Mexico Archive

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Gold Cup schedule: Convenient sort-of “home” matches for Western Canadians

By
Steven Sandor
– 03/13/2013

gold-cup2013BASTwitter and the Internet have been ablaze with news of the Gold Cup schedule.

Canada will open the tournament with a match against Martinique July 7 at the Rose Bowl in Pasadena, Calif. Then, July 11, Canada will get awfully close to the border when it faces Mexico in Seattle. The group stage will wrap when Canada will face Panama, the team that knocked it out of the last Gold Cup, in Denver on July 14.

Luckily for Canada, the game against Mexico takes place in Seattle, which offers Canadian fans the best chance to cross the border and see the match, as it’s a nice short jaunt from Vancouver. As well, Canada avoids playing Mexico in Los Angeles, a venue which basically gives El Tri a home game. As well, no team would want to face Mexico in the altitude in Denver, which would again be a major advantage for the team in green — as most of its players are accustomed to playing in the thinner air.

The Denver match is good for Canada as it will see our team facing a side that doesn’t normally play at altitude.
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Celebrating Inside Soccer’s 100th issue with the Canadian men’s national team

By
Steven Sandor
– 03/04/2013

Dale Mitchell, second from left, is mobbed by teammates after scoring a goal at the 1984 Olympics.

Dale Mitchell, second from left, is mobbed by teammates after scoring a goal at the 1984 Olympics.

The 100th issue of Inside Soccer is now available across Canada and, as has been the case over the last couple of years, I am glad to be a contributor to the magazine. Inside Soccer does a wonderful job of promoting the game across the country, and allowing avenues for soccer stories that don’t appear in other magazines.

As part of the 100th-issue celebration, I was tasked to find current and former members of the Canadian men’s national team, and to simply ask them to talk about their favourite moments in international football. Our article features Dwayne De Rosario, Terry Dunfield, Patrice Bernier, Paul Dolan, Nick De Santis, Bob Lenarduzzi and Greg Sutton.

As well, as part of the process, I got some tidbits from Carl Valentine, Dale Mitchell and Martin Nash. We have presented them here as a preview of the piece that you’ll find in the pages of the 100th issue Inside Soccer.
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Dasovic: Canada’s U-20s will be ready for tough Mexican conditions

By
Steven Sandor
– 02/05/2013

Nick Dasovic

Even on a conference call, it was easy to pick up on the confidence that’s oozing out of Canadian men’s U-20 coach Nick Dasovic.

On Tuesday, Dasovic named his preliminary 23-man roster for the CONCACAF U-209 Championship. The team will gather Feb. 11 in Mexico City for a pre-tournament camp. And, right before the team plays its Feb. 18 opener in Puebla against Cuba, Dasovic will need to pare the roster down to 20 players.

The top four teams — all of the countries that get to the semifinals — qualify for the U-20 World Cup in Turkey. So, Canada needs to get out of the group stage with results against Cuba and Nicaragua, then win its quarter-final match. Everything else is gravy.

“It’s about winning,” Dasovic said in a Tuesday call with Canadian media. “If you win, you get to the World Cup. If you get to the World Cup, doors open for everybody.”
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Canada’s Petrescu named the MLS top ref of 2012

By
Steven Sandor
– 11/20/2012

Canadian Silviu Petrescu has been named MLS Referee of the Year.

According to the voting stats released by MLS on Tuesday, Petrescu got exactly half of all the media votes tallied, 34.55 per cent from the clubs and 36.78 per cent of the player votes. So, more than one in three players think that Petrescu is the best official in the league.

Petrescu will work the MLS Cup finale between Los Angeles and Houston.

Petrescu worked 20 MLS matches this season, including the wild-card playoff match between the Los Angeles Galaxy and Vancouver Whitecaps, which was decided on a Landon Donovan penalty-kick goal. On that play, Petrescu ruled that Whitecaps defender Martin Bonjour had fouled Donovan in the area. It wasn’t an easy call, as Donovan was leaning into Bonjour as he went forward into the box, putting the defender in a no-win situation: Either let Donovan go by, or know that, no matter the contact, Donovan will go down.
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January date: Danes to face Canadian men’s team in Arizona

By
Steven Sandor
– 11/19/2012

The Canadian men’s national team does not yet have a coach, but it knows when it will playing its next game.

The Canadian Soccer Association announced Monday that the men’s national team will play a friendly against Denmark on Jan. 27. The site? Tucson, Ariz., close to where many MLS teams hold their training camps in Casa Grande, Ariz.

Denmark had already booked a Jan. 30 match against Mexico, also in Arizona. That game is expected to draw a massive pro-Mexico crowd to the University of Phoenix. So, for the Danes, the Canada game acts as a warm-up for the Mexico match.
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3

Why the CSA should look to Mexico for the next national-team coach

By
Steven Sandor
– 10/20/2012

Javier Aguirre… Should the CSA give him a call?

