Canada Scrapes 1-0 Win Over South Africa in Underwhelming World Cup Match

An expanded World Cup was always likely to lead to this; and the best that can be said for Canada’s 1-0 win over South Africa is that fans were spared extra time and penalties. Stephen Eustaquio’s stoppage-time strike aside, there was little to commend the match to anyone other than the most diehard supporter, and the 90-plus minutes of football could be exhibit A in any case against keeping 48 teams in the future, let alone adding more. Still, at least Canada’s continued involvement has given the co-hosts something to shout about, until either Morocco or the Netherlands bring them crashing back down to Earth in the next round. In a rare moment of quiet, that’s all there is to start the week, with Brazil and Japan, and the aforementioned clash between the ‘African champions’ and the Dutch, likely to be much better examples of the beautiful game when the action resumes at 1am on Tuesday (HKT). Not that Canada boss Jesse Marsch cares, and in the typically understated way of North Americans had some interesting things to say after his side’s win, which is where we’ll start this brief look at what happened while you were sleeping. Canadian heroes