Presented for your consideration, Toronto FC’s all-time results against USL Division One clubs (competitive fixtures only: Voyageurs Cup, CONCACAF Champions League).

Montreal Impact 0-1 Toronto FC
Toronto FC 0-1 Vancouver Whitecaps
Vancouver Whitecaps 2-2 Toronto FC
Toronto FC 2-2 Montreal Impact
Toronto FC 1-0 Vancouver Whitecaps
Toronto FC 1-0 Montreal Impact
Vancouver Whitecaps 2-0 Toronto FC
Montreal Impact 1-6 Toronto FC
Toronto FC 0-1 Puerto Rico Islanders

Total record: 4 wins, 3 losses, 2 draws

Excuse me while I go eat some crayons.

Last week, it was made official. Sporting a fancy new beard, Jacob Lensky had signed with FC Utrecht (Dutch).

The manager had a lot of encouraging things to say, considering the fact that Lensky has one career Eredivisie appearance and has been out of football for a year. The technical director was more realistic, calling Lensky a “long-term” project but sounding convinced of his physical and technical abilities. Lensky’s reportedly been getting a look at fullback rather than his native position, which was an attacking midfield role, which will be yet another hurdle for Lensky to overcome as he gets himself back into the professional game.

For those who aren’t familiar with Jacob’s story, the previous edition of the Jacob Lensky Saga is highly recommended reading: to summarise, Lensky was a brilliant prospect since he was old enough to kick a ball whose only question marks were his own desire and a family that may have desired a little too much. If Lensky has genuinely rediscovered his passion, all the luck in the world.

Lensky’s been predominantly getting action at fullback rather than his native midfield positon, and in a 3-1 friendly loss for Utrecht against Ankaraspor of Turkey he got bad reviews (Dutch) for his play in the first half. There’s been some very moderate anxiety over Lensky potentially jumping ship to the Czech Republic national team (his father, Boris, is of Czech descent) after Lensky badmouthed the Canadian programme in an interview back in the Netherlands. But Lensky’s been a good servant of the Canadian team for his entire life to date, including in the Olympic qualifiers and, more importantly, it seems doubtful that the Czechs would want him.

Frankly, for at least a couple years, it seems doubtful that the Canadians would want him.

The big question around Lensky is “is he doing this for the right reasons?” Is he simply another man in his early twenties facing the prospect of working for a living and realizing that kicking a ball around doesn’t seem so bad in comparison? Because if so, it might not be long before he remembers what drove him out of the professional game in the first place. Worst of all, is he succumbing pressure from people around him trying to live out their ambitions through Jacob?

Or maybe he’s someone who’s been flying around Europe since he was a boy, trialing here and getting a youth contract there, who broke into the freedom of adulthood, went to live a normal life for a year, and in so doing rediscovered everything he had loved about the game to begin with? If that’s the case, then the sky’s the limit. Maybe he won’t be the incredible attacking midfielder we’d all dreamed of, a worthy heir to Dwayne De Rosario, but he’ll be a Canadian playing professional football on his own terms. And that ain’t bad.

Lately, I’ve been giving a lot of thought to how we fall in love.

Oh, I’m don’t mean the birds and the bees. I’m talking about the only sort of love that truly matters, the only love that can last through the aeons, that never lies and never sneaks around at night: the love that can only belong to something that really matters, like a sports team.

I’m the sort of guy who writes eulogies to the Edmonton Aviators and posts pictures of Rick Titus on his website, when Rick Titus is considered a biological weapon in seventeen Latin American countries. I held off, to the point of pride, on throwing my lot in with the Impact or the Whitecaps or the FC, even when I moved to Victoria or was surrounded by Toronto fans every time I went to any message board or was entirely abandoned by Impact fans who didn’t attend a national match against Honduras (okay, my flirtation with Montreal ended early). I cheered for Vancouver in the Voyageurs Cup on an intellectual level: after all, underdogs are good (sorry, Toronto) and fanbases that don’t abandon the Nats in World Cup qualifying are good (sorry, Montreal).

