NextPod Soccer Podcast -- Special u17 FIFA World Cup Edition

In this special edition of the podcast, James and Duane look back on Canada's first two games at the 2023 FIFA u17 World Cup and set up the team's final game against Mali.

Episode Transcript

(00:04):
Welcome to Next Pod, your weeklylook at North American soccer prospects and the
West, Next bro Campiel and beyond. These are your hosts, Dwayne Rode
and James Grossi, and welcome toNext Pod. This is a special edition

(00:30):
for the U seventeen World Cup withCanada focus. Thus my sort of neutral,
low energy, kind of open today, but I can get excited.
I got excited because on the lineis not the King of Kensington anymore.
Today he will be the Pope ofpaper. How are you doing, James,

(00:50):
James Cross Arena. I'm doing well. I'm full of bagels. I
ate a couple of bagels for lunchand I got my flu shot today,
so I'm a little bit carloaded andfull of vaccine. So I'm excited to
talk to you about some U seventeen. Actually it hasn't gone swimming way for
Canada. But I don't think despitehow excited we might have been for this

(01:11):
opportunity, I don't think any ofus expected it to be an easy ride.
No, as I said in thepreview, like it's not like we
expect Canada to win an Under seventeenWorld Cup. We're just simply not there
at the youth level. But youdo like to see these kids get an
opportunity, and you know, Ithink there was some hope that with the
group that they got that maybe theycould get a result of historic result.

(01:32):
So far after two games that hasnot happened. They still do have one
more chance. There's some silver liningthere. They might have a short handed
mallie to play in that final game, but they will have a short handed
game to play in that final game. But they're still going to have to
go out and do the work games. But before we get into that,
that's still a quick recap. Thisis a special edition. As I said
of the show, We're going tocome back with a full podcast a little

(01:53):
later in the week where we breakdown the U Sports championships that had on
the week or that took place onthe weekend, dive into the Canadian stuff
there. But let's have a focusjust on these seventeen kids from now and
we'll start with the Canada Spain game. To nil was the result for Spain.
That's not bad. It's particularly notbad when you realize they were playing

(02:15):
with two with a man down formost of the game. For I guess
when the thirty what thirty fifth orthirty six minute on what we Your general
thoughts on that result, James,Yeah, I mean it was you know,
looking back at some of the numbersfrom the game, it sort of
played out just as we expected itwould. You know, Spain had sixty
six percent of the possession, Canadahad just twenty three. Because now now

(02:37):
everyone's tracking when the balls and contested, so those numbers don't work out three
hundred. Spain had thirty seven shots, eleven on target. Canada had just
do none of those on target.Spain attempted seven hundred and thirty one passes
they completed six hundred and seventy sevenof those. Canada had just two hundred
and thirty three attempts and one hundredand sixty five completed in final third entries.

(03:00):
I thought this one sort of stoodout was Spain had more chances down
three other five channels than Canada hadin total, and the numbers ended up
being ninety seven to twelve for finalthird entries. And you know, so
when a game looks like that,when those are the numbers that come out
of the game, you sort ofknow what what it was going to look
like and how it was going toplay, and both cpl ers Kavanta Vernier

(03:23):
and dj to He got their startsand they both looked looked good. TFC
center back Lazarsafanovich got the start,was wearing the armband, and you know
from from it's a little bit superficialto look in and see how the guys
are are acting during the end thatwas, but it's always a little bit
of fun, and you know,Canada was belting it out to the man.

