Canada’s scrappiness on display in this year’s Copa America | The Cooligans

Yahoo Sports soccer contributor Christian Polanco and CBS Sports Golazo's Christine Cupo discuss Canada's shocking performances in this year's Copa América. Hear the full conversation on the “The Cooligans” podcast - and subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you listen.

Video Transcript

Canada defeats Venezuela in penalties and move on.

When Alexis asked me, how do I think Canada is going to do a Copa America?

You know what I said?

I said they are not going to win one game.

This is a huge win.

Obviously, Schaffer be getting the early goal against Venezuela and then also the mistake, the goal from Solomon Rondon, obviously unbelievable and to hit the ball, I think it was like 3040 yards or something like that over, over Crepe, but there's, there was something, you know, you were talking about the Canada back line, but there's something to even the midfield.

There's a confidence these dudes are like, they're no joke.

I feel like we saw these early rumblings of a new Canada and they were far more quality than we've seen in the past.

And I feel like we've seen this probably over the last very few years where they seem to have made great strides that I don't know what had been going on, especially with the managerial shift, right?

Like obviously very challenging to teach at the uh to teach to coach at the national level.

Um because you are kind of, I call it babysitter, right?

Because like wherever the players are at club, essentially, like that's mom and dad because they're impacting your day to day, your training, your everything else that goes into making you and the player that you are and then you get these scant minute with, you know, your national team coach and you hope to show out, but like you get such little time to imprint upon players, we know what Jesse Mars Mars is, um record had been for club, but you know, what was it going to be, you know, for a first team?

There's a, a scrappiness that I think we're not sort of used to, especially when Canada plays uh South American teams because you just assume they're gonna be kind of like the, the, you know, outclassed in, in the quality, impressive uh win for, uh for Canada.

They end up playing Argentina.

Next.

Can't imagine it'll go too well for Canada there, but if they can hold their own, uh anything can happen.