Then, earlier this year, Vancouver lost the Voyageurs Cup thanks to Montreal’s impression of Craig Forrest, Frank Yallop, and Ipswich Town taking on a particularly feisty Manchester United. And I went off, and I ranted, and I raved, and I told people to die in a fire, and somewhere in there I realised that I wasn’t exactly being intellectual about it. Dammit, I had started to care. Like a footballing version of a nineteenth-century courtesan, I had told myself the one thing I was never allowed to do was fall in love, and now here was my own personal romantic movie, starring Teitur Thordarson as Ewan McGregor.

There’s probably an element of sheer masochism in it, mind. It is entirely in-character that I didn’t bat an eyelash at the Whitecaps when they won the USL-1 title but was suddenly in their corner when they lost the Voyageurs Cup. Bear in mind that I also cheer for Charlton Athletic, an A-League team that hasn’t existed for almost a decade, and of course Canada. I hope there’s nothing revealing about my personality in there.

And yet, while with every day I live and die a little more with the Whitecaps fortunes (on Sunday I sang and chanted with five Southsiders at a Whitecaps Residency match when they took on the Victoria Highlanders, and nearly got involved in the worst rumble in footballing history for my trouble), sheer geography limits the extent to which I can be a true diehard or earn the right to wear that Southsiders scarf I bought. A Victoria Southsider I know pays $120 each way for a float plane to take him to and from Vancouver for most of the Whitecaps home games, but without disclosing the contents of my tax return let’s just say I won’t be doing that any time soon.

It’s a peculiarity of the Canadian game that, while football was practically the seminal working-class sport in all the old footballing powers, here true enjoyment of the game is largely limited to the upper and middle classes. Except for those lucky souls living in Vancouver, Montreal, or Toronto, attending a high-level match in this country requires a considerable investment of both time and money, to say nothing of the cost of truly being a supporter.

Imagine being in Winnipeg, with your nearest Canadian team above the college level being the Premier Development League’s Thunder Bay Chill. Or in Edmonton, where your home team would be in Abbotsford, British Columbia. Or the Atlantic, where unless you appreciate the semi-professional leagues that have been so successful in each province you’re looking at a trip to Montreal for the professional game.

This is a large part of the reason I support the Canadian men’s national team playing in as many cities as practical. Yes, the support in Toronto is superb, but if we play all our matches at BMO Field, what will the rest of the country do? Football is the canonical example of a sport that is better live than on television, and no number of 1080p broadcasts and imported British announcers on the allegedly Canadian Broadcasting Corporation will change that. There’s a world of difference between a Calgarian seeing Toronto FC take on FC Real United or whatever and having a team to cheer for in his hometown, if only for a day.

The essential reason I still dwell on the Aviators after all these years is that they were my first love. Just like noone forgets their first real romance, no matter what happens there’s a place in your heart for the club that introduced you to the joys of the beautiful game. I was lucky. I had an opportunity, even if it was only a brief one, in Edmonton. A kid growing up in Moose Jaw will be limited to only the pale shadow of the experience you get from watching Barcelona and Manchester United play for yet another European trophy, dimly knowing that something important to a lot of people is going on but also weighted down with the awareness that you can never, ever be a part of it.

If we want to live in a world where we get more than fifteen fans to a Canada match in the United States, we should make it a world in which most of this country can, without killing an entire weekend or half a paycheque, go to a high-level match and watch good players play the game the way it was meant to be. Don’t talk to me about travel costs or players wanting to go overseas. It doesn’t matter. If we’re going to grow support for this game, experience is everything.

We deserved to win.

There is no ambiguity. There is no “if only”. Yes, our finishing was wasteful, but it was also extraordinarily unlucky, with McKenna, Johnson, Simpson, and Hutchinson missing by those fractions of an inch that no human being can control. Finishing is often a matter of fortune as much as talent, and today fortune was not with us.