(03:44):
Every every single one of those guyswas up for that game. There
was a nice crunching challenge from fromTriku thirty seconds into the match to sort
of let Spain know that, youknow, they weren't going to have everything
their way on the day, andanother one from Las about eight nine minutes
later. So you you like tosee that kind of physicality and that kind
of willingness to get involved in thegame. But it really didn't take long

(04:08):
to see the difference in class betweenthese two teams was my big takeaway.
You know, Spain were on thefront foot pretty much from the start,
and to me, the real bigdifference that I saw was was in decision
making and in execution. You know, Canada were a little bit slow,
they were pensive. Anytime they hada moment on the ball, they would
they would hit a poor pass orunderhit a pass, or or try and

(04:30):
take a shot when a pass wason or something like that. And Spain
were just sharp from the off.I was really impressed at how good they
looked at this early stage in thetournament. You know, normally teams take
a little time to get going,but the Spanish side was was you know,
firing on all engines. They wereclean touches, precise passes, and
Canada was was just the opposite.I think, you know, one of

(04:54):
the big take one of the otherbig takeaways for me was I admired Canada's
commitment to playing out of the back, but it was a pretty risky strategy.
And that's always sort of the conundrumwhen it comes to young players is
do you want them to stick tothe principles you're trying to instill to them,
or do you want them to readthe situation in the game and maybe

(05:14):
just get that ball a little bitfurther from goal or our number are really
bad turnovers in dangerous spots that couldhave seen this game get a little bit
more out of hand. And youknow the goal in the twenty first minute
from Mark you who's already made hisBarcelona debut. We saw a little bit
of that positional uncertainty that comes whenyou get a bunch of guys together and
some of them are playing in unfamiliarpositions and there's not a ton of experience.

(05:38):
You know, tj Diheed was alittle bit slow to get out wide
and pressure a switch ball and thatled to Theoregalpless pushing forward and then he's
easily bypassed to a winger in anadvanced position and he swings the ball in.
And then one of the other takeawaysI guess for Canada was they seemed
to be doing a lot of hisown marking as opposed to being man on

(05:58):
man and that goal was one examplewhere Canada were defending the six yard bucks
and you just sort of drifted offto the backside, gets on the end
and you know Spain are in thelead. It was an open play goal,
but I think that's fit with thewhole set piece sort of laxity that
we saw from Canada. And youknow, it's it's always tricky when it

(06:20):
comes to young players like Zomo.Marketing is a much easier system to instill
in a team and to get guyscommitted to but it leaves a lot of
gaps that can be exploited by areally smart team. And you know,
Canada, we're playing a really smartteam in Spain. Yeah, I mean
luck you just said a second ago. They're playing against a guy that's already
made his Barcelona debut, and withall due respect to the campiel A guy

(06:43):
that's made his Barcelona debut versus theguy that's made his Forge debut is kind
of on a different level. Oneday, we maybe hope that we might
get that a little closer. Butyou know, the institutional experience that these
Spanish kids come out of is justimpossible to match in North American. It
really takes special individual efforts by byplayers too, and special sort of talents

(07:04):
to come through for us to havean opportunity to really compete consistently with these
these you know, traditional football powers, and Spain is certainly one of those.
So you're not going to hang yourhead too much. You know,
they defend with a little bit ofa pride, they get stuck in,
so to speak. You don't wantto overplay that, but it is good
to see them playing with a littleenergy, and and they hang with them

(07:25):
for for this, uh hang withthem a result? Why score wise,
if not possession wise or chances wise, the red card certainly doesn't help.
So so that's that's just talk aboutI'll Cendra Bielo's red card and and and
what that sort of was and whatit meant to the game. Yeah,
you know, my initial impression watchingit live was that, you know,

(07:46):
as Canada wins a free kick,Spain kicks the ball away just to delay
things a little bit, and yellowkind of lunge is trying to get a
piece of the ball as it's movingand ends up catching the man. But
you know, rewatching it, whichis always a little bit dangerous. It
looks a little bit more like hismove towards the player comes after the ball

(08:07):
has already been kicked, so itlooks a little bit naughty. I don't
know if it was a rush ofblood to the head or if it was
a little bit of a delayed reaction, you know. To be fair,
Canada were a step slower than Spainon the day, so I don't know
why this moment would be any different, but it was. It was a
tough one, and it's something thatwe've seen a fair brick from Canada on
the international stage, where where inthese high pressure situations there's there's little moments

