CanMNT reveals squad for pre-World Cup Bahrain friendly

2022-11-02

Charlie O’Connor-Clarke, Digital Content Editor (@charliejclarke)

Canada Soccer revealed on Wednesday the men’s national team squad for the upcoming camp in Bahrain prior to the 2022 FIFA World Cup in Qatar.

In total, 21 players have been called into the squad by head coach John Herdman, with the majority of them being North America-based players whose club seasons have wrapped up already. Major contributors from World Cup Qualifying squads attending this camp include Toronto FC’s Jonathan Osorio, Richie Laryea, and Mark-Anthony Kaye, as well as CF Montréal’s Alistair Johnston, Kamal Miller, and Samuel Piette.

A few former Canadian Premier League players were named to this group as they vie for inclusion in Herdman’s final World Cup roster, in TFC (and former Pacific) defender Lukas MacNaughton, as well as Montréal (and former Cavalry) centre-back Joel Waterman. Goalkeeper James Pantemis of CF Montréal also spent the brief 2020 CPL campaign on loan at Valour FC.

Canada will play Bahrain — ranked 85th in the world — in a friendly match on Friday, Nov. 11 in the Bahraini capital of Manama. Herdman explained on Wednesday in a virtual press conference that this initial friendly will be important to his staff in assessing the match fitness of certain Major League Soccer-based players who haven’t played in several weeks. The coach still has several squad selection decisions to make over the next week or so, as World Cup-bound teams must submit their 26-man rosters by Nov. 13.

“This camp was designed for those players to have a competitive international match and a period of time in desert conditions to acclimate and to see where the players are at,” Herdman told media. “We’ve been monitoring and tracking players, they’re on individual programs — daily training environments where you’re assessing numbers — but you need to get a fingertip feel as a coach, you need to see them competing in a meaningful game to really understand where they’re at before any final selection can be made.

“We have players returning from injuries, we have players that haven’t played competitively since Oct. 8. This group probably have never been together before, so it’s definitely going to be a learning experience through this five, six-day camp we’re going to have in Bahrain, but very valuable for us in our preparation.”

Following the camp in Bahrain, Les Rouges will have one final pre-World Cup friendly against 24th-ranked Japan on Nov. 17, to be played in Dubai. From there, Canada will head to Qatar for the World Cup, which they’ll kick off on Wednesday, Nov. 23 against Belgium.

Canada’s other Group F matches in Qatar will be on Sunday, Nov. 27 against Croatia and Thursday, Dec. 1 against Morocco.

The full squad for this friendly match is below.

Canada’s Squad