Northern Exposure: 3 named as Canada Soccer’s Player of the Month

March has proved to be busy for Canada Soccer with four different national teams seeing action this month. This is a recap of recent developments from Les Rouges plus a look at general Canadian soccer news from home and abroad.

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CanWNT Wraps Up Tournament By Drawing With Brazil

The Canadian Women’s National Team wrapped up the first edition of the Tournoi de France - an invitational soccer tournament in Calais, France running Mar 4 to 10 - with a late comeback against Brazil to draw 2-2.

Today’s match was the last game of the four team tournament which saw Canada go 0W-1L-2D. Canada opened the tournament with a 1-0 loss to host France. They then drew the Netherlands 0-0 ahead of today’s game against Brazil.

After its recent successful Olympic Qualifying campaign back in February, the Canadian team was using this tournament to continue to assess its player pool as well as testing itself against some of the world’s top national teams. Canada will now head home to Vancouver to face Australia in a friendly at BC Place on Apr 14 before setting their sites on the 2020 Olympics in Tokyo, Japan.

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CanMNT Seeks Sell Out For Second Game At Westhills

Back in February it was announced that the Canadian Men’s National Team would play two friendlies in March against Trinidad and Tobago at Westhills Stadium in Langford BC.

Tickets were only being made available for the first game on Mar 27 but after a quick sell-out of the 7000 seat capacity Westhills Stadium Canada Soccer opened up ticket sales for the second game on Mar 31. Fans are obviously excited to see the likes of Alphonso Davies and Jonathan David playing on Vancouver Island.

Canada will be looking to earn valuable FIFA ranking points against Trinidad and Tobago as they continue to work towards the hex qualification route for 2022 World Cup qualifying scheduled to begin in September of this year.

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Canada U-20 Women Knocked Out Of Concacaf Championship

A 4-0 defeat in the quarterfinals at the hands of the US eliminated Canada from the U-20 Concacaf Championships tournament. This result follows a 6-0 win by Canada in the round of 16 against Cuba and a 2-0 win against El Salvador, a 0-0 draw with Guatemala, and a 3-1 loss to Jamaica in round robin play.

Unfortunately this loss also means that Canada will not qualify for the World Cup in August. This year’s Concacaf Championship will only see the two teams who make the final qualify for the U-20 Women’s World Cup.

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Canada U-23 Men Announce Final Roster For Olympic Qualifying

After releasing a provisional list of 50 players back in February, we await the final roster selection for the Canadian Men’s U-23 National Team which is set to come out on Mar 11. This team will compete in the Concacaf Men’s Olympic Qualifying Tournament running Mar 20 to Apr 1 in Guadalajara, Mexico.

Training camp will start Mar 13. Canada is looking to be one of the two teams that will qualify for the 2020 Summer Olympics in Tokyo, Japan. Canada has not qualified for an Olympics since 1984.

Canada kicks off its qualifying campaign against El Salvador on Mar 21. They then face Haiti on Mar 24. And they wrap up the round robin portion of the tournament with a game against Honduras on Mar 27.

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TFC Coach Greg Vanney Reaches 100 MLS Wins

History was made this past weekend when coach Greg Vanney reached 100 MLS wins since taking over the head coach position with TFC. Toronto’s late winner against New York City FC last weekend clinched the landmark record for coach Vanney who has taken this team from mediocrity back in 2014 to being one of the most successful MLS squads today.

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Atlético Ottawa Announce First Canadian Player Signings

After not hearing much for the past few weeks from the most recent Canadian Premier League expansion team, there has been a flurry of activity from the Atlético Ottawa organization which has announced six new Canadian player signings since the writing of this article.

Ottawa continues to build their squad in preparation for their first game on Apr 18 after only being announced as an official CPL team on Jan 29. The team will open their training camp on Mar 11 in Madrid, Spain at Atlético Madrid’s official training complex.

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Canada Soccer’s February Players Of The Month

Canada’s players of the month for February are Kadeisha Buchanan for CanWNT and both Alphonso Davies and Jonathan David for CanMNT. Congratulations everyone and we look forward to your continued success in the red and white.