Javier Aguirre, meanwhile, refereed the match and is now a first-ballot Benito Archundia Hall-of-Famer. Supporters greeted his appointment as match official with horror after he turned the Mexico – Panama group match into one of the most ridiculous games ever witnessed on a pitch, and our scepticism turned out to be justified. I don’t think he was on the take. This wasn’t a fix, this was just utter ineptitude of the sort that shakes nations. A cynic would point out that Aguirre is Salvadoran and had an axe to grind against Canada, but I doubt that was the issue.

We saw it between Mexico and Panama, and we saw it again. Aguirre is just an idiot.

The penalty was bogus, of course. Yes, Stalteri and Martinez were hand-jostling, with each getting a piece of each other for intervals. Stalteri was no more guilty than Martinez was and, frankly, Martinez wasn’t guilty at all: such jockeying is an accepted part of the game, appeared many more times in the match whenever Canada slung a cross or a corner into the Honduran area, and is legal. The ball did not strike Stalteri’s hand, either. it was a ridiculous decision and one that Aguirre, who was forty to fifty yards behind the play on account of poor positioning or poor conditioning, was in no position to call.

I was a defender for almost every match of my footballing career, so I may have a bit of a bias here. But, frankly, if I got a call like the one Stalteri took, I would not have ended up with just a yellow card. I would have blacked out and come to thirty minutes later surrounded by shocked teammates and with my hands covered in blood. They would use up all the ink in the universe to write out the number of games I should be suspended for.

Aguirre was the story. He was not biased towards Honduras, he was just an idiot. Canada got a foul out of a flagrant dive by Will Johnson that probably got him an honourary Honduran passport. Being scumbags with greased boots, the Hondurans dived much more and were rewarded for their dishonestly accordingly. Moreover, late in the match, a Honduran whose name eludes me dove spectacularly even for a Honduran. He rolled around on the ground and cried and clutched every one of his limbs. Play went on, with Honduras initially on the attack before giving the ball up. Canada went the other way. This took about a minute and a half, before Aguirre whistled the play dead.

What?

There’s no provision for a referee to do that! It was the most bizarre decision since an MLS referee decided that the away team needed a water break. Canada had uncontested possession and was starting a build up, and suddenly tweet, this Honduran needs his mommy. A drop ball was then awarded – in short, Canada was stripped of possession because of an uncalled dive over a minute before. You’re not going to believe this, but a dash of the magic spray and the Honduran turned out to be absolutely fine.

At least with the penalty, there’s an entry in the Laws of the Game saying “if there’s a foul or hand ball in the box, it’s a penalty”. That decision by Aguirre was a complete non-sequitur.

Canada bossed Honduras by at least as much as they slapped Jamaica around in Carson. But in Carson we had the American referee Terry Vaughn, and in Philadelphia we had this jackass. And that’s your game.

I’m calling it two and a half matches. Effort counts for half a point.

However many you want to say I attended, the point is that unless I find an envelope filled with hundred-dollar bills my role in the Gold Cup is over. I’m currently sitting in Vancouver International Airport, killing time until five in the morning when I can head down to the ferry terminal and make my way back home. Once I’m in Victoria I will, of course, catch Canada’s remaining matches at the Bard and Banker downtown, but it won’t be the same.

There were good times at the Gold Cup. In Los Angeles, I was up to spend $26 American on two beers (really) when a large group of El Salvadorans accosted me. Lacking any batteries or flares to throw, I had little choice but to relate to these fans as human beings.

Unfortunately, they didn’t speak English and I don’t speak Spanish. They were quite enthusiastic about my Canada kit, and we blathered at each other in mutual incomprehension until they hit upon the universal language.

“Canada, win! Jamaica, lose!” the lead El Salvadoran said.

“Si!” I responded enthusiastially.

We high-fived.

I probably should have just got used to dealing with El Salvadorans, actually.

Another running trend was nobody having any idea that the Gold Cup was on. In Los Angeles, the cab driver that picked myself and another Voyageur up directly in front of the Home Depot Center wasn’t aware the Gold Cup was on (apparently he just cruises downtown Carson at ten in the evening?). In Columbus, home of the Best Fans in MLS(tm), people looked at me like I was insane whenever I wore my Canada kit and reacted to the knowledge of international football in their community with shock. Only in Miami did I meet somebody with a hint of awareness: the shuttle driver who picked me up at the airport reacted with joy when he heard I was there for football. “Ah, Copa d’Oro!” he said – he actually spoke great English but for whatever reason it was the “Copa d’Oro” to him.

