AL RAYYAN, Qatar — John Herdman insisted his Canada team “showed they belong” at the World Cup despite losing their Group F opener 1-0 to Belgium on Thursday.
Alphonso Davies missed a 10th-minute penalty as Les Rouges were the better side for long periods only to concede a minute before the interval as Michy Batshuayi rifled a shot past Milan Borjan.
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Canada ended with 21 shots to Belgium’s nine as they pushed the team ranked second by FIFA all the way in their first World Cup match for 36 years.
“They showed tonight that they do belong here,” said Herdman. “It’s been a long time since we’ve been back here. Our fans were football fans but tried to own the stadium tonight.
“We came into that game with a couple of goals: to play fearless and to entertain. We had some other goals, which was to create some firsts but we never quite got to those moments.
“I think the group stage is wide open now given the result of Morocco and Croatia. With a performance like this, I just said to the players: straight onto the next task.”
