The slump continues for the Canadian women's soccer team.
Ninth-ranked Canada fell to its fourth straight defeat Saturday, blanked 3-0 by Japan in a women's soccer friendly.
Momoko Tanikawa, Mina Tanaka and Aoba Fujino scored for eighth-ranked Japan, which controlled play at the 20,000-capacity Peace Stadium in Nagasaki. Canada was outplayed for much of the game and it was one-way traffic for long stretches.
"We're in a really difficult stage right now. There's no shying away from that," said Canada assistant coach Natalie Henderson, who is running the team with head coach Casey Stoney back in England with her ailing mother. "We certainly aren't a team that likes losing or wants to continue this run. We want to fix things and we're trying to fix things.
"I think there's some positives to take from today. But again we have to make those positives more consistent."
Canada fell to 4-9-4 all-time against Japan. The Canadians have not beaten Japan since March 2018 — when they prevailed 2-0 at the Algarve Cup — and have won just one of the last eight meetings.
The two teams meet again Tuesday at Transcosmos Stadium Nagasaki in nearby Isahaya in Canada's final outing of the year.
Canada will be looking to turn the tide, coming off consecutive 1-0 losses to No. 24 Switzerland and the 11th-ranked Netherlands last month after a disappointing 3-0 loss to the second-ranked U.S. in July.
It's the Canadian women's longest losing streak since a four-game slide in 2019 that included a round-of-16 loss to Sweden at the World Cup in France.
The Canadians, whose 2025 record stands at 6-5-1, have not scored in 364 minutes since Emma Regan's 86th-minute goal in a 4-1 win over Costa Rica on June 27 in Toronto.
Canada lived dangerously early
Read more on cbc.ca
cbc.ca
