Canada’s road to Rio is about to begin.
On Thursday evening, the Canadian men’s U-23 team will kick off their Olympic qualifying journey against one of the favourites of this year’s CONCACAF Olympic Qualifying tournament.
They also happen to be one of Canada’s fiercest rivals.
Canada, whose roster features Whitecaps FC striker Caleb Clarke, WFC2 defender Jackson Farmer, and Whitecaps FC Residency graduate Ben Fisk, will meet the U.S. tonight at 6 p.m. PT in Kansas City, KS.
BROADCAST ALERT:All of Canada's matches at the CONCACAF Men's Olympic Qualifiers will be broadcast live nationwide on TLN & streamed oncanadasoccer.comvia CanadaSoccerTV. To find TLN in your area, visithttp://tlntv.com/channel-listings.
Though the Americans are one of the driving forces in the CONCACAF region, Canada has some great memories of success at this age group. Almost four years ago, Canada went into Nashville, Tennessee and came away with a shock 2-0 win as the Americans were eliminated in the group stage of the competition while Canada made it to the tournament’s semifinals.
Only Samuel Piette returns from that squad in 2012 that beat the Americans and there’s nothing he’d like more than to pull off some drama once again.
“For sure we want to repeat what we did three years ago against the USA,” Piette said this week. “The most important thing is to try and get the win and we want to go for the three points here.”
From eight remaining CONCACAF nations, two or three will qualify for Rio 2016. Both semifinal winners on October 10 will qualify for Rio 2016 while the third-place winner on October 13 will advance to an intercontinental playoff against Colombia.
Canada U-23 Olympic qualifying schedule:
Thursday, October 1 vs. USA (6 p.m. PT)
Saturday, October 3 vs. Panama (11:30 a.m. PT)
Tuesday, October 6 vs. Cuba (4 p.m. PT)
