Marsch Warns Canada Against the National Sin of Playing It Safe
Canada coach Jesse Marsch, an American, has issued a stern warning to his Canadian players ahead of Wednesday's Group B finale against Switzerland: do not, under any circumstances, behave like Canadians.
Needing only a draw to advance, the team faces the most Canadian temptation imaginable, which is to politely accept a tie and go home satisfied. Marsch has cautioned against this. He would like his squad to try winning, a concept the country is still workshopping.
He also hopes to use Alphonso Davies against the Swiss, a sentence that doubles as the entire national strategy. The plan, as far as anyone can tell, is Davies runs fast, the crowd at BC Place gets loud, and the rest of the lineup tries to remember which end of the pitch is theirs.
The home crowd, for its part, has embraced its role with the quiet menace of a Tim Hortons drive-thru at 7:45 a.m. Fans are loud. Fans are proud. Fans have also been overheard apologising to Swiss supporters for the volume, which Marsch is reportedly trying to coach out of them between sessions.
Meanwhile, south of the border, the American co-hosts continue their own World Cup tradition of explaining to relatives that soccer is, in fact, a real sport, and that the offside rule is not that complicated, and no, you cannot call timeout.
A draw sends Canada through. A loss sends everyone back to debating whether hockey expansion to Houston counts as foreign policy.