Gold Cup: Canada name 10 MLSers to 23-man roster as Benito Floro sets sights on tournament final

MLSsoccer staff

The Canadian national team named its 23-man Gold Cup roster on Tuesday, including in-form Orlando City striker Cyle Larin and nine other MLS-based pros in the group head coach Benito Floro believes can make a deep tournament run 15 years after their first and only championship in the event.

Toronto FC lead the way with three players selected: Quillan Roberts, Ashtone Morgan and Jonathan Osorio, followed by FC Dallas, who will send Kyle Bekker and CanMNT newcomer Tesho Akindele. Vancouver Whitecaps midfielder Russell Teibert, Maxim Tissot of the Montreal Impact, the New York Red Bulls' Karl Ouimette and veteran defender Marcel de Jong of Sporting Kansas City round out the MLS contingent.

“The main aim in this Gold Cup for us is to get as far as possible. We want to get to the final and every game that we get in the tournament will increase our level of play,” Floro said in a statement.

Floro's side will assemble in California on June 28, providing a little more than a week to prepare for their tournament opener vs. El Salvador on July 8 at StubHub Center in Carson. Canada then head to Houston to take on Jamaica on Saturday, July 11 before flying home to Toronto to face Costa Rica at BMO Field on July 14, the first-ever Gold Cup game in Canada and their final match in Group B play.

Canada enter the competition riding a four-game winning streak and a five-game unbeaten run, having comfortably dispatched Caribbean minnows Dominica in the early rounds of CONCACAF World Cup qualifying.

“It is true that good results always help,” Floro said. “But now we are going to play against three teams that are higher ranked than us so we need to show that we are growing and developing against those teams and show that we are doing things in the right way.”

Lars Hirschfeld

(Valerenga/Norway)

Kenny Stamatopoulos

(AIK/Sweden)

Quillan Roberts

(Toronto FC)

DEF

Andre Hainault

(unattached)

DEF

Dejan Jakovic

(Shimizu S-Pulse/Japan)