Don't cry for Canada

Semifinal loss to Argentina part of learning curve on way to World Cup

- JOE CALLAGHAN

Canada's Jonathan David appears to be pleading his innocence after a challenge on Argentina's Cristian Romero in their Copa America semifinal in East Rutherford, N.J. The Argentines beat Canada for a second time to reach the Copa final Sunday.

The end of the beginning, not the beginning of the end. Jesse Marsch and Canada have at least two more years to walk together, toward World Cup 2026, to see what they can see at the first men’s FIFA carnival to be co-hosted on Canadian soil.

There will likely be more nights that don’t quite go as planned. You can count on it. Tuesday was one of them and it surely hurt the American who has worked enough wonders in seven weeks at the helm to have created a little national moment in the process.

Two well-taken goals, midway through the first half and early in the second, sent reigning world and Copa champion Argentina back to another final. Lionel Messi got the second in fortuitous fashion but it was that kind of excruciatingly frustrating night for Marsch and his staff. Chilean referee Piero Maza will surely have driven them to drink.

Canada lost 2-0 to Messi’s worldbeaters for the second time in three weeks and there is still no cause for shame in that, certainly not on a night when maple leaf red pockets disrupted an Albiceleste invasion of MetLife Stadium, with 80,120 there to see it in person and millions more watching on after an epic run to the final four.

Finest of margins, cruelest of cuts