Canada goalkeeper and captain Borjan out for remainder of Gold Cup

Canada captain Milan Borjan will miss the rest of the CONCACAF Gold Cup with an undisclosed injury.

Canada Soccer says the goalkeeper has returned to Europe so that he can recover ahead of the 2023-24 club season.

Borjan becomes one of several top Canadians to be out of the tournament.

Alphonso Davies, Jonathan David, Cyle Larin, Tajon Buchanan, Alistair Johnston, Atiba Hutchinson and Ismael Kone were all ruled out before the tournament.

The team then announced the day before its opening match that Stephen Eustáquio and Samuel Adekugbe were being replaced by Jayden Nelson and Liam Fraser.

Borjan was in goal for Canada’s 2-2 draw with Guadeloupe last Tuesday in Toronto and its 0-0 draw with Guatemala in Houston on Saturday.

Canada (0-2-0) now must win its Group D finale against Cuba (0-0-2) in Houston on Tuesday to advance to the Gold Cup quarterfinals. The winless Cuba squad, which is last in the four-team group, fell 1-0 to Guatemala last Tuesday and 4-1 to Guadeloupe on Saturday.

Canada is currently third in the group, having only picked up two points from those first two contests.

Guadeloupe (1-1-0) is ahead of Guatemala (1-1-0) for first with a plus-3 point differential to the latter's plus-1. The two will also play each other on Tuesday in hopes of holding on to the top two seeds in order to advance to the quarterfinals.

Borjan leads the national men's team in matches by a goalkeeper with 77 and clean sheets with 35.

The 35-year-old has played club football with Serbia's Red Star Belgrade since 2017, though was loaned to Slovakia's Slovan Bratislava last month.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published July 3, 2023.

Note to readers: This is a corrected story. A previous version had the incorrect day for Canada's game against Cuba.