Almost two weeks ago, Canada’s men’s U-17 team had to come back from behind twice to pick up a win over Costa Rica. But with a spot in the FIFA U-17 World Cup Chile 2015 on the line they weren’t able to pull it off a second time as their World Cup hopes were dashed on Sunday.
This time around, it was merely a case of Costa Rica converting their chances and Canada not being able to capitalize on the offence they created.
The Costa Ricans also had a great deal of good fortune as a bumpy surface led to an unfortunate own goal as Costa Rica won 3-0 at the Estadio Franciso Morazan in San Pedro Sula, Honduras.
Luis Hernandez and Andy Reyes scored in the first half and got their third through a Kosovar Sadiki own goal in the second half
“It’s a great learning moment for our kids and for our program. But we created chances, which I was happy about,” said head coach Sean Fleming. “But why didn’t we finish—it’s one of those things. We had several chances to shoot in the first half that for whatever reason, we started passing instead of shooting the ball.”
The loss wraps up a tournament where Canada came out strong and were unbeaten through the first four games of the tournament. It was the last two games that tripped up the team, though, as they lost the two games where a World Cup berth was on the line.
It was a grueling couple of weeks as Canada had six games in just over a few weeks. At this age, everything is a learning experience and there’s no doubt that the players will put these experiences in their memory banks and come back stronger down the line.
“I’m very disappointed, obviously,” said Fleming. “It’s more the goals we gave up that were easily avoidable. I give great credit it our kids, though. I’m so proud of them. They stayed to the task for the whole 90 minutes and it’s football."
Scoring summary
18' - COS - Luis Hernandez
27' - COS - Andy Reye
74' - CAN - Kosovar Sakiki (own goal)
Canada
1.Luciano Trasolini; 2.Kadin Chung, 5.Kosovar Sakiki, 19.Gabriel Boakye, 12.Thomas Mickoski; 6.Munir Saleh, 10.Tristan Borges, 8.Harrison Patton (16.Dante Campbell 46'), 9.Ballou Tabla; 7.Duwayne Ewart (15.Cyrus Rollocks 58'), 14.Daniel Sagno (17.Terran Campbell 75')
