The Canadian women’s national team’s pre-World Cup calendar is filling out, slowly but surely.

CanWNT will play France in a friendly on Tuesday, April 11 during the April international break at Marie-Marvingt stadium in Le Mans, Canada Soccer confirmed Tuesday.

France, who are ranked one spot above Canada in fifth in the FIFA world rankings, represent the kind of high-calibre opponent that Bev Priestman’s team want to face in the lead-up to the tournament to ensure they are sharp and ready to push for a deep run on the biggest stage come summer.

“Playing a top team like France heading into a World Cup gives us the opportunity to see where we’re at, learn, and test ourselves,” said Priestman in a press release.

On a media call on Tuesday, she added that the opportunity to play France has been in play for some time and that “it’s important to play European opponents, especially a top-10 nation like France.”

The April window can accommodate two international matches for teams, but Priestman said that Canada have only targeted one game in April because they have had a heavy game schedule and they want to focus on things on the training ground. “We’ve designed it that way,” she said on the media call. “We need some grass time.”

However, she did say that a behind-closed-doors game is locked in for later in the year in the imminent run-up to the World Cup and that the team hopes to play a total of two games in Australia before the tournament begins. At the Women’s World Cup in Australia and New Zealand, Canada will face Nigeria, the Republic of Ireland, and co-hosts Australia.

Meanwhile, Canadian Soccer Business CEO Mark Noonan said recently that the organization is pushing Canada Soccer to arrange a send-off game series on home turf.

Asked about the current absence of home warm-up games on the slate, Priestman said the players will be desperate to play in front of their own fans before they jet out down under. “The players would love to play at home before they go to the World Cup and that’s something that is on the table for discussion right now… You ask any player, they want to play at home before they go to a World Cup.”

Priestman stressed that the team and Canada Soccer will explore the potential of playing a home game outside of an official game window. After the April window, the next official slot is in July, very shortly before the World Cup.

The CanWNT coach divulged that although the initial plan, before the high-profile events of recent weeks, was to leave for the World Cup at the end of June, “something we will explore is whether we can play a team before that July window, in June before we leave.”

Before all this, of course, Canada face Japan in their final game at the 2023 SheBelieves Cup on Wednesday. Kickoff in Frisco, Texas is at 4 p.m. ET / 1 p.m. PT and the game is live on OneSoccer.