2026-05-10 09:33:37

Jesse Marsch is keen for Canada to utilise home advantage at the World Cup.

The coach will lead the co-hosts at this summer’s tournament and is determined to win Group B – where Canada are pitted against Bosnia and Herzegovina, Qatar and Switzerland – so his team can continue playing matches on home soil in the knockout stages.

Marsch told FourFourTwo magazine: “The format of the tournament makes it very obvious for us what our goal is. If we advance out of the group but don’t win it, we have to go to the US. If we can win the group, we stay in Canada for potentially two knockout rounds.

“So our objective is really clear. We want to win the group and we want to keep on playing in Canada – we want to continue our dream of making a deep run in the tournament, by making sure we keep our home field advantage. To do that, we want to finish top of the group.”

Marsch feels that the Canadian public are aware that the country has a “good team” and believes that his players are capable of improving on their showing at the World Cup in 2022 – where they were eliminated from their group after losing all three games.

The former Leeds boss said: “Everybody’s starting to understand that we have a good team – and we don’t play at home very often. When we do, we’re very good.

“In 2022, the World Cup was new for so many of the guys, but now the team is a bit more seasoned and the expectations they have for themselves are higher. They took a lot of confidence from 2022 – the displays were better than the results.”

The American coach doesn’t feel that a lack of qualification matches will hinder Canada when the tournament gets underway.

Marsch said: “We haven’t had the pressures of those qualifying matches, but our guys play in enough pressure situations – we have people at bigger clubs who understand what it’s all about.

“We try to build our own internal pressures to make sure we’re continuing to grow and become the team that we want to be.”

He added: “It’s fair to ask how prepared we are for the most competitive and pressurised matches in a lot of our players’ lives, but we have a group that’s so committed to achieving with this national team.

“I really like this team and the group that we have – their mentality and their work ethic. I’m really excited to be their coach.”

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