HOUSTON – In the moments after Jesse Marsch stepped off the pitch following the country’s first-ever knockout-round win at a men’s World Cup, he told reporters that advancing meant a “free hit” for the Canadian men’s national team and its dreams at the 2026 World Cup.<\/p>\n
In the wake of Stephen Eust\u00e1quio’s dramatic stoppage-time winner to advance past South Africa in the Round of 32, the CanMNT were caught up in the moment. For practically any Canadian, the idea of the men’s national team advancing to the Round of 16 was a dream, especially for those involved in the game since 2014, when the team was ranked No. 122 in the world.<\/p>\n
In reality, though, there’s no such thing as a free hit. Last month in Montreal, center back Luc De Fougerolles told GOAL, “If your goal isn’t to win it, then why would you be here?” when asked what a successful World Cup would look like to him.<\/p>\n
So, while a beaming Marsch may have called it a “free hit,” it was anything but. After beating South Africa in Los Angeles, Marsch hopped on a plane to Monterrey while his players and staff traveled to Houston for the Round of 16. The 52-year-old American coach, however, wanted to see the Netherlands and Morocco with his own eyes and watched the Atlas Lions’ dramatic late comeback and penalty shootout win over the Oranje.<\/p>\n
That performance sparked fear in him. After all, it was the type of game Morocco had played throughout their 33-game unbeaten streak.<\/p>\n
“Preparing for Morocco is like a gory, horrible nightmare,” Marsch said Wednesday, building on his description of preparing for Switzerland as a “horror show” before the Group B finale, which Canada lost 2-1. “It’s like, I don’t want to watch them play. They’re too good.”<\/p>\n
While Marsch was quick to admit that his team will have to be at their best to earn a victory and didn’t walk back his “free hit” comments, at least publicly, he also has immense belief that No. 29-ranked Canada can upset No. 6-ranked Morocco.<\/p>\n
“We know that everybody’s going to write us off,” Marsch added. “That’s an opportunity, right, but in the end we are focused on trying to really be our best for this match and deliver the best performance of our lives, and that can give us a chance.”<\/p>\n
Here, GOAL takes a look at how Canada might be able to pull off the upset.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"HOUSTON – In the moments after Jesse Marsch stepped off the pitch following the country’s first-ever knockout-round win…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":113512,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[21537,21541,17,8134,21543,25123,36580,30208,36231,21540,31252],"class_list":["post-113511","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-canada","tag-a-davies","tag-a-johnston","tag-canada","tag-j-marsch","tag-l-de-fougerolles","tag-m-bombito","tag-m-choiniere","tag-morocco","tag-n-saliba","tag-r-laryea","tag-s-eustaquio"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/113511","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=113511"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/113511\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/113512"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=113511"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=113511"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=113511"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}