World Cup Qualifying: Canada visits St. Lucia (Updated)

Tomorrow evening at 6pm ET, the Canadian men's national team (CMNT) will be playing their third game of the second round of CONCACAF qualifying for the 2014 World Cup in Brazil. The game is being played down in St. Lucia, and Canada beat them in Toronto on the 2nd of September by a 4-1 scoreline. Canada won both of their qualifiers to date by scores of 4-1 and 3-0 (at Puerto Rico) and can eliminate St. Lucia with a win.

Unfortunately, the game is not being televised due to a lack of broadcast facilities at the source, but Canada Soccer will be tweeting a commentary of the game for people to follow along with. Rogers Sportsnet has sent down a small camera crew to do interviews and collect highlights to be shown later.


There are a number of news stories available (some of which I've tried to collect here), but the big bits of interest are the two young players that Canada's coach, Stephen Hart, has called up for Canada's next two games, Joseph Di Chiara (from Thornhill, Ontario), and Ashtone Morgan (an academy graduate for Toronto FC). Hart talked about the two players with Canada.com. Di Chiara has never been part of Canada's international camps previously, while Morgan played with the U23 team. CBC wrote about how Morgan and Di Chiara were able to take this step. Di Chiara is currently playing withFC Krylia Sovetov Samara in Russia, and earned his spot when Hart and his assistants watched some of his games on DVD according to TheChronicleHerald.ca.

Canada will be playing in a converted cricket stadium, originally built for the ICC World Cup several years ago when it was held in the Caribbean. Gerry Dobson of Rogers Sportsnet wrote an article about Canada's preparation in Fort Lauderdale and then a second about the facilities in St. Lucia. RedNation Online's Gavin Day traveled to St. Lucia and was able to take a tour of the stadium facilities. Duncan Fletcher of Waking The Red has looked at the players involved in the current camp, and questions Hart's decision when Kevin McKenna went down injured in advance of the trip, and wonders if Olivier Occean can be Canada's main centre forward.

In addition to these articles, Canada Soccer has been putting up a number of videos on their Youtube channel, including the team training in Florida and an interview with Tony Fonseca after the team arrived in St. Lucia.

Once this trip to St. Lucia is done, Canada will return home and will play Puerto Rico at BMO Field in Toronto next Tuesday (October 11) at 7pm. That game will be aired on Rogers Sportsnet One, and I'll be headed up to watch the game myself, to join Duncan and a number of the Voyageurs in supporting Canada!

Updates:

Canada Soccer just announced that there will be an audio stream of the St. Lucia game tomorrow night. Details and URL to be confirmed, but I'll be certain to post a link as soon as details are available!

Some other new stories include Canada Soccer's video of the team checking out the stadium, Gerry Dobson writing about the stadium and defensive issues, Rudi Schuller's preview for the MLS website, and Dave Rowaan from Waking the Red writing about broadcast issues.

Updated anew:

The link for the Canada game tonight? Audio only, but better than nothing!

Finally -- Canada Soccer has an app for the iPhone? Of course they do! Download it now!