Ottawa – Canada will head home from the 2023 FIFA U-17 World Cup after a group stage exit in Indonesia following a 5:1 loss to Mali on Thursday 16 November. Canada lost their three group matches to Spain, Uzbekistan and Mali across seven days in Surakarta and Surabaya on Java Island. The Thursday loss at the biennial FIFA youth tournament ended a two-year journey for the young Canada footballers. “Tonight we pushed to try and get the win against a really good team,” said Andrew Olivieri, Canada Soccer’s U-17 Coach. “We’re not pleased to have lost, but we can look at all three games and learn in different ways whether it’s through effort, fight, or quality. This is the standard they have to meet and it’s just the foundation. Some of these guys will move onto the next cycle with the U-20s, we know they’re good enough to excel at that level, so it’s important that they grow from this experience.”