(08:30):
where where they lose their composure andit ends up being really costly. You
know what I really feel for Alessandra. You know, this was this was
his first steps on this huge stageand we heard at the end of last
week's show Marl Biello's comments about howhe was looking forward to his son getting
the opportunity here, and you couldreally see how distraught he was as he
went off the pitch. He missedCanada's second game. We haven't heard anything

(08:54):
yet about, you know, anyfurther discipline. The announcer mentioned that there
might be some additional stuff coming,but I'm keeping eye that and we haven't
seen anything yet. And so,you know, on the grand scheme of
things, you never want to seea player sent off, you know,
forty minutes, thirty five minutes,whatever it was into their World Cup debut.
Maybe the refs were a little tooeager to get involved. You know,
they'll be excited as everyone else tobe at the World Cup. But

(09:16):
it was one of those moments thatyou know, he'll learn from it and
he won't make that mistake again.But it's a mistake that we've seen Canada
make on the stage four too manytimes. Yeah, I mean, you
can't read intent into people's minds obviously, so we don't know, but you
can't make a lash out and expectto not see cards at the international game.
And whether those cards are yellow orred is dependent on the mood of

(09:39):
the referee, and you never wantto put yourself in the that in that
situation where the referee holds your game, your your tournament in his grasp and
a red card there, to meis probably appropriate. And it's a learning
lesson at the under seventeen level forthese kids that you can't allow even a
rush of blood to the head,as you say, dictate. They've got

(10:03):
to be able to maintain that.Particularly, look, if they're part of
the national team program moving forward,or they want to be part of a
professional setup moving forward, they're goingto be baited. They're going to have
situations that are really frustrated, particularlyin the Conka cap region, that they're
going to need to hold themselves incheck. So so it's a learning lesson
this whole tournament is a learning lessonfor everyone. Uh, you know,

(10:26):
you want to win it when you'rethere, but you also want to take
lessons from it that you can moveforward in your career. And hopefully that
is a situation there that we willsee with the young mister Biello. I
guess you know we've kind of talkedabout this a lot, but is there
any final thoughts you out before wemove on to the more frustrating of the
two games. Yeah, you know, bad parts aside, there were some

(10:50):
really good things that I liked inthis match. You know. TJ Taheed
looked really dangerous on one of thefew four ways forward for Canada for the
shot. Just why that had hegotten a little bit more curl on it,
it might have leveled the game atonce. And what a shock that
would have been for ten man inCanada to pull one back against Spain.
And I would have loved to haveseen how that second half played out.
And you know, Canada's goalkeeper NathanielAbraham, he's a little bit unorthodox and

(11:15):
how he does things, but hepulled off a number of really good saves
to keep this game tight. Andit took a really a really nice one
to two move between you and Junienttto break Canada down and score that second
goal for Spain. So there werethere were some good some good notes coming
out of the game as well.And you know, I think I think
going into the game, if youtell, if you were to say Canada,

(11:35):
you're going to lose a guy afterthirty five minutes, and you're going
to be able to get off thepitch with the two nothing loss against Spain,
your your goal difference is only minustwo. It's the first match of
the group stage. That's not aterrible result, you know. Over over
in the other match in their group, Malli defeated Who's back to stand three
zero with a hat trick from MamaduDoombia to take to get three points in

(11:58):
that game. And so you're you'relooking at the shape of the group then
and you see, okay, nextgames against Pekistan they lost their opener as
well, what can you get fromthat game? And you're still you're still
sort of on track for finding somesuccess at this tournament. And you know,
my question after that first game wasOkay, that Spain games out of
the way didn't go as bad asit could have gone. We saw Canada,