I mentioned that he was the first outsider who had any idea the tournament was going on. He replied that he was Colombian, so he had quite an attachment to the beautiful game.

“Oh, yeah, Colombia!” I said excitedly. “I remember, we kicked your ass in 2000!”

Judging by the ill expression on his face, he remembered too.

Also, I spent a lot of time getting lost. In Los Angeles I held up my end of the navigational bargain but the Los Angeles county transit departments thought that schedules were a nice theory but unworkable in practice and did their own thing entirely, leaving me to walk about four and a half kilometers in the blazing California sun to just meet the Voyageurs in the pub.

In Columbus, I took a bus down to the pub but did the responsible thing and hitched a ride with some other Voyageurs to get to the game. Knowing that Crew Stadium was “north”, we drove way the hell up the highway and were halfway to Cleveland before it occured to us to check a map. Also, one of the guys in the car was the guy who had to claim the tickets, so everybody else got to wait out in front until we showed up.

In Miami, well, you heard about that one already.

I met a lot of cool people, re-met a few more, and got stuck in a cab with a couple real dullards but I was drunk so that was okay. I did not get to lob a single bottle full of urine, which speaks volumes about the fans I encountered. The El Salvadorans were everywhere but they were interested in a good game and a good time, not in causing trouble. There were no Jamaicans to speak of and the Ticos I missed, which is a good thing since I would have gotten liquored up, yelled “REMEMBER SWANGARD!” and ended up with a Miami cop kneeling on my head. It was a much more positive experience than, to pick something at random, World Cup qualifying in Montreal.

I wrote a 1,200-word article on watching a USL-1 match, because I was bored and had no Internet access. If you stuck me in a hotel which charged $10 a day for Internet access and then let me out after a week, I’d have written a post about Charles Gbeke the length of War and Peace, except not proofread.

I sweated a lot. Los Angeles and Miami are so hot and humid that by the end of this tournament even Ali Gerba will be thin.

I didn’t order room service once. I did, however, eat at Burger King three times.

Why did I do it? Because Canada won’t play another meaningful match until 2011, that’s why. So I figured, enjoy the good times while they last. I’d say I’d do it again, but next time I’ll buy maps before I walk to the stadium.

I am a Canadian football fan, so you’d think I’d be used to being the entire supporters section at a match. And sure, I’ve stood in crowds of twelve or fifteen before and felt like I was exactly where I belonged. But it’s a bit different when you’re the only fan in the building, like I was when I watched Miami FC take on the Vancouver Whitecaps at Florida International University Stadium last night.

(A subscript: yes, that is the same stadium where Canada took on Costa Rica on Friday in a match I did not manage to attend. Yes, I did walk to and from the stadium, just as I tried to on Friday. Yes, I did make it there and back without incident beyond sweating like Ali Gerba after a marathon. The system works!)

I was, of course, the only Whitecaps fan present. I was also damned near the only fan present full stop. There was a reasonable family crowd – a couple hundred or so – there to kick balls into the bouncy castle in the concourse (seriously) or cheer on the kids from a local youth academy who ran around before the game and at the half. There were also a few ultras (named, imaginatively, the Miami FC Ultras) who tried to chant and wave flags but had the look of people who weren’t quite sure whether they were doing it correctly.

At intervals, the Ultras would be cheered on by the public address system. The announcer would bellow out the beginning of a chant, and the Ultras would half-heartedly pick it up and carry it for a few seconds before getting bored. They were such great chants, too – they busted out the old standard “this is our house”, which didn’t so much intimidate me as make me want a mortgage with the Bank of Montreal for some reason.

