Canada off to a winning start at Concacaf W Championship

In the end, it was an impressive scoreline and a good start to the Concacaf W Championship for the Canadian women’s national soccer team.

A 6-0 win against Trinidad and Tobago at the BBVA Stadium in Monterrey, Mexico was the way Canada head coach Bev Priestman was looking to begin the eightteam tournament, although the manner of the victory did draw some criticism, considering four goals were scored in the final 11 minutes of the game against an exhausted opponent on a hot and humid night.

“The group at the start earned us the right in the second half to get the goals,” Priestman said following the win. “I knew that would be the case and hence why I was front-footed on the substitutions.

“The narrative around the lack of goals plays into players and they get tense and I was just pleased to put that to bed now and just focus on the process. I think when the group does that and take away that tenseness and we just trust that stick-to-the-process and move the ball quickly, some of the things we’ve been working on, that was the result of some of the goals we’ve seen.”

For well over an hour, Canada was relying on a goal from Christine Sinclair 15 minutes into the game to separate the teams on the scoreboard.

Canada kept squandering chances in the first half, including a penalty kick miss by Jessie Fleming, which kept Trinidad and Tobago in the game. Janine Beckie also turned in a cross from Sinclair, which was called back on a clear offside. Canada had 27 attempts on goal, with nine hitting the target, to just one for Trinidad and Tobago.

Priestman brought on four players to try and change the rhythm of the contest an hour in, inserting forwards Adriana Leon, Jordyn Huitema, attacking midfielder Julia Grosso and defender Allysha Chapman into the mix.

Grosso went on to score

Canada has never lost to Trinidad and Tobago, outscoring them 40-0 in nine all-time meetings.

two goals, kickstarting the offence. Fleming, Beckie, and Huitema then rounded out the scoring in the final minutes of the game.

“At half time, my message was about people coming off the page a little bit,” Priestman said. “You think about the goal that we scored, the chances we had; the offside goal, the penalty, it all came from people doing something different.

“Sometimes we stick to the script too much and we got away from that and I gave them the freedom to express themselves; go make mistakes go get the ball back quickly. I’ll never tell this team to play it safe, I think we have to take the handbrake off and that was a message to the fullbacks at halftime. Take the handbrakes off and join the attack, because that’s what we need you to do.”

Canada has never lost to Trinidad and Tobago, outscoring them 40-0 in nine all-time meetings. The win gave Canada the top spot in the group with games against Panama on Friday and Costa Rica on Monday to conclude the opening round.

The top two teams move on to the semifinals, and also qualify automatically for the 2023 FIFA Women’s World Cup in Australia and New Zealand. The Concacaf tournament is serving as both a World Cup and 2024 Olympic qualifier.

The winner of the tournament will gain an automatic berth into the Olympic women’s soccer tournament in Paris, while the finalist will move on to an Olympic playoff against the third-place finisher in September.

“I think everyone came on had a lot of fire in them,” said Grosso. “We had a lot of fire in us, ready to go and everyone else on the field had a lot of impact as well, just helping us, energizing us right away on the field, so we couldn’t have done it without everyone.”

The two goals were Grosso’s first with the national team at any level and put the Vancouver product in good standing with Priestman going forward, particularly if the early finishing problems persist.

Grosso, 21, converted the winning penalty in the goldmedal shootout to defeat Sweden at the Tokyo Olympics last summer, and has since moved to play with Juventus in Italy.