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CanMNT to play World Cup tune-up friendlies vs. Qatar & Uruguay in Vienna

Canada Soccer announced on Wednesday that, in preparation for the 2022 FIFA World Cup, the Canadian men’s national team will play friendly matches this September against Qatar and Uruguay.

Both contests are set to take place in Vienna, Austria, where Canada will face Qatar on Friday, Sept. 23, before taking on Uruguay on Tuesday, Sept. 26.

Qatar, the hosts of the upcoming World Cup, will be Canada’s first non-Concacaf opponent since 2020, and their first match against an Asian Football Confederation side since 2016. Qatar currently sit 49th in the FIFA World Rankings, six spots back of 43rd-ranked Canada.

Led by Spanish coach Félix Sánchez, Qatar are the defending AFC Asian Cup champions, having won it in 2019. They also competed in the 2021 Concacaf Gold Cup as invitees, advancing to the semifinals and defeating both Honduras and El Salvador along the way.

As hosts, Qatar were seeded into Group A for the World Cup (their first appearance in the tournament), where they will take on the Netherlands, Ecuador, and Senegal.

Uruguay, meanwhile, will be Canada’s first South American opponent since 2014, marking just the second time these sides have met (the last being a 3-1 win for the Uruguayans in Miami before the 1986 World Cup).

Currently ranked 13th in the world, Uruguay — helmed by manager Diego Alonso and likely featuring star players like Edinson Cavani, Darwin Núñez, and Luis Suárez — are two-time World Cup champions, in 1930 and 1950, and they’ve won the Copa America 15 times, most recently in 2011.

In CONMEBOL World Cup qualifying for 2022, Uruguay finished third in the 10-team table behind just Brazil and Argentina. This fall in Qatar, they’ll be in Group H alongside Portugal, Ghana, and South Korea, hoping to improve on their run to the quarterfinals at the 2018 World Cup.

“We have an opportunity to experience two FIFA World Cup opponents within a similar time frame as a FIFA World Cup schedule, so these two matches will provide our players and staff with a chance to rehearse our on- and off-the-field processes and systems aligned to the competition’s three-day turnaround,” said Canada coach John Herdman in a statement. “With the second match against Uruguay, it will be a genuine tier-one test given the depth and quality of their players which gives us an opportunity to evaluate our squad and our approach.”

Holding the September camp in Europe should help alleviate some of the travel burden on Canada’s players based at European clubs, who will be in the thick of their own seasons at that point of the year before leagues pause in mid-November. This will be the first time the men’s national team has travelled outside of the Concacaf region since John Herdman’s first camp with the squad in 2018, when they travelled to Spain to play New Zealand in a friendly.

These matches will serve as preparation for Herdman and co. as they look ahead to Canada’s first appearance at the men’s World Cup since 1986. They’ll begin that quest officially in their first Group F match against Belgium on Nov. 23, before taking on Croatia (Nov. 27) and Morocco (Dec. 1).

The men’s national team convened most recently in June, when they defeated Curaçao 4-0 and lost 2-1 to Honduras in a pair of Concacaf Nations League fixtures. That camp was their first since March, when they officially secured qualification to the 2022 World Cup and finished first place in Concacaf’s eight-team qualification table.