The real money shot was their rousing rendition of “When the Blues Go Marching In”, the most generic of all football chants (and I say this as a man who enthusiastically leads the red version for Canada). Surely they could have just watched any match at Stamford Bridge on GolTV and picked up something but no, the public address man would yell “oh when the blues” and the crowd would yell back “oh when the blues” and a couple Ultras would pick it up “go marching in” and already the crowd would be losing steam when they replied “go marching in” and then all together “oh when the blues go marching in I want to be mumble mumble”.

That was pretty much their entire songbook. I was disappointed that I didn’t hear one “can you hear Vancouver sing?” because for once the answer would have been “nooooo”: one fan doesn’t sing, he yells.

I yelled a lot, though.

It was kinda funny at first. The attendance was in the mediocre three digits, so it was even easy to hear my applause when the Caps came out. I was standing at the front of the stand right near midfield – there wasn’t a lot of competition for seats, and FIU Stadium is intimate enough that it was the best position I’d ever had in a game I wasn’t playing in. The Vancouver starting lineup was announced, and I cheered along. The Whitecaps actually looked at me, which was another first, though you could have heard a mouse fart in that stadium. Most of them looked impressed. I cheered and felt stupid. Marcus Haber gave me a long-suffering, sympathetic grin.

I got the impression that a Whitecaps shirt was something not often seen in Miami. A photographer with a press pass gave me a good talking-to. He explained to me that he knew a lot of the players who came through here; for example, he and Charles Gbeke hung out from Gbeke’s time with the Montreal Impact. He pronounced Gbeke’s last name “G-becky” with a hard ‘g’. He was also a Honduras fan and best friend of most of the players, especially Amado (or, as he called him, Armando) Guevara. I considered throwing him over the railing, but decided that if Vancouver won I’d need to save my fighting muscles.

(There were also a few very nice and knowledgeable Miami FC fans who came over and chatted. These fans were quite polite, good conversationalists, and pretty bad stories compared to that photographer guy.)

Luckily, there would be no rumble between myself and a bunch of Miami fans who would have lobbed bags of urine at me but had forgotten to fill the bags first and would frantically drop trou while yelling obscenities and hoping I’d wait around to get properly doused. From the opening whistle, Vancouver had no clear idea what they were doing. It was ugly.

The turf was a factor. You Toronto FC fans: if you watched a Miami FC match you’d stop complaining about the carpet at BMO Field forever. If Dwayne De Rosario had played on it, he’d give every board member at MLSE fellatio in thanks for the quality of his home stadium. The carpet appeared to have been laid by somebody who was laying FieldTurf for the first time, had only forty-five minutes to do the entire stadium, had gotten loaded at the campus pub before the job, and had also just been in a serious car accident. Crests and valleys rolled aross the pitch like the Scottish highlands. Balls took the weirdest damned caroms and ricocheted in directions I’d never even heard of. I think a Martin Nash cross actually bounced off the turf and travelled back in time.

Miami FC was smart enough to avoid long balls and long runs. They mostly played very direct passes, including piercing strikes of Vancouver’s off-form defense. Their first goal came in much that way, with the Miami striker getting a clean break and beating Nolly easily. Their second came on a penalty for a hand ball: I howled and roared and questioned the referee’s parentage but yeah, it was a hand ball. I hadn’t even wiped away all my sweat and it was 2-0 Miami.

Vancouver never seemed to quite get the measure of things. Their long balls were invariably catastrophic. They repeatedly sent long bombs far out of the reach of the strike force, running harmlessly out the back or to a defender or, at best, pinning the Whitecap in the corner with nowhere to go. More than once a Whitecap tried to play the ball on the hop only to see it go someplace bizarre, a blunder Miami avoided. Most glaringly, Vancouver didn’t learn from their mistakes and kept up the same strategy.

They had their chances. Hirano was a true midfield general and bossed both ends of the pitch. His playmaking led to some opportunities that invariably just went wide. The Caps snatched one back late but it was all over by then.

So ended my first experience as an away supporter for the Whitecaps. Not one Miami fan had the courtesy to heckle me on my way out. I felt more welcome at a Vancouver game in Miami than I did at a Canada game in Montreal. It was very nice, quite enjoyable aside from the result, and completely wrong. I can only assume that Miami FC will explode into flames sooner rather than later.

