Growing depth pool fuelling CanMNT's Gold Cup, World Cup aspirations: "Everyone can contribute"
Less than 14 hours after opening the 2025 Gold Cup with a commanding 6-0 victory vs. Honduras at BC Place on Tuesday, it’s business as usual for the CanMNT back on the training pitch.
As is customary the day after the game, not everyone in Canada’s squad is training together as a group - those who started the night before are either on a stationary bike or lightly participating in drills, depending on their physical output in the match.
For everyone else, however, training continues as normal, as they get put through their paces by head coach Jesse Marsch. They might be short 11 players, but the 16 who remain, plus an additional training player, are running through drills at a frenetic pace, as they get put through a gauntlet of possession drills and small-sided games.
In each drill, the message is the same - keep the intensity high, words that are certainly taken to heart by all involved, as they shift their focus to their next match at this Gold Cup, a clash vs. Curaçao in Houston on Saturday.
Welcome to CanMNT training under Marsch - they take the adage “practice like you play” quite seriously, creating an environment where these sessions sometimes even replicate the intensity of the games.
“I think some of the training sessions are harder than the games, with the intensity, and how you're pressed at the back,” Canada’s Luc De Fougerolles, who got to watch this session from afar after starting the night before, said afterwards. “When you get to the game, you seem to have more time on the ball, so just having the experience in training makes it easier in the games. Obviously, the games are longer, so it does make it tough in that aspect, but this is a great way to prepare.”
Go behind the scenes at #CANMNT training as we prepare for Honduras in Vancouver!
— CANMNT (@CANMNT_Official) June 16, 2025
Secure your seats 👇
——
Découvrez les coulisses de l'entraînement du #CANMNT alors que nous nous préparons pour affronter le Honduras à Vancouver !
Réservez vos places 👇
When seeing that commanding win vs. Honduras the night prior, you can see the fruits of the work they’ve been putting in training, however.
Right now, training is both a chance for Canada’s players to continue to adapt to Marsch’s style of play, as well as an opportunity to compete for their spot in the team - and this session is an example of what the latter looks like, in particular.
Having not started the night before, all of those players on the pitch wanted to show Marsch that they want to start the upcoming games at this Gold Cup, showing off the improved competition in this group. All of a sudden, this Canadian side has gone from a team that maybe had a handful of locked-in starters 12 months ago to one that has well over 20 players pushing for starting roles, let alone spots in Canada’s World Cup squad for next year.
Because of that, it’s elevated every training session, as players know that any slip in intensity will be capitalized on by someone around them, creating a competitive atmosphere that these players are happy to be a part of.
“It's been like that since Jesse came in here; the competition is crazy,” De Fougerolles said. “Look at the group here, it’s an unbelievable group, we've got 26 players here who are all ready to start and all ready to give their best. I did quite a few of these sessions at the Copa América that were very tough, but really enjoyable. It's nice to just be playing football even after everyone else played in the game.”
Canada looking to maintain ruthlessness in attack:
Certainly, players will continue to enjoy training if it leads to more dominant results like the one Canada got vs. Honduras, which was their most dominant victory since a 7-0 thrashing of Aruba in a World Cup qualifier in 2021.
Despite missing key pieces such as Alphonso Davies, Moïse Bombito, Stephen Eustáquio and Alistair Johnston vs. Honduras, Canada put in one of their best performances under Marsch, dominating the game on both sides of the ball.
In particular, their goalscoring outburst will stand out, as they also generated 4.61 xG on 19 shots, creating nine big chances, as they were dangerous every time they got near Honduras’s box. After a recent four-goal outburst vs. Ukraine, that means they’ve now found the net 12 times in their last four games - that’s as many goals as they had in their first 14 games under Marsch, for context.
That’s huge, as they’d underperformed their xG heavily heading into this month's games, something they wanted to change this summer.
“Yeah, before this camp and throughout, we’ve talked a lot about being more ruthless,” the CanMNT’s all-time leading scorer, Jonathan David, offered after the Honduras win. “That was a big talking point. We’ve tried to work on that in training, so that we always try to score the chances that we have, and I think it’s been going well so far to this point.”
