Big chance for new recruits
Five Canadian players on SheBelieves Cup roster at first national team camp
Bev Priestman made quite the splash with the selection of her first roster as head coach of the Canadian women’s soccer team on Monday, widening the player pool for next month’s SheBelieves Cup squad.
Twenty-nine players will travel to Orlando next month for two weeks of preparation before the four-team tournament, which also includes the United States, Japan and Brazil. The roster will be whittled to 23 in the days before Canada opens against the U.S. on Feb. 18.
Five of those players have never been to a national team camp before: goalkeeper Rylee Foster, 22; defender Bianca StGeorges, 23; midfielders Samantha Chang, 20, and Jordyn Listro, 25; and striker Evelyne Viens, 23.
There is an expectation that fresh talent will get a look with the arrival of any new coach. After the departure of Kenneth Heiner-Moller, who left last summer, it was necessary.
Canada is closing in on a transition, with seven players — including Christine Sinclair and Diana Matheson — over the age of 32. At least some are expected to retire following this summer’s Olympics in Tokyo. The faces in camp have hardly changed since the last, less significant change this squad endured following the 2015 Women’s World Cup. The top 14 or 15 players have been predictable.
Priestman, hired in October, already sees a hunger in the newcomers — exactly what the squad needs.
“I think for any sort of winning team you have to have that level of competition for places,” Priestman said on a virtual conference call following Monday’s
roster announcement.
More competition for roster spots is a goal Canada Soccer needs to focus on, to keep pace with the rapid growth of women’s soccer in countries such as England and Spain.
Listro, who recently re-signed with the National Women’s Soccer League’s Orlando Pride, told the Star last fall that at 20 years old — fresh out of college and no longer involved in the national team’s plans after years in its youth system — she was lost when it came to pursuing her pro soccer aspirations. Persistence eventually got her in the door in Orlando, but other talented players have given up because clear pathways to the pro level don’t exist for more than a couple of dozen of the best. Even then, the road can be bumpy.
“The national team is top 10 in the world, but how much better could you be if you had a big pool of players, because you could be missing out all the time,” Listro said at the time.
The long-term fix would be a
domestic professional league, but that won’t help Priestman in the six months before the Olympics. So it is up to her to connect with every Canadian player who has the slightest chance of making the cut.
She plans to do that by keeping a close eye on Canada’s youth system and making sure every player in the pros or college is scouted regularly. Those who impress may be rewarded with call-ups.
It’s unrealistic to expect that all five new players will make the SheBelieves roster, or the Olympics. But the added competition should help to get the best out of the squad — which could very well include a couple more new faces in Tokyo.
“Any player that’s getting exposure in this first camp has absolutely nothing to lose … because they’ve been brought in for a reason,” Priestman said. “They’ve shown some attributes that I think this group needs, and so I’ve just sort of said to them, ‘Bring what it is that ... got you here.’ ”