Being an observant reader, you’re probably asking yourself “why Lord Bob, why are you updating your blog when, theoretically, you’re at Florida International University Stadium watching Canada take on Costa Rica?

I’ll tell you why. Miami is the worst city in the universe.

Google Maps says the distance from my hotel to the stadium is about seven kilometers, almost straight as an arrow down two streets. It is, in short, walking distance, and I chose this stadium for that reason. So I checked Google Maps and made sure I was going the right way. I drew a brief sketch on the back of my print-at-home ticket and made sure to ask the helpful concierge if I was going the right way.

“Why, no!” the helpful concierge said. “You don’t go left then right! You go right then left!”

Yeah, that was pretty much completely untrue.

I got lost, and it was made worse by the fact that Miami is the worst city in the universe. When I realized I was lost, I knew I had to get to the highway, which was marked on my map as US Highway 41/8th Street. I was on 6th Street, and I knew 7th Street was a block to the north since I had just come that way. So I said “I am clever. I will go two blocks north and still make the game.”

Yeah, it was a different 8th Street. It was so close to the 8th Street I was looking for that I could have spit the distance if I’d known it, but I didn’t.

Miami also hates pedestrians. Some cities don’t put sidewalks on the both sides of some streets. Miami builds sidewalks that end in random places, or sidewalks that don’t go anywhere, or sidewalks with chainlink fences at the end, or just chainlink fences that keep you from getting where you want to go, or sidewalks that lead to intersections with no pedestrian signals and rampant traffic, as if Miami pedestrians usually just turn into helicopters.

Also, no gas station in this god-forsaken city seems to sell road maps.

After walking for two hours through brutal heat, trying to make logical guesses as to where I wanted to go and getting lost each time because of the completely random street layout, I wound up at a Wal-Mart where nobody spoke English and couldn’t understand that I wanted a map despite the fact that, as far as I can tell, the Spanish word for map is “map”. I was able to find one myself, realised that if I tried to get to the stadium I’d arrive just in time to watch the winner do a victory lap, went back to my hotel, and am currently trying to tie my bedsheets into a crude noose.

If Canada gets to the World Cup final and the match is held in Miami, I still won’t come back to Miami. This is the worst city in the universe.

Sitting in Port Columbus Airport, with free wifi, and my flight doesn’t leave for almost two hours. What else am I going to do?

The miniscule fraction of a doubt that Canada wouldn’t go through to the quarterfinals was eliminated late yesterday, when in spite of typical CONCACAF refereeing and Javier Aguirre’s karate-kick action, Panama held on to a 1-1 draw with Mexico and ensured Canada no worse than eighth position in the round robin. And to even finish that badly, Haiti will have to beat the United States in Boston tomorrow, among other improbable results.

My friends, we are sitting pretty.

Of course, we can’t take our foot off the gas. A win over Costa Rica is worth in the ballpark of one trillion points in the FIFA rankings and, if we win by a couple, could well send the Ticos to their grave. Costa Rica, meanwhile, has everything to play for, and a Costa Rican win combined with El Salvador not beating Jamaica sends them through.

Don’t be fooled by Costa Rica’s record and the fact that they’re in the hex. The Ticos are taking the Gold Cup seriously and have sent what I’ve called a B+ team – pretty close to what Canada has sent, actually. Florida International University Stadium holds 20,000 people and I expect 19,998 of them to be Costa Rica partisans. We have no players used to playing on plastic, while in Costa Rica league matches artificial turf is common. The weather forecast is straight out of San José. I’m sure glad we don’t need this match or I’d be worried.

So yeah, I’m predicting a Canadian loss. But why worry? I’m just too relieved that we don’t really need the match.

Indeed, if I were Stephen Hart, I’d take the opportunity to play it safe. Three Canadian players – Julian De Guzman, Mike Klukowski, and Paul Stalteri – are riding a yellow card and there’s no reason to risk a suspension for any of them. Give De Guzman a half, because he’s usually fairly disciplined, but Klukowski and Stalteri should sit unless needed.