Today was a day of goodbyes for the Canadian national team.

A day after he announced his resignation, former coach Stephen Hart spoke with the media in a Friday conference call, basically saying that there was no way back after Tuesday’s 8-1 loss to Honduras, which ended the World Cup campaign with a national-team implosion.

And, midfielder Patrice Bernier announced that he is retiring from international soccer. The Montreal Impact midfielder will spend the rest of his thirtysomething years focused on his club career.

Bernier, who wasn’t used in Tuesday’s 8-1 loss to Honduras — the game which ended Canada’s World Cup qualifying hopes — is likely to be the first of many.

Truth is, this was, in soccer terms, a very experienced team. Some might even use the term, “old.” And many tough choices lay ahead.
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FC Edmonton’s Gardner reflects on Canadian U-20 team’s battles with Mexico

By
Steven Sandor
– 07/10/2012

Dino Gardner

It’s easy to spot Dino Gardner on the pitch with FC Edmonton reserves. The fullback was the only player wearing a training jacket, despite the fact the temperature sat at 31 C Tuesday afternoon.

But, maybe the weather seems a bit cool to him, as he’s just returned to the club from a stint in the heat and altitude of Mexico with the Canadian national U-20 team. Gardner looks to be a player who will be with the team when it tries to qualify for next year’s U-20 World Cup.

Canada lost its first friendly in Mexico 3-0, but Keven Aleman, Gardner’s former teammate at TFC Academy, scored on a penalty to give coach Nick Dasovic’s men a 1-1 draw with the Mexicans in the second game.

Remember that the Mexicans have their own domestic U-20 league, and the U-20 national team is built from the team that won last year’s U-17 World Cup. In fact, Julio Gomez, the Pachuca star who won the Golden Ball as MVP of the U-17 World Cup, scored in the 3-0 win over Canada. As well, the Mexican U-20 sticks together; after playing Canada, it will play in the Lev Yashin Cup in Russia, against some of Europe’s top club youth programs, and then is off to Northern Ireland’s Milk Club to play a select group of international U-20 sides.
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Canadian U-20s lose one, draw one in Mexico

By
Steven Sandor
– 07/08/2012

Keven Aleman

Canada’s U-20 men’s team salvaged a draw out of its two-game closed-door series in Mexico.

Real Valladolid’s Keven Aleman slotted home a second-half penalty kick to give against El Tri’s youth team on Sunday. Jesus Manuel Corona, a product of defending two-time CONCACAF Champions League holders Monterrey, scored the opening goal in the first half.

The win comes after Mexico beat Canada 3-0 on Friday, even though Stefan Vukovic, of the Montreal Impact U-23 program, had a golden chance to score off a feed from FC Edmonton’s Dino Gardner.
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TFC says it has been approached about Plata loan; Nesta may not fit under salary cap

By
Mark Polishuk
– 07/01/2012

Joao Plata: Says he could be going to Mexico or Ecuador; TFC brass says he's on road trip to Dallas

Joao Plata is still a member of Toronto FC, though this apparently could be news to Plata himself.

The rumour mill has been swirling with talk that Plata could be headed back to his native Ecuador to play for LDU Quito, but TFC director of team and player operations Earl Cochrane denied that a move is imminent, though the club has been presented with offers.

“A couple of weeks ago we had some clubs ask us about his services,” Cochrane said.  “We’ve toyed with the idea and continued to kind of think about whether to loan him out.  Quito was one of those clubs, and a couple of clubs in Mexico also.”
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CONCACAF Champions League draw: TFC to face Santos Laguna… again

By
Steven Sandor
– 06/05/2012

Toronto FC will play Santos Laguna more times in 2012 than it will play many MLS teams on the schedule.

The CONCACAF Champions League draw, announced Tuesday, saw TFC put into a group with Santos Laguna, the team that knocked them out of the previous CCL at the semifinal stage. And that likely means another visit to Toronto for American scoring ace Herculez Gomez, who scored against Toronto FC at BMO Field for his Mexican side, then played last Sunday for the Americans against Canada in Toronto. By the end of 2012, TFC and Santos Laguna will have played each other four times over the year.

Santos Laguna is the reigning Mexican champion, and has the honour of being the team that eliminated Canada’s most two successful CCL teams, TFC 2011-12 and the Montreal Impact 2008-09, from the competition. Toronto FC was tied 2-2 with the Mexican powerhouse at halftime of the second leg of their semifinal. But Santos Laguna exposed TFC over and over in the second half, and the Mexican fans celebrated what became a 6-2 rout.

But Santos Laguna lost the CCL final to Monterrey, who claimed its second regional championship in a row.
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