Good morning, Vancouver 🇨🇦
— OneSoccer (@onesoccer) June 19, 2025
Got ~90 seconds or so? Here's all six #CanMNT 🇨🇦 goals vs. Honduras again 😎 pic.twitter.com/exUtF1G0Lj
To be fair, it doesn’t hurt to have created as many chances as they did, either. This Canadian team has also been a bit boom or bust in terms of chance creation over the past year, so they’ll be pleased to see the chances flow the way they did vs. Honduras, and hope that’s a sign of what’s to come the rest of the tournament, even if at a slightly reduced level.
“These are the games that you play for, where everything clicks,” Tani Oluwaseyi, who started up front with David, said after the game. “Everyone’s working as one unit. The balls are flowing, and runners are making the right runs, we're making the right reads. These are always really fun games, and it's not always going to be like this, so it's important to enjoy it when it does happen.”
Having played a lot more aggressively in possession vs. Honduras, with heavy involvement from their full backs and midfielders, that ended up making a big difference for them, however.
Instead of leaving their two forwards and two wingers on an island, as has happened in past matches, they made sure to support them, something they’ll want to do more of going forward.
“I think it's the style that we play,” full back Niko Sigur, who opened the scoring vs. Honduras, said. “He wants the full backs to be aggressive, because we know we've got guys beside us and behind us. If he told us to go alone without the cover, it wouldn't make sense, but if we all go together and we all work as a group, we can have a lot of success.”
“I think it makes everyone dangerous, it makes our team a bit unpredictable,” David added. “You cannot just focus on one or two guys; everyone on the team can contribute and score.”
#CanMNT 🇨🇦 captain Alphonso Davies celebrates a HUGE 6-0 win over Honduras with his teammates 🙌 pic.twitter.com/Qfv7eKQ3bg
— OneSoccer (@onesoccer) June 18, 2025
Yet, that’s exactly what Marsch wants to see from this group - he wants them to be aggressive in every phase of the game.
Sometimes, given that Marsch comes from the Red Bull school of thought, it can be easy to focus on Canada’s high press as the main form of aggression that they show, but it’s important to remember that aggression can be shown in many different ways, too.
It can also come from winning 50-50 duels, how you defend 1v1, and, of course, in how you attack.
Given Canada’s strong defensive numbers under Marsch - they’ve conceded 18 goals in 18 games, with four of those coming in his first match vs. a highly-ranked Netherlands side - they’ve mostly thrived in bringing that aggression defensively, hence the elevated focus.
Now, however, these recent results show that they’re starting to find that aggressiveness on the offensive side, too, which is important given the options they’ve got up front.
That’s pleased Marsch, who pushed his team to be more aggressive offensively after a recent 0-0 draw vs. Côte d'Ivoire, something they took to heart in this Honduras match.
“We were unsatisfied with the Côte d’Ivoire game, not from a result or from how we managed it, but from the perspective of being the aggressors, we felt that we backed down,” Marsch said. “It was maybe the first time that we played an equal in terms of athleticism and aggression and that kind of hit us like ‘Woah, they're athletic and they're fast’, and I said, ‘Yeah, that's why we play that way, because we want teams to feel that way about us’.
“But, if we play a team like that, our reaction shouldn't be to put the brakes on, it should be to put the foot on the gas, so we wanted to make sure that, knowing that Honduras is an athletic team, that we that we were going to get back to setting the tone physically and with the pace that we play at, and we were able to do that all over the pitch.”
“Sometimes people want to say that I'm a pressing coach, what are my possession tactics and this and that, but the goal is to create a well-rounded team that understands in all moments what their roles are.”
Balancing short and long-term goals:
While it felt like Canada’s win vs. Honduras was quite seismic, however, given how dominant they were and the history between the two, at the end of the day, it’s a small step for Canada towards their main goal right now.
That, of course, is to win the Gold Cup, snapping a 25-year major trophy drought, which would be significant for this program’s growth ahead of the World Cup next summer.
This opening game win could prove to be the catalyst that powers them towards success, showing why many have pegged them as Gold Cup favourites, or could be a footnote on a disappointing tournament - it’s up to Canada to decide which outcome they prefer.
The good news? That’s not lost on this group, either, which perhaps further explains why they went straight back to business the day after this win - it’s a sign that their focus lies on doing what it takes to lift a trophy in a few weeks.
