World Cup: Day 24
It’s the last 16! It’s two games a day now!
I think both of these matches raised some interesting questions for the sides involved. The trend of the last two days seems to be “you’re going to have to work for it this time”. Let’s discuss what went on.
Canada 0-3 Morocco
Why didn’t Canada think of Morocco’s “just score your chances” strategy?
Jesse Marsch was a little less gung-ho about the pressing in this game, but the Canadian strategy was still to force transitions and hit Morocco fast. They got a good counter-pressing situation going 10 minutes in, winning the ball back in Morocco’s half, but goalkeeper Yassine Bounou was in a good position to save Tani Oluwaseyi’s shot. After Canada really went for it early on, Morocco were able to get into better a passing rhythm and slow the game down. I’ve gone on about this a lot, but the “Red Bull” playing style has the rather ginormous flaw that teams can choose not to play in a way that allows lots of transitions. At the same time, Canada’s mid block did frustrate Morocco pretty well. It was a drab half.
Early in the second half, Azzedine Ounahi scores a low drive on the edge of the box with a sea of bodies in the way. That’s really just an incredibly unlikely chance to be scored, but it’s one that changed the game.
These teams got back to cancelling each other out for most of the second half, until Canada really had to throw players forward in search of an equaliser and got caught on the break. That’s fine. Canada had to take those risks. But Morocco score their second and third meaningful chances of the match. The shots just went in.
Morocco played Canada basically level and got a little lucky with the scoreline here. They’re now facing some plucky minnows from just north of Spain and west of Italy. We’ll see how that goes.
Paraguay 0-1 France
We finally saw them struggle.