A weekend to remember (or forget) for Canadian soccer fans

A World Cup draw and a Finals appearance. Mixed results, it's fair to say.

Photo by Fauzan Saari on Unsplash

And so it begins.

New Year’s Eve is still 23 days away as I write this, but the year Canadian soccer fans have been waiting for since, well, for a lifetime, has pretty much started already. The calendar may say 2025, but it’s 2026 in spirit.

And the year launched with a weekend unlike many in history for Canadian soccer. A World Cup draw on Friday — as a lifelong supporter of the program, it felt like we weren’t making a big enough deal out of the fact that Canada was getting drawn into only its third World Cup group in history — followed by the oldest soccer brand in Canada playing for its first D1 championship since My Sharona topped the charts.

Aside: Normally, when I play the “It’s been so long since this has happened that this song was new” game, the song ends up being far less cool than My Sharona.

It felt like soccer was taking centre stage in a way that it rarely has, with TSN devoting hours to the coverage of both events.

It’s fair to say that it was a mixed bag of results for Canadians, with the draw being mostly positive, but the Whitecaps ending up on the wrong side of the result, despite pretty undeniably being the better team on the pitch.

TFC fans can relate. Some might even sympathise.

More on the game in a bit, but the draw was the bigger story of the weekend and it’s the start of what is likely the most important six months in the history of the program. Yes, it’s only a few games, and yes, Canada has hosted the women’s World Cup, but to suggest this isn’t the brightest light to ever shine on the game here is, frankly, delusional.

Worldwide, obviously — the world doesn’t pay any attention to Canadian soccer, generally, so some attention is going to be enough to take it to historic levels — but more importantly, here in Canada, as well.

For weekends like this past one (or close to it, anyway — even big footballing nations don’t get World Cup draws every day) to become more normal, the domestic game needs to be taken seriously. There needs to be a critical mass of people who have an opinion about Jesse Marsch’s handling of Promise David. Like people who don’t know who Jamie is, I mean. People who usually talk about the Canucks second power-play unit.

We’re getting there. We are. It’s a lot different than it was even four years ago, and I’m not going to be one of those old guys who gets all gatekeepy about that. The dream us oldsters always have always had was to see the game get to the level where it was taken as seriously as the Blue Jays, Raptors and a NFL Sunday night. For it to be right there in the conversation for the second most popular sport in the country. Hockey will always been king, likely, but second favourite?

That’s possible. If the sport can grab the country’s attention.

Now is that chance. Everything up to 2026 has led us to the point where there’s a chance it could finally happen, but we need a few things to go right. Namely, we need the team to perform and we need the soccer community to also engage and welcome more people into the fold, by providing reasons for curious outsiders to discover the wonders of the domestic game.

That means the CanPL needs to get its stuff together and work like hell to attract soccer-curious people to the stadium next spring. It means TFC and CF Montreal need to get out of their own way and get their fans back engaged. It also means the Whitecaps need to build on their success in 2025 and figure out the stadium issue (not having the MLS commissioner threaten to move the damn team on the eve of MLS Cup would also be lovely).

It’s a lot of moving parts. Realistically, some won’t happen, but if enough do in combination with the big one — the CanMNT performing — it might just be enough.

Then old guys like me can drift off into irrelevance with the knowledge that it all was worth it.

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Pep talk over. Let’s quickly look at the draw

Some will disagree, but to me, the draw worked out nearly perfectly for Canada. We will get to the playoff winner in a minute, but first, let’s consider the other two games.

No one should ever sleep on Switzerland. They are rarely an easy touch, and they have some significant scalps in their World Cup history. Make no mistake, they will be favoured against Canada in the game. They are likely celebrating that they drew Canada in Zurich right now.

They’re also beatable. Especially playing at home. It’s the type of mid-level European team that Canada can frustrate — the Swiss will want to play front foot against Canada. Our athleticism can cause them problems. Canada will go into that game confident it can take points.

They will go into the game against Qatar as favourites. To be honest, that scares me a bit, as Qatar will probably try to give up possession and Canada has shown a weakness to teams that do that. Marsch needs to book some unglamourous friendlies that will require Canada to break a team down in the new year. Forget Holland. Get Haiti up here.

Here’s the thing, though. They need to beat Qatar. There’s zero excuse. A failure to not take three points here would be a disaster.

Then there’s the first game. Likely against Italy. In Toronto.

Who writes this stuff?

Look, this is the chance. Yeah, a lot of cafes are going to be filled with guys from Woodbridge who will be happy to tell you how much Canada sucks. They know this because their dads told them back when they were kids living on St. Clair in 2006. Their dads learned it from sitting on their grandfathers’ knees at College and Clinton back in ‘82.

If I’m being truthful, Canadian soccer owes a lot to a lot of these guys — many of them are builders in the game and without them we wouldn’t be where we are. So, it’s truly with the greatest amount of respect that I say this:

It’s time to shut them the **** up.

The soccer Gods have handed Canadian soccer with the greatest opportunity it will ever get to earn the respect it has long craved with this draw. So, embrace it.

Of course, Italy still has to qualify, which is all you need to remember if you are worried about the other side of this — a loss to the Italians. Yeah, that’s possible, but this is not Nonno’s Azzurri. Dare to dream.

And if it’s Wales, Northern Ireland, or Bosnia? See the paragraph on Switzerland above and reduce your stress by about 25%.

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As for the Whitecaps 3-1 loss to Messi FC. Perhaps, it is my Toronto-centric-ness, or maybe because the draw was the day before, but it felt to me that the ‘Caps appearance in MLS Cup didn’t get as much attention as any of TFC’s three appearances did.

That’s unfortunate, as Vancouver has built a very good team. Importantly, they built that team off a strong domestic presence. Now, you have to remember that American players are domestic players on Canadian MLS teams (and it’s ok not to like that if you are a fan, but it’s the Whitecaps job to use it to their advantage), but even still the ‘Caps have done much better at playing Canadians and at understanding that MLS Cups are won on the back of good domestic signings.

Seven of 11 starters on Saturday didn’t require an international spot. There’s a lesson there for every single MLS team that wasn’t involved in the deep stages of this playoff season.

Did the Whitecaps deserve a better fate on Saturday? Yeah, probably. The better team doesn’t always win Finals, though. At least Miami got some shots on goal (Sorry to make it about TFC again, but the Toronto is hard to completely wash away, even when I’m trying to be magnanimous).

With the core returning in 2026 — they’ll get a deal done for Yohei Takaoka, don’t worry Caps fans — they will start next season among the favourites. A great opportunity to take advantage of a World Cup being played in their stadium, you would think.

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Finally, a note on this space over the next six months.

I’ve been thinking a lot about how I would approach the World Cup and, although I don’t want to pigeonhole myself into any hard rules, I think what you can expect here is as much a look back at how we got here, as it will be a news-focused site.

I think that’s the value I have to provide. I’ve seen some s..tuff. Some of it is worth remembering as we build towards a home World Cup.

It’s been a journey. Let’s celebrate it.

As Ben Knight used to say…

Onward!