Canada Dominates in 4-1 Win Over St. Lucia in World Cup Qualifier

This article was last updated on April 16, 2022

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Josh Simpson Paces Canadian Attack with a Brace

Canada put aside its disappointing run in this summer’s Gold Cup and started its World Cup qualifying campaign with a dominating 4-1 win over St. Lucia on Friday night.

The Canadian attack was led by Josh Simpson who scored a brace – with a tally in each half – while Dwayne De Rosario and substitute Will Johnson added the other goals. The St. Lucia goal was scored by Paul Tremain in the first half on a long distance strike and gave a brief glimmer of hope for the island nation.

Just to demonstrate how dominant Canada was the red and white outshot St. Lucia 30-6, including 15-1 in direct shots on goal. Despite the fact the play was so one-sided Canadian Head Coach Stephen Hart was still disappointed with how the team started the match and how it went against his gameplan.

“The first half, I think we wanted to play the game in 15 minutes and get it over with,” said Hart. “If we were a little patient, show a little more composure in and around the box we would have gotten the scores. Basically that’s all we said in the dressing room you can’t just be throwing yourself forward and not thinking about the end product of how’s its going to finish. It was marginally better in the second half — we got the goals. We’re just happy to start with a win.”

Hart was also frustrated with how the St. Lucian players kept falling to the pitch and disrupted the flow of the game for his team. The referee had to stop the match several times as a result and had to call for the stretcher on five separate occasions. It looked very amateurish and even the fans got involved by booing the St. Lucia team as well as giving the stretcher crew an ovation whenever a player was carried off the field. 

"I thought in the second half we had a nice rhythm, nice ball movement but the game could never get into any rhythm – the game seldom played," said Hart. "It’s not my players, I just thought every time we seemed to be finding our rhythm and moving the ball well the game would be stopped. It was frustrating."

Added midfielder Atiba Hutchinson, “Yeah, you really don’t want to think about it too much but some of them maybe get cramps, maybe they don’t train daily. But you can’t really think about that too much, we have to focus on ourselves and keep pushing for a win.”

Finding the Net

Canada had a very quick start and came out firing against a St. Lucia team that was taken by surprise and looked unprepared. The first five minutes saw the Canadians deep inside the St. Lucia end and creating several great scoring chances. Canada was able to open the scoring in the fifth minute when De Rosario found Simpson open and passed across the box. The ball went behind the St. Lucian defenders who were rushing to get back and Simpson had some luck as his shot went off the keeper and a defender before going into the net.

However, less than a minute later St. Lucia struck back quickly to tie the game at 1-1. Tremain cut inside and from 30 yards out let go a blast that went between two defenders and beat a diving Canadian keeper Lars Hirschfeld just inside the far post. The pace of the Canadian attack dissipated considerably after the St. Lucia goal but the team were still able to create chances but simply lacked the finish. Meanwhile, St. Lucia looked dreadful in all aspects of its game, especially on defence and were very lucky to get out of the half tied at 1-1.

Canada continued its attacking ways in the second half, but it took some luck to get back on the scoreboard. In the 50th minute a Canadian cross hit the hand of a defender and the referee quickly pointed to the spot to signal a penalty kick. De Rosario made the St. Lucian keeper Iran Cassius guess the wrong way as he calmly shot the ball inside the right post to put Canada back up at 2-1.

Canada made it 3-1 when Hutchinson made a great breakaway pass to Simpson who slotted the ball past Cassius to give the home side a two goal lead. Then in the 90th minute, substitute Will Johnson was able to knock in a shot while falling down at the side of the net to make it 4-1 for Canada.

Canada will play its next game on Tuesday when it travels to Bayamon, Puerto Rico for its second match with kickoff at 8 p.m. ET.

Click HERE to see more pictures from this game.