Canada Eliminated in Group Stage of Men's Pan Am Soccer

While the Canadian women were given the help they needed to advance to the Pan Am Games semi-finals yesterday, the men weren't as lucky.

A 3-3 draw between Brazil and Panama meant the Canadian men's team is officially eliminated from medal contention before they have even played their final group match.

Canada will be left to rue chances of their own, as they were unable to make any of the many they created count against Panama in a 0-0 draw on Thursday when a victory would have kept them in contention.

Going into the final match day Brazil were automatically through as the top team in the group, now Panama will go through as the second seed on five points. The most points Canada can get is four after losing against Brazil and drawing Panama in their first two games.

That means that tonight's game against Peru will be meaningless for both teams, even if it does offer them another chance to get in crucial preparation for October's Olympic qualification tournament.

The way that the deciding match played out, in which Canada needed a Brazilian victory preferably by multiple goals in order to have a chance at advancing, played out in frustrating fashion.

The Brazilians scored the first three goals of the match, and had a very comfortable looking 3-1 lead going into halftime.

To start the second half, however, they completely fell apart defensively. A pair of defensive lapses led to a goal from open play and a penalty that left the score at three goals apiece.

After that, the match descended into a polite kick about between the two sides, both of whom were more or less happy with the 3-3 result. Brazil never really pressed again, and Panama did their best to kill off the rest of the game through any tactic possible.

It looked like Brazil had finally given Canada some hope on the final kick of the game, but Brazil missed a wide open net from just a few yards out.

The miss capped off a string of frustrating summer results for the program. The Canadian men's Gold Cup team was unable to get by the group stage, or even score a goal, earlier this month. Now the Pan Am team will have no knockout round matches either.

This means Canada only have the women's team left with a chance to get a medal in soccer at the Pan Am games. They play Colombia on Wednesday in the tournament's Semi-Final after finishing as the runners up in Group A last night.