PLAYER ANALYSIS: Is Santiago Lopez ready for a CanMNT senior call-up after U-20 showings?
Jesse Marsch has complimented Canada's recruitment process at every opportunity - and he wants to be a part of it!
The hunt for new talent is on, as Jesse Marsch reveals his strategy for recruiting dual nationals to play for the #CanMNT 🇨🇦 pic.twitter.com/ZDAaXj2DCt
— OneSoccer (@onesoccer) July 16, 2024
The prospect of recruiting dual nationals has come up considerably early in his tenure. Out of a relatively quiet spell come a number of potential battles in the coming year, from your Promise Davids to your Luka Kulenovices.
And then you have Santiago Lopez.
The Concacaf U-20 Championship is a pretty good litmus test for determining who is and who isn't ready for more. There's a lot of obfuscation at this level that makes cobbling teams together a nightmare for youth coaches. There will always be dual nationals looming over us at some daunting European academy who might leverage our fear into a flight to Mexico. Once you have the gang together, though, pedigree has a way of falling to the wayside. Are you what you were supposed to be? Unironically, can you do it on a rainy night in Irapuato?
Santiago Lopez sure can
Santiago Lopez won't be so easy to write about.
It's fun telling stories about players, and exciting, zippy players in particular. If we had a better sample size, and a full FBref chart, I suspect Lopez would be a good ball progressor unafraid to release into advanced positions. But Lopez is an academy guy at Pumas UNAM who's made two appearances in all of eight minutes for their first team.
And so, we should keep in mind, there's no marrying numbers to video here. It's all video, though happily, the video we have is pretty good:
GOLAZO 🇨🇦
— OneSoccer (@onesoccer) July 21, 2024
Santiago Lopez, take a bow! 😎
The #CanMNT U-20s go up 1-0 over Honduras as the Pumas UNAM forward scores a fantastic free-kick 🎯
🔴 Watch #CanM20 on OneSoccer pic.twitter.com/AUGwsK6uLw
If you haven't watched the U-20s, by the way, yes, that's really the field we've played on, and yes, that's Estadio Sergio León Chávez in Irapuato, Mexico – the stadium Canada played two matches in at the '86 World Cup! It's taken a drubbing since then I'm afraid.
But it hasn't slowed Lopez down one bit. Keep in mind, if you're gonna be a real winger, it's almost essential that you're gonna be able to make torching runs like this at the youth level where you take on the appearance of a tabletop hockey player with preset moving slots. Lopez has the ability to hem himself to the outside until it's convenient to cut in.
Lopez is still slight and lanky, but he consistently shows a remarkable ability to power through defenders when he needs to. There have been a number of times this tournament where yes, perhaps, he could've made some attempt to play the ball centrally, but wow, did he ever do a good job to get himself in that position.
That isn't to say he hasn't shown a deft playmaking ability near the net. Pitch conditions have robbed some pretty plays of their prettiness, but in his assist against Honduras, he powers through the defender all the same.
A look at Canada U-20's second goal last night, scored by Vancouver Whitecaps 2's Myles Morgan.
— Canadian Soccer Talk (@CANFutbolTalk) July 21, 2024
Unfortunately for 🇨🇦, two first-half goals weren't enough as Honduras would claw back an equalizer at the death. #CanM20 faces the Dominican Republic on Tuesday. 🚨
📹: CONCACAF pic.twitter.com/VuSx1jvNJc
Is that play almost more remarkable than the goal off the set piece? Lopez has a penchant for spinning into space, and there, he leverages the momentum to fall into the ball and find a poorly marked Myles Morgan. It's something of a quirk we often see on his first touch - man just likes to spin.
If it works, it works - it's a clever little way to get away from defenders in tight spaces if you can pull it off. The clips I mined out from their OneSoccer streams tend towards called fouls, which is the best highlight marker you can find in Concacaf's provided match reports. I wouldn't say Santi has blistering pace, but he has a way of making it seem like he does. He uses his agility on the ball as a threat that he might skin you. Breton catches Lopez here, but he takes the bait as soon as he turns away:
No, he's not a rocket, but he sort of takes off like one. A lot of other fouls - and there were quite a lot of them - came off the counter-attack.
The trend here, I think, is Lopez's ability to track the ball through a maze of legs. When you're tangled up in defenders the way Lopez has been so many times on this rained out pitch, the most appealing thing might be to wallop the ball up the field some place less threatening. But Lopez ignores that he's playing on a bog, worming between defenders who are at a distinct advantage when the game is this slow. He finds a way to play his game, no matter what.
He can, in fact, do it on a rainy night in Irapuato.
Dual-national mania time?
I'm just about convinced this one's gonna be a fight.
Lopez was born in Mexico, but spent six of his formative years in Oakville. Our record isn't great when it comes to Mexican-Canadian attackers growing up in the GTA, and unlike Flores, Lopez has spent most of his life in Mexico. He represented them at the u18 level. Next up will be u23s - theirs play regularly where ours haven't in three-and-a-half years. Maybe I'm pessimistic, but it might take an early senior cap to keep him in the program, if he is indeed worth keeping in the program in the long term.
Our upcoming September friendlies have been advertised as stand-ins for World Cup Qualifiers we won't get to play. The way dual nationals are springing up, you have to wonder whether a mostly domestic camp with (semi-cynical) calls extended to dual nationals might be the way to go.
