I know we're Canadian fans, but even for us the paranoia over this semi-final is a bit much.

Mexico's playing good soccer! Did you see all the fans they had at BC Place; we're going to be drowned out! And Canada can only get goals through Christine Sinclair! Oh nooooo! (stands on bow of sinking ship singing "Nearer My God to Thee")

Mexico is a good team. I don't dare take them lightly. Their offense has become more versatile than the bad old days of "get it to Maribel Dominguez and pray nobody notices", while their defense has improved to arguably be the second-best in CONCACAF, with 20-year-old Alina Garciamendez out of Stanford emerging as a star. They certainly had a better World Cup than we did, although in an easier group.

On the other hand, Mexico still loses to countries Canada generally beats: Brazil twice in the most recent Pan-American Games, a World Cup draw to England that they really should have lost, and another draw to Trinidad and Tobago of all teams: a side so bad the Dominican Republic knocked them off to get into Olympic qualifying. They are good but they are still not quite on Canada's tier: there's a chance of springing an upset because this is soccer and anything can happen, but Canada should win on home soil seven times out of ten.

And the "6,000" Mexican fans that were packed into BC Place on Tuesday to cheer on the Mexicans against the United States? First, there weren't really 6,000 Mexicans there. Second, even if there were 6,000 Mexicans there for a critical match against their mortal rivals, that wouldn't match up to the smallest pro-Canadian crowd of the three games so far. And third, even if the Mexicans did somehow outnumber the good guys, I'd not be intimidated by their scattered shouting "México! México!" against organized, concentrated Voyageurs chanting their opinion on a team of Kaylyn Kyles (they're for it).

I'm honestly not sure Canada has ever hosted Mexico in a senior international without the Mexican fans outnumbering and outshouting the Canadians, but the Canadian crowd should come out on top tonight. I'm betting on both Canada and the Canadian crowd; I guess all this soccer is making me insane.

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Canada walked into BC Place last night expected to beat the Costa Ricans and instead, they kicked the holy hell out of them. Don't let Fernanda Barrantes's pride-salvaging goal in garbage time fool you: this was Canada's game from kickoff until they decided not to worry about it.

Another brace from Christine Sinclair (ho-hum) plus a few fine defensive plays in the second half (what?). Kaylyn Kyle and Sophie Schmidt finally got the monkeys off their backs by trundling in blue-collar goals after frittering away chances in the first two games, and there was even an embarrassing own goal for good measure. Canada romped through the game then took their foot off the gas pedal, conserving energy and secure in the knowledge that the Costa Ricans would never get enough. Barrantes's goal was excellent, but it was just one in a sequence.

Did that game answer your questions? Canada handled the Costa Ricans and got goals from a variety of players. Sinclair was the maestro, of course, but both Schmidt and Kyle deserve loads of credit. Kelly Parker and Christina Julien also had good chances while Brittany Timko had a goal called back offside by an eyelash. There was a good team effort which was not perfect but all the same was at a very high calibre.

Before the tournament, John Herdman said goal number one was to finish top of the group. Done. Goal number two awaits: a semi-final match against the loser of tonight's United States - Mexico tilt. That almost certainly means Mexico, who are on good form and will give Canada a tough time. But Big Red will be favourites, and they just put in a performance worthy of it.

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As we know, Canada needs a win or a draw against Costa Rica to clinch first place in Group A and (probably) avoid a semi-final against the United States and their FIFA 12-esque +27 goal differential to determine who goes to the 2012 London Olympics.

The "or a draw" in that sentence sticks in my craw. Talking about drawing Costa Rica in a tournament where the favourites have humbled the minnows so utterly that even I get bored is insulting. It's insulting to the fans who pack one half of the lower bowl of BC Place to cheer on our world-class national team, and it's an insult to that world-class national team which has never looked anything but vastly superior to the Costa Ricans.

Costa Rica should not be able to run with Canada and that's the end of it. They played Cuba depressingly evenly despite the advantage of the Cubans actually playing soccer against them. They could have drawn with Haiti had luck been on the Haitians' side. Their tournament results suggest that Costa Rica is generally consistent against lower opposition but Canada, at their best, should be able to brush them away like a mosquito.

