Went to de Canada vs Honduras game wit Savannah Boy. SH was dey in he capacity as Assistant coach to Canada National team (Congrats SH...man movin up de ranks...go soon be Canada senior men's national team coach..
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Honduras takes advantage of Canadian breakdowns to score 2-1 victory. Honduras play a 3-5-2 formation with a kinda sweeper in #21 Vellecillo and de 2 outside men but still central. Statistically the opening half appeared even.....
De 2 wide players #14 Oscar Garcia and #13 Mario Berrios saw A LOT of the ball and were quite effective against Canada's wing backs. Garcia in particular played a lot of give and go balls with #19 Turcios.
Honduras playmaker was #3 Maynor Figueroa who looks very experienced and composed on the ball. Canada countered to neutralise Figueroa by cutting down on the room he initially had to play with.
At half time, Honduras bought on #20 Hendricks Thomas and he became their de facto playmaker with Figueroa pushing up more and making the blind run across the defence. They all like to play the long diagonal pass to the wings to exploit space.
Honduras has 2 strikers who are ok. They each scored excellent goals....#9 Francisco Ramirez got a breakaway about 30 yards from goal and with 2 defenders pressuring him, tucked away a tidy finish in the 52nd min. The goal of the game came from #10 Wilmar Velasquez who had all the time in the world to volley home a left sided cross from #13 after a Canadian player lost the ball. #9 got a long ball that surprised the Canadian defence and made a one time cross to he striking padnah cutting out the Canadian central defender and with no one else around, Velasquez hit an unstoppable one time volley past a helpless Canadian keeper in the 56th min. No chance and great finish.
Other than that, they didn't show anything too dangerous to me.
Basically Honduras is beatable in my opinion. Their 3 central defenders are quick.... certainly quicker than Stern, but if balls are played into feet of Stern, we should be ok once they control as they are expected to. If we use Glen, he could unsetlle anybody wit he pace. De #21 Vellecillo at de back look impressive to me.
We should have a significant aerial advantage. Not because of height but because that is one of our strengths and I didn't sense that they were very strong in the air, but they a good on the ground.
It would be interesting to see how Carlos Edwards performs against the #13 Berrios. He & #14 make a lot of overlapping runs but that also causes space to be exploited when they got caught out of position. We need someone who can run and take-on the defence in my opinion...especially on their right side (our left).
Game ended up 2-1 to Honduras, Canada scoring off a header by Kevin McKenna from a corner in the 70th. Canada has 2 mobile strikers which caused the Hondurans some problems but they don't have the 1 v 1 skills to truly exploit that weakness. We need to play a mobile forward together with Stern or else we won't have that ability to exploit that weakness either. This makes the midfielders who follow up to support the play that much more important. We should also shoot the ball instead of trying too many intricate plays.
Honduran goalie is decent. He didn't make any noticeable mistakes and came for the ball well when he had to. Didn't have to stop too many shots. Perhaps we can try shooting low along the ground at him.
For me....danger-men for Honduras are the 2 wide players #13 & #14 and the 2 play makers #3 and # 20. Forwards have shown they will finish if given the opportunity. Honduras probably had 3 decent chances all game and scored 2.
If we play to we potential and take it to de Honduran's, we should beat dis team based on their performance against Canada.