Canadian men’s soccer team has busy year ahead
The latest FIFA international break is upon the football world and Canada’s national men’s soccer team will use it to play a pair of friendlies against Guatemala and Puerto Rico.
International breaks happen roughly five times a year, when players selected for national duty leave their club teams to represent their country. In the world’s top leagues the season schedule comes to a halt to accommodate these official breaks.
With the FIFA World Cup 2018 qualifying set to start this year, Canadian head coach Benito Floro has sounded out two priorities, one is the technical side of preparation and the other is to get the team in the right headspace, or as he said in a Canada Soccer release, “we need the psychological attitudes to get results.”
Canadian men’s head coach Benito Floro instructs midfielder Kyle Bekker during a match.
The FIFA Women’s World Cup in Canada later this spring may have many Canadians paying close attention to the state of the beautiful game in their country. While the women take centre stage, the men’s team will be trying to get a good start to their own World Cup qualifying campaign before competing in the Gold Cup (the region’s top international competition).
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“Every day we are together is very important to us because it is the best way we have to practice our game situations,” Floro said. The men’s team is currently training in Florida during the international window, and will play friendly matches against Guatemala (March 27 in Fort Lauderdale) and Puerto Rico (March 30 in San Juan).
“Speaking about this camp, this is very important because it is the last one before official games so we need to use it to practice several things.”