The only concern is "at their best". Canada will enjoy a nice three-day rest before Friday's semi-final, but with either the tricky Mexicans or the devilish Americans in store John Herdman may take no chances. Visions of more off-days and early nights for core players dance through my head, and if we make things a bit too easy for Costa Rica then their tenacious bunker will catch us with our pants down, they might even snatch a goal on a defensive miscue, and all of a sudden we're dead.

It's a long shot, but as a Canadian fan worrying about long shots is my raison d'etre.

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Nothing is official yet, but it looks like defender Bilal Duckett may be on his way back to the Vancouver Whitecaps.

Duckett is a 23-year-old alumnus of Notre Dame University who joined the Whitecaps out of the third round of last year's MLS SuperDraft. His rookie professional season saw Duckett play 226 minutes in Major League Soccer, 706 minutes with the Whitecaps Reserves (first on the team), and 68 more in USL PDL with the Whitecaps Residency. In total, he accounted for no goals and no assists in precisely 1,000 minutes over a level of play ranging from "high professional" to "middling semi-pro".

Duckett was released on November 23 but has been in Vancouver since late last week, including attending Saturday's Canada - Cuba match. He has been tweeting hopes that he'll have a contract with the Whitecaps for the new season and is generally expected to be a part of the team's training going forward.

So, what's going on? It sounds rude, but Duckett's name because a byword among Whitecaps fans for the sort of inept college player Tom Soehn had the team rely on last season. His attitude was fantastic and he brought charitable and community involvement which went well beyond the call of duty, but for all his athleticism Duckett never seemed like an MLS talent. He played three positions, none of them well, and his release was generally seen as a necessary bit of business for a rebuilding team.

In fact, depending on the situation, Duckett's re-acquisition may prove to be a smart move. Just last week I was bemoaning Martin Rennie's lack of acumen in getting rid of the versatile, young, probably affordable Philippe Davies. Duckett is versatile, almost certainly affordable, and not much older. Plus he provides coverage at a position where we need it.

Not many players are willing to sign for MLS minimum money. If Duckett is, I might actually be talking myself into his return.

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Earlier this afternoon, I mentioned that the attendance for yesterday's Canada - Cuba Olympic qualifying match in Vancouver exceeded the attendance in Toronto for all three Canadian men's World Cup qualifiers this cycle. There were 12,417 fans at BC Place for last night's name, while the men's games ranged from 10,235 (the finale against St. Kitts and Nevis) to 12,178 (the middle game against Puerto Rico). The last game in Toronto to outdraw last night's tilt was June 1 in a pre-Gold Cup friendly against Ecuador, where 14,356 filled the stands (a large part of whom were Ecuador fans).

So am I going to talk trash to Toronto over Vancouver's superior passion for the nation? Nah. Toronto's had lovely crowds for the women's team: 10,255 fans showed up for a friendly against the United States in May 2009 and an impressive 13,554 made it to a friendly against Brazil on October 7, 2008. They have also supported the men's team well, although better in 2008 than today.

All I want is an end to the most preposterous argument in Canadian soccer today: that Canada is somehow better served by having their national teams based in the Windsor - Quebec City corridor. That the support is obviously better, that playing almost every home national team game there of any gender will cause that support to go, and that Canada will therefore improve on the pitch.

Prior to Thursday, Vancouver hadn't hosted a Canadian national team game, men's or women's, senior or junior since September of 2005. All of Western Canada hadn't seen a game since 2008. The West has been neglected by the Canadian Soccer Association, but when given a chance Vancouver proved itself Toronto's equal for an uncompetitive game against the lowest-ranked team in the tournament in the middle of January.

It's proof, once again, that the trick to ensuring nation-wide support for Canada's national teams is to actually give the nation a chance to see them. This has already been demonstrated time after time but here it is again, on national television for all to see, with attentive reporters and social media showing how much the players appreciate it. I know nothing will stop certain eastern pundits from trumpeting their eternal superiority but that just makes it incumbent upon us, who have eyes, ears, and brains, to always be ready to point out when they're wrong.

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I'm sure Canada's 2-0 win over Cuba was much more frustrating on television than in person. The Cubans put ten women behind the ball from the start, the Canadians had a bevy of scoring chances, they got one goal from the spot and and one goal from the run of play, and that was it. A Cuban team that made Haiti look competitive got away with a relatively decent 2-0 defeat.