(12:22):
We're buzzing. How do they reactto that result? What's the reaction
going to be against Uzbekistan? Andso that's what I was thinking going into
the second game, And as we'llget into the second game, was a
bit of a disappointment. Yeah,three no is a result as Pakistan wins
that game. Now, I'm notto defend a bad result. It's clearly
a bad result. Uzbekistan is aprogram in the Asian Confederation that has almost

(12:43):
qualified for a couple of senior WorldCups. They've been very close and what
is a tougher region than it getscredit for. They certainly are a better
country when it comes to international football. Then maybe we might think that said
it was a winnable game. Ithink that's fair to say. It was
a result that maybe had they beenable to take their moments, been able

(13:05):
to force himself dictate to the templea little bit more, they might have
been able to get a better result. Was the three naero score line fair
to Canada's play on the day,James, It's hard to say fair.
You know, the opening goal wassort of across from the side. It
takes an unfortunate touch off a defenderand ends up sneaking at the backside.

(13:28):
The second goal comes very quickly afterthat, sort of a line breaking ball,
plays a young man in clear ongoal and he takes his goal well
and the flag goes up on hisoffside. And it took var to sort
that out and to award the goal, and it looked pretty close to me.
I couldn't be definitive on that.But you know, before the game
is even really the gun, you'redown to nothing, and that's just that's

(13:50):
just a bad situation to put yourselfin, and in a I'm not going
to call this game must win,but it would have been really nice to
collect those three points today and yourselfin a position to possibly finish second in
the group, possibly finish third dependingon how things play out. So fair
is there's nothing that's ever fair aboutthis game. I think it was a

(14:11):
very winnable game for Canada, asyou said, but on the day,
the way that they went about things, they weren't able to ask enough questions
of his Pakistan. And that's reallywhat it comes down to in a lot
of these games. I mentioned decisionmaking and execution. The other one is
is do you ask enough questions ofthe opposition, and when Canada got asked

(14:33):
questions today, it ended up ingoals Forzbekistan and Canada just didn't really ask
that many questions of uz Bekistan.And that's how you get a three nail
result on a day that that couldhave gone the other way. Yeah,
I always wonder, and this hasbeen a problem with the Canadian youth teams
for a while. When you getthese kids up against talent that has been

(14:54):
pressed a little bit more in theirdomestic situation, that has had more opportunity
to play games to get that hashad more opportunity to be pressured before that.
Maybe our kids just aren't getting thatthat they aren't having that opportunity to
be challenged. They're the big fishin the small sea, right, the
big fish in the puddle in somecases. And when they get pushed,

(15:16):
when they get punched in the facefor the first time metaphorically not literally that's
hope, but metaphorically get punched inthe in the nose and there's a little
bit of blood in their mouth,they react by cowering, not necessarily by
standing up. Do you think it'sa bit of that that there's just a
lack of experience a lack of opportunityfor these kids to overcome adversity, and

(15:37):
you know, the first time thatthey're really pushed or or challenged, that
they're just not able to take thestep that maybe a more seasoned team might
be able to. I think there'salways a little bit of that at play,
but I think a lot of thework that's gone on in MLS Next
and at the three MLS academies andwith the CPO as well is finding ways

(15:58):
to put those guys in those situationsand pushed them onto to being more challenged
on a day to day basis.You know, I'll go back to conversations
with Greg Vanny about y TFC leftLeague one Ontario and it was that they
needed to hire a higher level ofcompetition week in weekend and that's why moving
to the USDA Academy back in theday was was the right move for them.

