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Canada’s captain Alphonso Davies’s injury woes have been mounting this season and he has already missed friendlies against Iceland and Tunisia in March due to a hamstring strain.
Bayern Munich’s Alphonso Davies, who suffered an injured hamstring during the Champions League semi-final, was among the 32 players named to Canada’s final training camp roster ahead of this year’s World Cup, Canada Soccer said.
The group of players will train in Charlotte, North Carolina all week before Canada announce their official World Cup roster on Friday.
“These are the final days before we announce the squad that will represent Canada at a home World Cup, and the excitement in this group is real,” Canada head coach Jesse Marsch said in a statement. “We feel the momentum building across our country and we are calm, focused, and ready for this moment.”
Davies’s injury woes have been mounting this season and he has already missed friendlies against Iceland and Tunisia in March due to a hamstring strain.
His latest setback came during the Champions League semi-final second leg against Paris St Germain nearly three weeks ago.
Canada Soccer said players will report to camp in line with communications with their respective clubs and medical staffs, with player fitness as the priority, whether reporting in Charlotte or thereafter.
Following the training camp, Canada will head to Edmonton to host Uzbekistan in a June 1 friendly before facing Ireland in Montreal on June 5 ahead of the World Cup. Canada open their World Cup on June 12 against Bosnia and Herzegovina in Toronto followed by games in Vancouver against Qatar (June 18) and Switzerland (June 24).
After a decade-long march up the FIFA rankings, co-hosts Canada are hoping to crown their rise by claiming a piece of World Cup history in Group B – a first ever win.
In two previous appearances at the World Cup – the 1986 finals in Mexico and the 2022 tournament in Qatar – Canada have a perfect record of six defeats from six matches.
Canada’s American coach Marsch insists his team, which also includes Juventus’s Jonathan David, have set their sights high. “We want to win the World Cup,” Marsch said last year. “That may sound ridiculous, but why would we go into any tournament at any time and think, ‘Yeah, let’s see how we do, and maybe we get one win. Or can we score a goal?’”
While outright victory remains monumentally unlikely, Canada’s results under Marsch suggest that winning a first World Cup game is well within reach. The Canadians surprised many by reaching the semi-finals of the Copa America in 2024, where they only narrowly lost on penalties to Uruguay in the third-place playoff.
The biggest challenge to Canada’s group campaign is likely to come from Switzerland, who are returning for their sixth straight World Cup. The Swiss have a consistent record of navigating the group stages – reaching the second rounds in 2022, 2018 and 2014 – but have never won a World Cup knockout game.
They fared better at the 2024 Euros, eliminating defending champions Italy in the last 16 before suffering a penalty shoot-out defeat to England.
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