Seeing Dwayne De Rosario’s name on the roster for the Canadian men’s national team is a familiar sight. After all, he’s earned 74 caps for his country in the last 15 years.
But this time out, there’s a very unfamiliar aspect to it: seeing the one-time MLS MVP’s club team listed as “unattached.”
D.C. United declined their option on the 35-year-old last month, throwing the long-time MLS star’s future into question. But at the very least, he now knows his immediate future likely includes two more appearances for Les Rouges.
De Rosario is part of the 22-man roster named by the Canadian Soccer Association on Friday for the national team’s upcoming friendlies against the Czech Republic (Nov. 15 in Olomouc, 11 am ET) and Slovenia (Nov. 19 in Celje, noon ET).
Despite head coach Benito Floro’s attempts to introduce new players into the mix in his first two camps since taking over, this squad will feature only one newcomer: Montreal Impact defender Karl Ouimette, a 21-year-old Quebec native who graduated from the Impact Academy in 2012.
The team features eight MLS players in all, including an increasingly familiar quartet from Toronto FC (Ashtone Morgan, Doneil Henry, Kyle Bekker and Jonathan Osorio), Vancouver’s Russell Teibert, San Jose’s Nana Attakora (who was removed from this summer’s CONCACAF Gold Cup roster due to injury) and D.C. United’s Kyle Porter.
“From here to the first official games [in 2015], it’s important to focus on our level of play,” Canadian head coach Benito Floro said in a news release. “It is necessary to pay attention in how we defend and attack so for me the best result is to take it step by step to improve our level.”
The team’s training camp before and between the matches will be based in Bad Waltersdorf, Austria.
Canada are still searching for their first win of the year, having compiled a record of three draws and eight losses so far in 2013. The team hasn’t scored a goal in its last eight matches, and has only found the back of the net once this year. That string of futility has seen the team fall to an all-time low of No. 111 in the most recent FIFA rankings.
Full roster:
GOALKEEPERS: Lars Hirschfeld (Valerenga, Norway), Kenny Stamatopoulos (AIK,Sweden)
DEFENDERS: Nik Ledgerwood (Hammarby, Sweden), Ashtone Morgan (Toronto FC), Andre Hainault (VfR Aalen, Germany), Adam Straith (Wehen Weisbaden, Germany), Nana Attakora (San Jose Earthquakes), Doneil Henry (Toronto FC), Marcel de Jong (Augsburg, Germany), Karl Ouimette (Montreal Impact)
MIDFIELDERS: Pedro Pacheco (Santa Clara, Portugal), Kyle Bekker (Toronto FC), Russell Teibert (Vancouver Whitecaps), Samuel Piette (Fortuna Dusseldorf II, Germany), Jonathan Osorio (Toronto FC), Stefan Cebara (unattached), Issey Nakajima-Farran (unattached)
STRIKERS: Tosaint Ricketts (Bucaspor, Turkey), Simeon Jackson (Eintracht Braunschweig, Germany), Kyle Porter (D.C. United), Iain Hume (Preston North End, England), Dwayne De Rosario (unattached)