(16:22):
Then I'm having a hard time figuringout exactly what went wrong with this
group because we saw we saw themrise to the occasion in the conk CAF
Championship and yeah, the series againstBrazil, we didn't get to see much
of that, but we had hopedthat that the the abilities that we had
seen back in February would be inplace for this team. And you know,

(16:45):
the thought clowing at the back ofmy mind is that, you know,
we mentioned two guys that were prettyimportant in those February results who were
not going to be with the withthe group and Die the attacking midfielder,
and Kyler Void, the Vancouver striker. And you know, Canada it was
really lacking in cohesion when it comeswhen it came to creating much in the
attacking third. I think their onegood chance came in the sixty sixth minute

(17:08):
when a jeeven bad wall shot fellfor Leno a Khlil and he touched it
sort of into the path of LucasOzmak and he offered it kind of wide.
And you know, it was itwas a strange game because Canada was
the game, was there for Canadato take. You know, Canada had
more possession, they had more shotsthan the same number of shots on goal.
And it's never it's never a goodday when your opponent scores three goals

(17:32):
also two shots on goal. Butit was Bekistan took their chances and put
Canada under pressure and Canada did notdo that. I thought, you know,
One of the more telling stats forme was that Canada out passed it
was Bekistan on the day. Theyhad more completed passes, but their top
their top pass maker was Lazarre Stefan, a center back, and that that

(17:56):
speaks to me of a lot ofthat sort of you're doing the build around
the back at midfield, you're gettingout of your end and towards the middle
of the pitch, but you're notdoing a whole lot more going forward.
And it occurred to me that theymight have been missing those two guys,
or if not those two guys specifically, the understanding that comes from having spent
time with guys. And we talkedto fair Bid in the build up about

(18:18):
how and had had a couple ofchances to come together as a group and
start to build those familiarities. Andwhen you make the changes that they made,
you bring in the two CPL guys, you bring in a couple other
players, some other key pieces aren'tquite available. You lose some of that
connection. And it looked like thata little bit today. There wasn't a
whole lot of breaking news by tostand down. It was more try and
get the ball wide and flinging crossesinto the box, and that's always a

(18:42):
low percentage way of going about findingyour way back into the game. Yeah.
Good thing about the Use tournament andthe Use system in general is there's
always the next day. It comespretty quickly. And for Canada that is
a game as Camali in this tournament, which if they do win, there
is a chance that they can geta fourth game in this tournament. Once
you get into a fourth game,who knows how far you can go.

(19:02):
You just have to keep winning alittle bit of good news on that front,
I'm hearing. Yeah. So Spainbeat Mali one nil in their second
group stage game and there was ared card to do bea the hat trick
hero from the opening match, sohe's set to miss the game against Canada.
I can't say I've seen a tonof Mali. They from what I
saw of the highlights, they looklike a competent team and it will be

(19:23):
far from easy. But with Spainon six points, Malley and Who's Bet
to Stand on three as things standin the goal difference, Mali are plus
two, Who's Bet to Stand areat zero and Canada are at minus five,
so Canada needs to win their game. Score some goals and hope that
Spain runs up the score against who'sbet to stand in that third match,
and if that is to happen,you know, there's second place is still

(19:48):
in play. It's still a livepossibility. You know. If Spain wins
won nothing, Canada will need towin five nothing over Mali, which seems
a little bit too far out ofstretch. If Spain wins two nothing,
a four to zero, wou'd suffice. But the more goals Spain scores sort
of puts it in Canada's court toget the result over Mali. I'm not
sure on my math there. Ijust sort of did some quick back of

(20:11):
the envelope stuff, So don't ome to any of those numbers. But
basically, Canada needs to win,and they need to win handily to overturn
some of that some of that minusthat they're staring at right now. And
you know, with with second place, it is still alive. And I
think it's six of the six ofthe eighth third place teams going through.

