Floro has nothing to show for 3-year tenure
• To his players, assistants and Canada’s l ong- s uffering s upporters, coach Benito Floro was the best and the worst — a bumbling, senile footballing genius who got as much or more wrong than he did right during his three- year tenure with the Canadian men’s team.
Floro’s contract l i kely won’t be extended following Canada’s World Cup qualifying exit Tuesday night in Vancouver, where a 3-1 win over El Salvador wasn’t enough to secure passage to CONCACAF’s final qualify- ing round. And now, three years after CSA president Victor Montagliani named Stephen Hart’s successor, Floro’s tenure effectively ends just as mysteriously as it began — with more questions than answers, and with nothing to show.
The appointment always seemed slightly rash. Bringing in an outsider was perplexing, considering the intricacies of soccer within Canada. There were alarm bells at Floro’s introductory press event.
“Football is the same in Canada, in Japan and in Europe,” Floro told reporters back in 2013. “It is the same for all countries.”
In essence, Floro’s guiding principle would be Canada’s eventual undoing during this World Cup qualifying cycle.
The 64-year-old was stubborn in his insistence of how the game should be played. He was almost too tactical for his own good. Early in his tenure, those inside the Canadian setup questioned his methods and training sessions — which seemed convoluted and outdated.
Multiple veteran players were miffed during an October, 2013, camp prior to a 3- 0 loss to Australia. There were linguistic issues, as the Spanish bench boss wasn’t well-versed in English. As of Tuesday night, his post-game answers were still extremely difficult to decipher.
And t hings continued to unravel throughout the Hart- to- Floro transition, leading up to last summer’s Gold Cup, where for the first time, the Canadians finally seemed to have a defensive identity. They just couldn’t score during a Gold Cup that saw them fall flat.
But that led to yet another series of bizarre statements from Canada’s head coach, who after being asked to explain Canada’s lack of offensive production, reminded a local reporter that Costa Rica hadn’t scored, “either.” Yet, the 0- 0 final was all the Ticos needed to advance.
Inside the dressing room more and more players — Floro’s disciples, you could say — were beginning to believe in their new manager. Captain Julian de Guzman couldn’t say enough good things about a man who’d given him every opportunity to see out one more qualifying phase.
“Benito came from a very rich culture of football,” de Guzman told Postmedia. “He’s very wise, very clever. A lot of our players are beginning to understand now where he’s coming from. Before, it was like a circus. They had no clue what he meant or was saying.
“What Benito has done for this program from then until now, a lot of players respect what he means ... A lot of players still don’t understand where he’s coming from.”
Which makes it difficult to place blame following what was a horrendous ending to a qualifying cycle that began so brightly with an impressive win over Honduras and a quality road point in El Salvador. Things appeared to be coming together. Les Rouges had a clearly defined defensive identity and a counter-attacking philosophy that brought the best out of Cyle Larin, Tosaint Ricketts and Junior Hoilett, who Floro also was credited with bringing aboard mid-cycle.
But when back- to- back qualifiers with Mexico rolled around months later, everything fell apart. Floro inexplicably deployed a highpressing philosophy in a 3- 0 loss to Mexico, allowing El Tri to pass through Canada’s lines with ridiculous ease.
In last Friday’s 2-1 — and it should have been worse — loss in Honduras, Floro doubled down on his pressing philosophy, refusing to sit in after going a goal up midway through the first half.
Which brings us full circle. Floro was stubborn in his refusal to construct tactics that played to Canada’s strengths — work ethic, defensive resolve, speed.
And the punishment, once again, is three years of irrelevancy.