Canada men's soccer falls to Italy in competition opener
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July 2, 2015
Canada men's soccer falls to Italy in competition opener
GWANGU, South Korea (Team Canada) – The Canadian men’s soccer team opened pool play with a 5-2 loss to Italy on Thursday morning at the 28th Summer Universiade.
GWANGU, South Korea (Team Canada) – The Canadian men’s soccer team opened pool play with a 5-2 loss to Italy on Thursday morning at the 28th Summer Universiade.
Team Canada website: http://english.cis-sic.ca/universiade/summer/2015/index
Gwangju 2015 website: www.gwangju2015.com
Team Canada Twitter: @CDNUniversiade
Midfielder Marco Visintin (University of British Columbia) scored both of Canada’s goals in the second half but the red and white were unable to recover from a disappointing first half.
Italy scored four unanswered goals in the first 45-minutes of play by capitalizing on their speed and ball control in the Canadian zone. Biagio Meccariello scored a pair of goals while Tommaso Biasci and Leonardo Morosini notched the other two.
“I am disappointed with our first half performance today,” said head coach Keith Mason from the University of Guelph. “We worked hard to get here and had two positive games heading into the tournament, but we let the occasion distract us and it cost us in the end.”
Canada opened the second half with a higher tempo and quicker ball movement, which paid off with Visintin’s first goal in the 68th minute. They continued to challenge the Italians for the remainder of the game which resulted in some yellow cards and Visintin’s second goal that came off of a penalty kick. Italy’s fifth goal was also scored from the spot.
“We had a good talk at halftime and got the team refocused,” Mason continued. “We told the boys to go out and win the final 45 minutes and that’s exactly what they did.”
Mason’s squad will now have two days of rest before squaring off against Chinese Taipei on July 5th at 4:30 p.m. (3:30 a.m. ET). Chinese Taipei is coming off a 3-1 loss to the host team of South Korea.
“We learned a valuable lesson today and that we can’t afford to play the way we did if we want to win the next game,” Mason said. “We need to get our confidence back up and play the way we did in today’s second half. If we do that, I know we can win our next game and advance in this tournament.