(20:32):
There's a lot. There's a lotstill play for in this final game,
and for Mali to be missing theguy who's been a bit of their talisman,
so far through the opening two gameswill be will be a positive.
And as I said, we haven'theard anything about Yellow about Yellow being seeing
any further discipline, so presumably he'llbe back as well. And you can

(20:52):
sort of hear we we got somesnippets of audio after the game, even
bad Waller and Andrew Olivieri spoke onthe broadcast. You could hear the disappointment
in their voices with how that matchplayed out. But yeah, you have
to hope that they can put thatbehind them and get ready for this third
game on Thursday pretty quickly. Yeah, Look, Canada's never won a game
at the tournament, so there's alot to play for. Even if it

(21:15):
isn't second or second place or thirdplace, get third place, you still
are in with a chance if youcan reverse some of that gold differentially.
As you just said, but they'venever won a game. If they can
get a win to end this tournament, then that will be a step forward
and something to build for moving asthese guys move into their under twenty cycle
and we get to move the nextunder seventeen kids through, and that happens

(21:36):
pretty quickly. As I said,there's youth tournaments every either qualifying or tournaments
every year, so we'll have lotsof opportunity on this show to talk about
youth tournaments moving forward, but benice to talk about a win one day
when James the American's got to win. I think that was a good result
for them to start their tournament.Other than that, anything jumping out at
you to talk about in this underseventeen tournament as a whole. Yeah,

(22:00):
So the second pass through of thegroups just began this morning, one day
morning. But you know, thebig takeaways from that first round of game
was, you know, England absolutelydestroyed New Caledonia ten nothing, with nine
different goal scorers than an own goal. As you mentioned, the US got
a three to one win over SouthKorea. Cruz Medina, who Charlie spoke
about in our preview show, scoredin between a brace from a fifteen year

(22:23):
old Starlotte FC homegrown nim Fascia Berchames. I'm sure I'm pronouncing that horribly,
but that's always interesting to see ayoung man like that take his chance so
well. And Mexico lost their openinggame three one to Germany. We've had
one really big upset so far.The Iranians beat Brazil three to two.
Brazil took a two zero lead inthe first half, but around scored three

(22:45):
unanswered goals between the fifty fourth andseventy third minutes to turn that one over
and a bit of a small upsetI think. With Senegal defeating Argentina two
to one. So you know,the tournament's just getting going. It'll be
interesting to see how things develop.Mentioned in that preview, there's always some
surprises around the corner in this competition, so I'm really curious to see who

(23:07):
who makes a name for themselves inIndonesia certainly will be interesting. That's going
to be it for the show today, guys, A little shorter one for
you. As I said, itis a bonus edition. I'm looking forward
to having a conversation about U sportsa little later in the week, a
fullish version of the show, andof course we well wrap up Canada's game
against Maui and and pay a littleof attention to this tournament as it wraps

(23:30):
up and we look to break betweenthe end of our first season of Next
Pod and season two which is goingto start. Do have an exact date
yet, but we're going to takea few weeks off to get some stuff
sorted out, to figure out,you know, a Patreon account and an
email account and makes new bumpers.Well, maybe we do the opening so

(23:51):
you don't have to hear you know, my kind of half rushed to version
of an opening that we put togetherquickly when we started this show. We're
going to make things a little biteasier so you can have a great second
season. We can have a greatsecond season. You can join us with
next pot James. Anything else youwant to say about this tournament or the
days ahead before we say goodbye today. No, no, I think we

(24:11):
covered pretty much everything. Just youknow, it's a it's a strange time
in the soccer community in Toronto.Everyone saw that photo from the TFC press
conference and so just just enjoy yourfootball. Don't forget that we're all in
this because it's it's fun and welove it and so just just don't forget
to have some fun. And Iguess what we learned in that photo is
that TFC John Molnarro will always bethe last man standing when it comes in.

(24:37):
It doesn't matter what happens, youcan rely that John will be there
telling us what happened in his professionalway. Hopefully we have John on the
show soon. James, yep,I'll make a call, all right,
I'll twist, I'll twist some arms. I've floated it past them. But
we'll see, we'll we'll see whenwe can arrange something. And we got
to find a good topic if we'regonna have Jon. Sure, we can't

(25:00):
just can just roll them out forany any random win days. It's got
to be something good. And he'sgot a lot of work on this plate
holding up TFC. All right.On that note, I'm gonna say goodbye bye.