All Whites fall to Canada after close contest

Had Chris Wood, Winston Reid, Ryan Thomas, Stefan Marinovic and, well the list goes on, been available, the All Whites might have kicked off their new era under coach Fritz Schmid with a win.

However, due to various injuries and club commitments, it was an inexperienced and new-look squad that took the field against Canada at an empty Pinatar Arena yesterday. They failed to take their chances and lost 1-0.

But for the opening 45 minutes, things were looking promising with New Zealand coming agonisingly close to scoring on three occasions, Michael McGlinchey hitting the post twice within a 40-second period before Jeremy Brockie had a goal disallowed for offside.

Those missed opportunities came back to bite them, as Canada eventually made the gamewinning breakthrough when cap- tain Dejan Jakovic sent a long ball through to Tosaint Ricketts, and the Toronto FC forward used his speed to get in behind Sam Brotherton before hitting a half volley past goalkeeper Max Crocombe in the 54th minute.

‘‘We have to admit that it’s a defeat that hurts,’’ said Schmid, after his first match in charge.

‘‘We should have at least been up by one goal in the first half. We hit two posts, we had a goal not allowed due to offside, which I can’t criticise.

‘‘But considering we had a very young team on the pitch and we are facing an experienced squad I must say, although it hurts and maybe the players will be disappointed, there were lots of positives in this game and they realised how much we can really achieve.’’

Although Schmid was disappointed to lose his first game as All Whites coach, the score was irrelevant in the grand scheme of things as he was missing 10 frontline players.

Instead he used the 90 minute hitout, and the few training sessions earlier in the week, to assess a wider group, many of whom were simply fighting for future selection.