Canada vs. USA: United States Must Win to Erase Embarrassing Loss to Brazil

The United States men's soccer team was outmatched against a superior Brazil squad just a few days ago, but they'll need to put that behind them in order to defeat their neighbors in the north.

The Americans were undefeated over their past four friendly matches before Brazil came along and defeated them 4-1 at FedEx Field, while the Canadians will look to use this bout as a warm up before their stretch qualifying for the 2014 FIFA World Cup.

Canada will play both Cuba and Honduras later this month in their hunt to make the list of the upcoming World Cup-competing teams. The U.S. will be doing the same later this month when they take on Antigua and Barbuda as well as Guatemala.

The battle between the bordering countries may simply be seen as a tune-up bout, there is a bit of bad blood between the two squads.

Canadian striker Simeon Jackson spoke a bit about the rivalry at the team's Friday press conference:

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They’re our next door neighbor. Usually next door neighbors don’t like each other when it comes to derbies, but it’s always going to be intense.

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Steve Davis of NBC Sports spoke a bit about what the upcoming match means on the United States side of things in a recent column, saying:

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Nobody around U.S. Soccer wants Sunday’s match in Ontario to be the one that finally gets Canada going into the right direction. And neither team wants to go into World Cup qualifying, which begins later this week, with the bloody nose of a bad loss.

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Tim Howard, Landon Dovovan and the rest of the United States squad has strung together an impressive few wins as of late, defeating Scotland 5-1 and defeating Italy for the first time in team history.

Putting together a decisive victory over Canada would be the perfect medicine for the loss to Brazil and the best way to go into the next few World Cup qualifying matches.

What the U.S. has on their side is that the team has had five matches already this calendar year, winning four, while the Canadian unit hasn't played an international match since February in a losing effort to 47th-ranked Armenia.

Speaking of rankings, Canada finds itself sitting at the 75th spot while the U.S. sits at 29th in the world. The United States should be able to put Canada away and get things back on the right track.

The Yanks haven't lost to Canada in their last 14 meetings, posting an 8-0-6 record during that time. What that means is, the red and white haven't defeated their neighbor country since 1985.