EDMONTON \u2014 Scoring goals in the World Cup has always been difficult for Team Canada, but head coach Jesse Marsch is feeling a little more confident after watching his men\u2019s team perform in a 2-0 win over Uzbekistan in Monday night\u2019s international friendly.<\/p>\n
With an announced crowd of 46,164 cold, wet fans watching, Canada got second-half goals from Jonathan Osorio and Jayden Nelson and played a strong defensive game to keep their opponents off the scoresheet.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s been a lot of talk that we haven\u2019t scored goals from the run of play, understandingly so because we hadn\u2019t,\u201d Marsch told a post-match news conference. \u201cBut I kept saying the goals are coming because I know we have a lot of firepower, and I kept also kept saying the most important thing is keeping clean sheets and preventing opponents from getting goals.\u201d<\/p>\n
Canada gave up three scoring chances in the first half but mostly kept Uzbekistan from mounting many serious threats in the second half.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe more we do that I believe we have enough firepower and enough talent,\u201d said Marsch. \u201cSo again, it\u2019s another match where, OK we give away a couple of big changes in the first half, but we were pretty stable for most of the match.<\/p>\n
\u201cSo, I think in the last, I don\u2019t know, 11 games we\u2019ve given up three goals. That\u2019s an incredible record. If we can continue on that pace, we give ourselves a chance to have a good World Cup.\u201d<\/p>\n
Canada now moves to Montreal to play Ireland in its second and final pre-tournament friendly before opening its World Cup schedule on June 12 in Toronto against Group B opponent Bosnia and Herzegovina. The other teams in Group B are Switzerland and Qatar.<\/p>\n
Marsch is trying to juggle a number of injuries, including the loss on the weekend of Marcelo Flores to a ruptured ACL and the uncertainty of team captain Alphonso Davies\u2019 status for the World Cup.<\/p>\n
Davies did some lengthy jogging on the soggy Commonwealth Stadium field Monday and spent the game on the sidelines encouraging his teammates.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt felt nice to get on the pitch and do some running,\u201d said the Edmonton native. \u201cWe will have to see how everything goes in the next couple of days. We have to take it step by step.\u201d<\/p>\n
Marsch said that while Davies really wanted to be on the pitch Monday in front of his hometown fans, it\u2019s important \u201cthat he is free, that he doesn\u2019t feel pressured to come back.\u201d<\/p>\n
Mother Nature has not been kind to the men\u2019s national team when it plays in Edmonton. The team\u2019s previous game in the Alberta capital, a World Cup pre-tournament game in November 2021 was played in -9 Celsius temperatures with snowbanks lining the frozen pitch. Canada beat Mexico 2-1.<\/p>\n
The temperature was 11 C for Monday\u2019s game that was played at Commonwealth Stadium in the midst of two days of steady rain that had the newly installed grass field waterlogged.<\/p>\n
Neither weather conditions, however, deterred the passionate soccer fans in the city. In 2021 more than 44,000 fans braved the cold while even more fans brought their rain gear on Monday.<\/p>\n
This report by The Canadian Press was first published June 1, 2026.<\/p>\n
John Korobanik, The Canadian Press<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"EDMONTON \u2014 Scoring goals in the World Cup has always been difficult for Team Canada, but head coach…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":709583,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[440],"tags":[49,48,561,82,1133],"class_list":["post-709582","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-soccer","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-soccer","tag-sports","tag-weather"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/709582","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=709582"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/709582\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/709583"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=709582"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=709582"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=709582"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}