Canadian fans are worried, because we're Canadian fans and that's what we do. "Too much of the offense goes through Christine Sinclair!" "We couldn't break down a team that terrible!" "We beat Cuba 2-0; the Americans beat a higher-ranked Dominican Republic team by 14. We're fucked."

Well, Canada was playing the middle leg of a three-games-in-five-days stretch. They rested a number of key players. Canada's three best players, in my books, are Sinclair, Sophie Schmidt, and Candace Chapman: they went 45 minutes, 45 minutes, and no minutes respectively. Alyscha Mottershead and Chelsea Stewart both made their first starts for their country. Canada hit crossbars, had shots that would go in four times out of five slip wide, and put in their fair share of scoring chances despite playing at two-thirds speed against an opponent bunkering for ninety minutes. There was never, ever, and I mean not for one minute, any doubt that Canada would win the game.

Canada wasn't perfect last night. Their performance on set pieces was miserable. They could have worked it wide a little more aggressively, could have gotten the fullbacks more involved for the first hour. Their intensity level was low to match the quality of their opposition. Oh, well. Canada won, they looked fine doing it, and now a draw against Costa Rica still hands Canada first place in Group A.

We all wanted Canada to win by a couple of touchdowns, to make the Americans sit up and take notice of us as we took notice of them. Instead, Canada handed in a dominant but unspectacular performance. Oh well. Ultimately, the performance against schmucks like this isn't what matters: Canada's failure to finish their chances against a hell-bent-for-leather bunkering Cuban team doesn't indicate what they'll do against a Mexican or American team that actually wants to play some soccer. They got the required result; that will do.

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My old loathing for writing anything on the weekend has prevented me from preparing any insight about this match before I was actually sitting in the BC Place press box watching Haiti and Costa Rica warm up.

Then again, what insight is needed? Cuba is... I was going to say "the worst team in this tournament" but after seeing the Dominican Republic last night let's go with "the lowest-ranked". They lost only 2-0 to Costa Rica, which doesn't sound too bad, but got awfully lucky. The calibre of Cuba's play on Thursday was so poor that it would have been hysterical if it weren't so dull. Their only saving grace was a smile from the soccer gods and a somnolencent lack of intensity from the Costa Ricans.

Obviously, with a 14-0 win yesterday Abby Wambach and Amy Rodriguez set a new standard for minnow-thrashing. Cuba should be every inch as bad as the Dominican Republic were and worse than Haiti, which raises hope to see the first Canadian touchdowns in BC Place since the Grey Cup.

(No, I don't really think Canada is going to win by two digits. Those sorts of games are always extreme results and, in their second group stage match, Canada is more likely to ease up; 5-0 is my prediction and would be fine by me. But if John Herdman had a cousin in a Cuban jail or something and really wanted to turn the big guns on them...)

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To conclude what's been a pretty busy day, the Vancouver Whitecaps have announced that they have released midfielders Mustapha Jarju and Philippe Davies.

Jarju will get the headlines. The Gambian came in as a mid-season designated player last year and made himself famous for getting into prime scoring positions then wasting them. I was under the impression that he was being mis-used by Tom Soehn as a pure striker rather than the attacking midfielder he's been his entire career, but it appears that Martin Rennie has chosen not to give him a chance.

Still, you can defend releasing Jarju if the Whitecaps have found a better way to spend the money. Letting Davies go, from an outsider's perspective, looks maddening. The 21-year-old had an excellent 2010 USSF D2 season and showed very promising signs in USL PDL during 2011 despite being frozen out of the first team by Teitur Thordarson and Tom Soehn. The Whitecaps press release indicates that the team declined Davies's option and the two sides were unable to come to an agreement. Given that Davies made the MLS minimum of $32,600 last year and counted as a homegrown player, that must have been some option.

Jarju had the big money, the big name, and the lack of big results. Everybody's going to be talking about him but fuck that, I'm here for Big Phil. Cutting Davies ends what's been a terrible year between him and the Whitecaps organization and gives Davies a fresh start that I doubt he'll really mind having. It also jettisons one of Vancouver's few authentic Canadians and a quality prospect no never got even the most cursory glance in MLS. Somebody who was cheap, young, had a good attitude, and who could play a variety of positions. I cannot to save my life concoct a reasonable explanation.

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