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UPDATE #2: It’s now being widely reported that Octavio Zambrano will be the new Canada men’s national team head coach. Here’s how it emerged:
The Canada Soccer press office fired an email out to reporters this morning revealing a men’s national team announcement would be made in Toronto on Friday. Both of the CSA big guns - Victor Montagliani and Peter Montopoli - are set to attend, meaning it’s probably something at least somewhat significant.
The immediate reaction, of course, was that Montagliani and Montopoli would finally be naming Benito Floro’s successor as head coach. That was strengthened by Anthony Totera then reporting that the new manager will be from Ecuador.
BOOM sources seconds ago confirm to me the next coach of Canada's men's national team will be coming from Ecuador
— A. Totera (@4totera) March 15, 2017
Top-class investigative journalist that I am, I set off for the ‘Ecuadorian football managers’ Wikipedia page and had a look down the (brief) list for possible candidates. One that stood out to me was Octavio Zambrano (pictured above) due to the fact he has plenty of MLS experience between spells with the LA Galaxy and the NY/NJ MetroStars.
It turns out (and this is Serious Journalism Skill #2) that Zambrano has Twitter, and guess what?
I have no actual information here but have a look at Octavio Zambrano's (@oz_football) recent Twitter follows... https://t.co/Bu6DwI4wre
— Oliver Platt (@plattoli) March 15, 2017
For the record, those follows are Canada Soccer, Jason de Vos, Montagliani and what I assume is a fan-run Canadian Premier League account.
Take that for what it’s worth, anyway - and bear in mind that there are other possibilities, such as this:
Sixto Vizuete confirms he has an offer from abroad...Canada? #CanMNT https://t.co/pZlP9CdZ6H
— Michael Przybyłowski (@prizby) March 15, 2017
Even if Zambrano is involved, there’s a chance he may not be the coach - he was most recently the technical director of Delfin, a club in Ecuador, but left at the end of 2016. The CSA, meanwhile, dumped their high-performance director Tony Fonseca just two weeks ago, though it was suggested in some meaningless jargon from Montopoli that he might not be directly replaced.
UPDATE: Hilary Evans on Twitter has found this article from Italy about Javier Livia, who is reportedly set to coach the Under-21s - as part of Zambrano’s staff.
We’ll find out on Friday, anyway, and Waking the Red will be in attendance.