I’d like to see Jaime Peters get a go at fullback, as Peters spent the successful latter half of his Ipswich season playing the position and seems to have taken to it. The other side could be taken by Marcel De Jong or, if Hart was feeling adventurous, Andre Hainault.

Why stop there, either? The 4-5-1 cum 4-3-3 that Hart has been running has been somewhat marred by a lack of offensive spirit from his wingers, so why not throw Simeon Jackson in the spot Josh Simpson started at against El Salvador and see what happens? And if ever there was a moment for Josh Wagenaar, just to see what he can do against talented opposition, this is it.

Don’t get me wrong. I want us to win the match. But for the first time we’re playing a competitive match that we can truly afford to lose.

Of course, if Hart storms out with the big guns and we win 2-1, well, I can live with that.

May 27, 2000.

That was the date on which the Canadian men’s national team last won its fourth game in a row. It took place at Varsity Stadium in Toronto, and Canada dropped Trinidad and Tobago 1-0 in a friendly thanks to a goal from Jeff Clarke, his first and it turned out last with the national team.

A friendly win wasn’t all that remarkable, of course. What was remarkable were the three games we won before it: the quarterfinal, semifinal, and final of the 2000 CONCACAF Gold Cup. Now we have once again won four on the trot for the first time in almost a decade, and once again the Gold Cup is our vehicle to do it.

I’m taking a long time to start talking about the match. I think I’m afraid that if I think too hard about it, it’ll turn out to be a dream. Good christ. If Canada played more matches like that we’d have run out of room on the south side of Crew Stadium for our championship banners. I don’t care what the scoreline said: we always had an element of control in the match and it never truly seemed like it would slip from our grasp. Of course we were terrified in the supporters’ section, but that’s because we’re Canada fans, not because Canada didn’t deserve to win going away.

Full credit to the Salvadorans. They played us every bit as hard as they played Costa Rica (their support was incredibly numerous in Columbus as well). We just played them harder.

Our midfield, which I harped on in my Jamaica review, came through in fine style. There were no passengers. Will Johnson created a couple of glorious chances, one of which he just missed burying in the second half, and was a thorn in the side of El Salvador the whole match. Josh Simpson wasn’t as electrifying as he was in Los Angeles but he was reliable, occasionally spectacular, and discharged his responsibilities. Patrice Bernier made the goal, missed a sitter, and was in the right position so often it was like he’d come back in time and knew which plays El Salvador would try. Johnson and Simpson were both playing forward a lot and were strikers on paper, but their role turned more into attacking wingers particularly late in the match.

And Julian De Guzman. And Atiba Hutchinson. Well. In my preview post, I said they ought to be the best players on the pitch. They were. Julian’s fro apparently gives him super powers, and if he’s trying to impress a club in Europe he couldn’t have done a better job. Atiba got a nice chunk of glass for being the official man of the match, and his attacking runs were almost embarrassing for the Salvadorans, who were left with no answer. On one occasion in the second half Atiba made a move, missed it, and got stripped of the ball. I remember the Salvadoran midfielder – don’t remember which one, I had a bit of beer in me by this time – charging up the pitch, trying to play it through, losing it to a Hutchinson who had charged back to defend like his hair was on fire, and the Salvadoran wearing the most perfect “where the fuck did he come from?” expression I have seen in some time.

The backline was less dominant than they were against Jamaica, but there’s no shame in that and there were no errors, aside from Stalteri getting a yellow on a blatant dive by the Salvadoran (Klukowski’s yellow was both deserved and a good play on his part to stop a chance). I am nursing a massive mancrush on Dejan Jakovic, who was the star of the defense once again and is still only twenty-three years old. This will end in an embarrassingly complimentary chant, I’m sure.

