Marsch confident Canada will generate offence, goals at World Cup

EDMONTON — 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’s team perform in a 2-0 win over Uzbekistan in Monday night’s international friendly.

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.

“There’s been a lot of talk that we haven’t scored goals from the run of play, understandingly so because we hadn’t,” Marsch told a post-match news conference. “But 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.”

Canada gave up three scoring chances in the first half but mostly kept Uzbekistan from mounting many serious threats in the second half.

“The more we do that I believe we have enough firepower and enough talent,” said Marsch. “So again, it’s 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.

“So, I think in the last, I don’t know, 11 games we’ve given up three goals. That’s an incredible record. If we can continue on that pace, we give ourselves a chance to have a good World Cup.”

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.

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’ status for the World Cup.

Davies did some lengthy jogging on the soggy Commonwealth Stadium field Monday and spent the game on the sidelines encouraging his teammates.

“It felt nice to get on the pitch and do some running,” said the Edmonton native. “We will have to see how everything goes in the next couple of days. We have to take it step by step.”

Marsch said that while Davies really wanted to be on the pitch Monday in front of his hometown fans, it’s important “that he is free, that he doesn’t feel pressured to come back.”

Mother Nature has not been kind to the men’s national team when it plays in Edmonton. The team’s 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.

The temperature was 11 C for Monday’s game that was played at Commonwealth Stadium in the midst of two days of steady rain that had the newly installed grass field waterlogged.

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.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published June 1, 2026.

John Korobanik, The Canadian Press