Not Maro, Gossip. You can also get tickets for other areas of the stadium here.

Want persuading that the south end or as close as you can get to it is where you want to be, well here's the latest in the CSA's See Thee Rise series, which came out a few days ago, focusing on the home game against Panama, well worth a watch.

Incidentally, if you've gone far enough down the main page here after the redesign, you'll have seen youtube videos, that's now changed to the CSA's youtube channel, so you'll always be able to see the latest videos they put out there.

Couple of other things happened today outside of the game preparations. First up, Bell Canada was announced as a Premier Partner of the CSA, committing to "work closely with the Canadian Soccer Association to build a grassroots experiential program that will help young, female soccer players get closer to their national heroes while contributing to their physical and mental wellness."

That sounds interesting enough, and also as well there's hopefully some cash coming to the CSA. Let's face it, they need it, this isn't about just some extra profit for a souless owner, so with the caveat that as long as their logo never sullies the jersey, I'll welcome that news and give them a tiny extra bit of bang for their buck here.

Also today, the under 20's beat the USA in the Marbella cup, with goals from Samuel Piette and Caleb Clarke giving them a 2-1 win.

Moving on to the game coverage, Red Nation Online is once again the obvious place to start, where Steve Bottjer has been relentlessly busy, there's an interview with Dejan Jakovic as well as preview pieces based on interviews with Marcel de Jong, talking about the possibility of replacing Dwayne De Rosario and Terry Dunfield getting his game face on, as well as some talk about the Cubans not liking the cold weather and probably a whole lot more by the time you read this.

Bottjer pops up again at Sportsnet, where John Molinaro also has an article on Kenny Stamatopoulos and Gerry Dobson profiles Iain Hume. Julian de Guzman gets a Canadian Press writeup, which I'll link to here at TSN. Continuing with the usual suspects, over at CSN, Squizz ties it all together with his personal life over the last 4 years, (he's just got engaged, congrats to him, in lieu of gifts please donate goals to Canada). Rudi Schuller has a few articles up at goal.com, start here with this one where Stephen Hart does the whole 'one game at a time' thing. Over at the Sun, Kurt Larson's also concentrating on Hart concentrating on Cuba. Here's Benjamin Massey trying but kind of failing to get his hopes up over at 86 forever. Richard Whittall does his whole 'look at me, I know my history' schtick and mixes some shitting on TFC fans into his preview, while Paul Attfield at the globe and mail wonders if we might get some lockout bothered hockey fans on board this time around.

That's about it for now (Wednesday night) but I'm sure there'll be plenty more coming along soon.