And today was a milestone in one other regard. Ali Gerba is now tied for fourth all-time on Canada’s goalscoring list with fifteen senior goals. The man he is tied with is an obscure Toronto midfielder by the name of Dwayne De Rosario, who you may recall opted to stay home from this tournament. I get the impression that De Rosario isn’t going to pass Gerba again, either.

Below: the banners on the Voyageurs section, as seen at halftime from the north end. Click for a larger image.

Fresh off the redeye from Los Angeles to Columbus, and bits of me are scattered across every American airport from the west coast to Atlanta, Georgia. I flew from Los Angeles to Columbus via Atlanta! If the CSA lived up to their usual standard and sent the boys commercial, they’re probably sitting in the hotel restaurant staring at plates of eggs and nursing hangovers the size of Landon Donovan’s ego.

Flying in the United States is just the worst. The worst. Any Canadian players who have fallen onto this page: I have new respect for you guys. I feel like I just played ninety minutes plus stoppages against El Salvador by myself (I did not win).

Luckily, El Salvador had to make the same trip, and their federation isn’t known for being flush with cash. There were some folks with big bags in front of me at LAX: they may have been stowing El Salvadoran players in the cargo hold to save on airfare. Say what you will about the brutal travel and a schedule that seems like it was composed by Chuck Blazer in the midst of a particularly forgettable bender, at least every team in every group is getting the same treatment.

Unfortunately, I am scared to death of El Salvador in any stadium. I had the privilege of watching El Salvador dismantle Costa Rica, and the comparison to Canada could not have been more striking. Canada was as fundamentally sound but unexceptional, with next-to-no creativity apart from Josh Simpson and the audacious connection between Klukowski and Gerba for the goal. Few mistakes were made, except for Greg Sutton’s well-documented distribution problems and a couple ill-conceived giveaways early in the second half. Canada was the better team on the night but it could have easily – so easily – been 2-1 to Jamaica after ninety minutes.

El Salvador was taking a few liberties and lost the ball on occasion. But on balance they were flying, and they were doing so against an intensely skilled Costa Rica lineup fielding their B+ squad. Yes, they had the Carson crowd behind their backs; about 26,000 fans of whom 25,500 were there for El Salvador, but if they’d come out against Canada in that form they’d have ripped us to shreds. I don’t think the Columbus crowd will be quite so partisan, but the Voyageurs numbers are estimated at fifteen and you’ll be able to push me over with a feather if El Salvador’s ultras don’t beat that by a factor of ten.

A few months ago, I thought El Salvador would struggle to beat Jamaica. Now, I’ll be surprised if they don’t win the group.

At every position (except possibly goal), Canadian players are more skilled than their El Salvadoran counterparts, but that’s been true for a decade against most of CONCACAF’s sides and it’s hasn’t got us many points. Except against the United States and Mexico, Atiba Hutchinson and Julian De Guzman ought to be the most talented players on any pitch yet it never works out. When our stars put together their best matches this team is a contender in CONCACAF. In the 2006 friendly against Brazil and the 2007 Gold Cup against the United States, Canada went toe-to-toe with a strong Brazil B team and the Americans’ best eleven and were up to the challenge. Those performances come too seldom.

But there is one bright spot. Both of those matches were under our Tobagan titan, Stephen Hart.

Hart’s shown the ability to get close to the best out of these players. Our one real Canadian-style submission was in 2007 in an ultimately meaningless loss to Guadeloupe and we came back admirably from that. El Salvador is a nothing country with a historically unsuccessful team and they’re underdogs to Canada according to the online bookies. But they’re also in the hex and have been getting better results than us against better opposition. If Hart can convince them to take El Salvador seriously, a victory is in the offing.

I can’t predict a Canadian win. I just can’t. El Salvador’s form is better, El Salvador’s support will be better, and I don’t think Canada has won four matches in a row in my lifetime. I’m saying El Salvador 2, Canada 1 (Gerba), Canadian supporters tased 3, heads knelt on by enthusiastic Columbus cops 5.

Of course, even a loss leaves Canada in a good position. Beat Costa Rica in Miami or and we’re through; draw and we’re probably through anyway. But, if the stars align (in every sense), it could be glorious tonight.