What could have been

Moral victories will be fine in time. Today, not so much.

Photo by Yogendra Singh on Unsplash

Look, they played well.

Canada was full measure for its first World Cup game in 36 years, going straight at Belgium from the opening whistle. they had the better possession, more shots and won more hearts than the suddenly old and past it Belgians did.

On every neutral review of the game, the experts agreed. Canada deserved something from the game.

Belgium took all the points. One moment, one perfect ball in and one clinical finish did Canada in 1-0.

Football is a cruel game.

It’s four games at the World Cup for Canada all time. Zero goals. And the longer that goes the more pressure the players will feel. Perhaps it was in the head of Alphonso Davies as he lined up to take the penalty. We’ll never know, but we can objectively say that it wasn’t taken well.

We can debate whether Johnathan David should have taken it. He should have. Davies is a brilliant player. He doesn’t take penalties. David has much more experience at that and I suspect if another opportunity comes up he will be the one stepping up.

On sober reflection of this game there is a lot to like about the performance, but it was also not a perfect one. Besides not taking the penalty, David was not all that visible. There was a lot of good-looking attacks that ultimately ended up missing the target. Belgium actually had the same number of shots on target in the game that Canada did.

Maybe Milan Borjan could have done a bit more on the goal. That’s nitpicking though. The performance was good. The result was poor. And, as much as a I’d love to focus on the performance, this is a World Cup and this team shouldn’t be treated as try-hards that are there to make up the number. If they want to get out of the group they will need to tidy up the final third and prove that they can play with Croatia the same way they did Belgium.

The Croatians didn’t look dangerous against Morocco so this tournament isn’t over yet. It will be if they lose on Sunday, however.

And that stress is going to make it awfully hard to focus on noble losses in the meantime.

But, hey, this is what we’ve always dreamed of, right?

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