Canada's head coach Jesse Marsch during the first half of a CONCACAF Gold Cup quarterfinals soccer match against Guatemala on Sunday in Minneapolis.Abbie Parr/The Associated Press
Ahead of the CONCACAF Gold Cup tournament, Canadian men’s coach Jesse Marsch seemed pretty sure about two things.
First, that this event was a big deal in terms of his team’s preparation for next summer’s home World Cup – “Everybody knows how important this tournament is.”
Second, that he had cultivated a Three Musketeers’ vibe in the squad – “(The players) all said, ‘We’re coming. We want to win it’ … I’m glad I coach a team that feels this way.”
After getting wrestled to the ground by Guatemala in the quarter-finals on Sunday, Marsch had a different perspective.
“If I’m honest, we’re missing half our group,” the head coach said. “That’s not an excuse.”
Then what is it?
Cathal Kelly: Jesse Marsch’s mollycoddling shows the error of our cultural norms
Canada has a long history of hiring big talking foreigners to coach our senior soccer teams. Actually, those are the only sorts of coaches we hire.
They range from full-on hucksters (Carolina Morace) to effective mountebanks (John Herdman), but what they have in common is a disdain for their work environment. They think they’re doing Canada a favour by showing up.
Marsch, an American who’d coached briefly in England, was hired in the usual way – with a lot of talk about what a big favour he was doing Canada by accepting an enormous salary to coach a dozen or so games a year.
Of course Marsch would have preferred the U.S. men’s team job, but he was congratulated on having the humility to accept one of life’s second choices.
Upon arrival, Marsch said some mean things about his home nation at just the right time, endearing himself to the local rubes. Since then, nothing. Actually, scratch that – less than nothing.
Canada is meant to be preparing for the biggest moment in men’s team history. They were coming off a good swing in qualifying for the last World Cup. For just a moment in Qatar, they seemed to belong there. Marsch’s job was to take the pace that had already been set and improve it.
Since they don’t need to qualify, World Cup hosts have to harvest momentum where they can. Marsch’s Canada team went to the CONCACAF Nations League tournament in March as favourites, maybe even the favourite.
It’s a made-up event, but it meant something to Canada. It was a chance to get nose-to-nose with their main competition and start swinging.
Mexico TKO’d them in the opener. Afterward, Marsch lamented that his team had done everything right – except score.
By the time they hit America in the third-place game, Marsch was so intent on winning that he started Alphonso Davies. Canada admitted afterward that Davies had been hurt in the first match.
Coaching 101 is that you don’t risk the guy who is by far your best player in a game you don’t have to win. Less than 15 minutes in, Davies blew his ACL.
So mark that tournament down as a unqualified failure.
The Gold Cup was Canada’s last big chance to prove they are worth the hype (though it’s begun to feel like 2022’s hype).
Drawing with Curaçao in the round robin was bad. Losing to Guatemala – who were hammered by Panama, and needed penalties to beat Guadeloupe – is worse.
Canada is back to the bad old days. The only difference this time is that people know some of the players’ names.
What’s changed in the last two-and-a-half years? Only one significant thing.
Marsch may have a plan, but if so, he is not able to articulate it. Whenever he tries, he marches out into verbal quicksand à la “missing half our group.”
Here he is on the meaning of Sunday’s loss:
“I still felt really strongly that this was a really good group, and it was really important to develop more players with this team and see how far we could push it. I wasn’t talking that much about a trophy as much as I was talking about moving forward day by day, game by game and making sure we were up for the challenge.”
This guy sounds like he’s coaching high school.
The highest levels of world soccer, where you are leading players valued at eight figures while making seven figures yourself, are not where you go to “develop more players.” Marsch is changing his job description on the fly, in order to suit his new reality.
He was hired to coach a World Cup contender. Obviously, Canada is not going to win it. But the Canada from three years ago might have made a quarter-final. Or why not dream big – a semi.
That’s the team Marsch was supposed to coach. Listening to him now, he thinks he’s coaching a no-hoper that should throw a parade if it wins a game in the round robin.
He’s coaching a developmental squad. He’s laying the groundwork for some future coach who can do what he hasn’t been able to, but only after he’s pulled a few bucks out of the project.
This guy isn’t coaching Canada. He’s leading it through therapy: ’What’s with this obsession with winning? Let’s just try to get a little better every day. That’s the real goal in life.’
If Marsch tried this line of talk in a real soccer nation, he’d be run out of town by the end of the week. If the team was playing this way with less than a year until a home World Cup, there would be panic in the ranks. In Canada, all is calm.
It’s taken just over a year, but Marsch has become one of those coaches. The ones who talk to Canadians like they don’t know if the ball is inflated or stuffed.
So much for our emerging status as a mid-tier men’s soccer power. Instead we’re back to excuses that aren’t excuses and a coach who explains blowing the big games by saying, “it’s important for us to lose.”
No, it isn’t. We tried that for a long time. We all decided that we didn’t like it.