The Canadian men’s football team will play Iceland for their first ever game in Reykjavik on Wednesday 22nd August.
It will also be the first match for the new Canadian coach, Dale Mitchell. He is bringing 17 players to Iceland including English defender Paul Stalteri.
Stalteri has 59 career appearances in Canada and played for Canada at the CONCACAF Gold Cup in June. Nine other players heading to Reykjavik also competed in the CONCACAF event which saw Canada reaching the semi-finals only to lose out to the United States.
Canada has one team in Major League Soccer, however, no players from the team made the roster for the Iceland game. Instead, Mitchell picked only European players for the game. “You can see by looking at the squad that it is a European-based squad,” said Mitchell in a media conference call Tuesday. “It’s a midweek game in Europe, so it’s an ideal time to get the majority of our European-based players together.”
Mitchell went on to say, “any time you are representing your country, you want to put a squad out there that can win the game. I feel confident in the group that we have selected.”
Canada is placed 52nd while Iceland comes in 109th position in the world class rankings published by FIFA.
Following the match in Iceland, the team will return to Canada to host Costa Rica in a game to be held in Toronto on September 12th.