Canada’s men’s football team first participated in the World Cup in Mexico in 1986, but exited the group stage without scoring a single goal. Now in Qatar, Canada is back in the World Cup after 36 years, and in a country dominated by snow and ice sports, it seems as if football is not taken seriously by Canadians. Canada was once ranked outside the top 100 in the FIFA rankings. But in recent years, a professional football system and a deep youth training system have allowed their football career to rise again.

In this year’s World Cup qualifying, Canada surpassed the United States and Mexico to advance to the World Cup in the first place group, as the consensus of the World Cup dark horse team, Canada’s most outstanding feature is their defensive counter-attack. Most of the time, head coach Hedman chooses a 4–2–3–1 formation, but against some particularly strong opponents (such as Belgium and Croatia in the group stage), they will also consider switching to a 4–4–2 formation. If you look at Canada’s games, you will find that Canada does not like to control the ball, their possession rate in the World Cup is generally not high, more often than not they will choose to give up possession to the opponent, relying on excellent back defense to break the ball and quickly organize a defensive counter-attack is the main means of Canada’s scoring.

Canada is in the same group as Belgium, Croatia and Morocco in this year’s World Cup, and it won’t be easy for them to break into the knockout stage, but the World Cup is never short of miracles.

Canada’s passive skill: defensive counterattack: every game Canada has less possession than the opponent and wins the game can get an extra airdrop