Barring a labor dispute, the Canadian women’s soccer team will play France at Le Mans during the April international period.
The match will take place on April 11 at the Marie-Marvingt stadium. The French women occupy the fifth rank in the world and the Canadians, the sixth.
“Playing against a top team like France before a World Cup gives us the opportunity to see where we are, to learn and to measure ourselves,” said Canada’s head coach, Bev Priestman, in a communicated.
The Canadians, however, are threatening to boycott the April camp unless their demands are met.
They want the same support and benefit from the same preparation for the Women’s World Cup in Australia and New Zealand this summer that the men enjoyed before the World Cup in Qatar last fall. The men’s and women’s teams have also asked Soccer Canada to open its financial books to explain the budget cuts to their program in 2023.
Members of the women’s squad refused to train ahead of the SheBelieves Cup, before being forced back onto the pitch under threat of legal action by Soccer Canada. The federation claimed that the players were not in a legal position to call a strike. However, this could be the case in April.
Canada has played France 15 times and is 5-7-3. The French won the last duel 1-0, in March 2020 in Calais.