“It’s good to have a performance like that yesterday, but things can change quickly,” Cyle Larin said on Wednesday. “We have to focus on the next game and keep building off that. We know we're favourites, we have the quality and the ability we have, but in football, anything can happen, so you’ve got to take it game by game and perform each game at the same level to get to the finals and do something special.”
Gold Cup favourites? 😅
— OneSoccer (@onesoccer) June 17, 2025
Nope, say Jesse Marsch and Jonathan David – the #CanMNT 🇨🇦 have to prove something in Concacaf, and that only comes with silverware 🏆 pic.twitter.com/QuTbamjaD0
They know that if they’re to win this Gold Cup, a lot more intense training sessions await, which these Canadian players won’t mind.
While Canada has a main goal of winning the tournament, they’ve also made it clear that they’ve got some important objectives to tick off along the way, and one is to integrate more players into the fold and to continue to expand their depth, which is where training becomes so important.
When seeing how much someone like De Fougerolles has progressed in the last 12 months, it makes you excited to see what this environment can do for Jamie Knight-Lebel, Nathan Saliba, Jayden Nelson, Daniel Jebbison and Sigur, the six players 22 and under in this Gold Cup squad.
Along with Promise David, who is 23 but has single-digit caps like those other six, Marsch will want to keep pushing that group, who will be hungry to provide competition for the older and more established players also in this squad. Given the performances that De Fougerolles, Sigur, Saliba and David all put in against Honduras, with the latter three all scoring, Canada’s certainly on the right track, with Marsch so far pushing the right buttons when it comes to his youngsters.
“I think for me, he's talked to me a lot, he's given me a lot of advice as a young player,” De Fougerolles offered. “I think that’s really important, he’s also shown confidence in me, he's always talking to me about what he thinks I can do better, and what I'm doing well. And that helps me, that belief he shows in me gives me confidence to play on the pitch and not be afraid to make mistakes and play my natural game.”
Now, the big challenge for Marsch will be to find out how to find balance in his roster going forward. That’s the flipside of creating all of this depth - while it benefits the players, who are pushing each other to new heights, someone has to pick a starting 11 for each match, and then choose five subs to complement them, which is no easy task when you’ve got 20+ players deserving of starts.
Nobody megs coach 🙅🤣
— CANMNT (@CANMNT_Official) June 15, 2025
Aucune toilette sur le coach 🙅🤣
🎟️: https://t.co/fwQ45uW0wu#CANMNT pic.twitter.com/StVr8iXvNN
If done correctly, the right squad and team selection can push Canada to new heights, as the game vs. Honduras showed. If done wrong, however, it can make this team look disjointed - no easy task.
Because of that, Marsch will look to strike a balance between rewarding those who are earning opportunities, figuring out what works best for his tactical identity, and, of course, planning based on what the opponent offers.
“We use different players for different kinds of games, but we try not to be so clever that we're ignoring the combination of what we think when we can be at our best,” Marsch mused. “Then, if we're doing things right with five subs, we can put five more weapons on the pitch - in the 60th minute, when we've pushed the game at a high level and started to tire them out, we can bring in more weapons.”
“That’s what I tell them, the goal is that every time we play a team, they’re going, ‘What, this guy's coming on, and now that guy's coming on’. We have incredible weapons with this group, and we’ve got to keep them all engaged and keep them believing in in the collective unit, and in this idea of rotation, starting one game or coming off the bench, being ready for this game, being ready here, even if I don't play, train hard, be ready for the next match.”
“I've got to feed their hunger the right way, I can't just sit guys on the bench for a whole tournament, I've got to give them opportunities.”
In the meantime, however, that competition isn’t going away anytime soon. Just look at recent comments from Nelson as an example of what the next while looks like for this Canadian team - every training session will be a version of the Hunger Games, where the best will be left standing.
Only that instead of pushing to have one left standing, it’ll be all about ensuring that the entire squad benefits from that battle - much like they did vs. Honduras.
"If the World Cup is not in your vision, in your future, what are you even doing as a player and a fan of this team?” Nelson told TSN's Matthew Scianitti last week. "We're all fighting for spots...it's like the Hunger Games, to put the best men forward.”
