Team Canada trains in Houston, Friday.Ashley Landis/The Associated Press
Whatever happens here in Houston on Saturday, the Canadian men’s national soccer team knows it has done its part to help elevate the sport in its own backyard.
Dramatic wins over Qatar and South Africa were both great and groundbreaking in their own way, helping to pave the way for the round of 16 match that Canada finds itself in following Stephen Eustáquio’s late strike last Sunday in Los Angeles.
But even among Canada’s growing ranks of newly minted soccerphiles, no one is confusing those two teams – both ranked south of 50 in the world rankings – with Pele’s 1970 Brazil squad. What’s really needed to push the program on is a signature World Cup win, a moment when everyone can remember exactly where they were when one of the planet’s sporting goliaths was toppled on the global stage.
Luckily (or not), Alistair Johnston and his teammates get an opportunity to test their footballing bona fides against No. 7 Morocco on Saturday.
“I think that’s left, obviously, a lasting impact,” Johnston said of Sunday’s win over South Africa. “If you can then find a way to knock off one of the best teams in the world and make it to a quarter-final, I think now we’re talking a different stratosphere altogether.”
Last Sunday's knockout win over South Africa was a breakthrough for defender Alistair Johnston and his Canadian World Cup teammates. Their next opponent, Morocco, poses a tremendous test.DANIEL COLE/Reuters
The task at hand is gargantuan for Johnston and his teammates though. Head coach Jesse Marsch compared preparing for the 2022 semi-finalists to “a gory, horrible nightmare” earlier in the week, and he didn’t pull any punches Friday at the team’s official pre-match press conference.
“Look, this team has zero weaknesses,” Marsch said. “But we have to try to be good at the things that we care about and that we are good at, and we have to see if that can hold up against an opponent like this.”
That opponent has pace to burn, with the captain Achraf Hakimi having terrorized opposition left backs for years, becoming the only defender to score in every round of the UEFA Champions League.
In scouting the Moroccans – he flew down to Monterrey for their round of 32 win on Monday over the Netherlands – Marsch came away impressed by their physical attributes more than anything.
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“When you look at Morocco,” he said, “the mobility of their midfield in general, and how they show up around the pitch, it’s the fluidity, it’s the mobility within the structure of how they play, that really, I think, they drive their confidence from.”
It will help that Marsch confirmed Friday that Canada’s fastest two defenders – Alphonso Davies and Moïse Bombito – will be available to play.
He added that Canada’s backline has been the source of much of what has been good about his team the past couple of years – particularly in the absence of consistent goal scoring – and it will be hoped that it can give the team a solid foundation in this match. However, he added that Canada will have to be alert to Morocco’s ability to erupt from the opening kickoff.
The reigning African champions got first-half goals in each of their three round-robin matches, with Ismael Saibari scoring what proved to be the winner against Scotland in the second minute. But they also showed enough resilience to score late too, with Issa Diop scoring in second-half stoppage time to force extra time and ultimately penalties against the Dutch.
Morocco players celebrate Issa Diop's late game-tying header against the Netherlands in the round of 32 on Monday.Ricardo Mazalan/The Associated Press
With some Moroccan reporters asking the Canadian head coach if he was engaging in psychological games in talking up the Atlas Lions, Marsch simply leaned into the expectations that have built up around a team that was ranked 92nd in the world just 11 years ago.
“This is a big accomplishment for us,” he said of winning a first-ever knockout match at the World Cup. “Of course, we’re not satisfied, we want to keep going.
“But I think the internal expectations for the Moroccan team themselves is to find a way to get back to the semi-final and even further. And by the way, they should have that expectation on themselves.”
Many of the Canadian squad have experience of playing Morocco at the World Cup, with Johnston, Davies, Jonathan Osorio, Cyle Larin and Tajon Buchanan all starting in Morocco’s 2-1 win in Qatar four years ago.
But Johnston played down any comparisons between the two contests, and added that Canada has come on leaps and bounds in the intervening years.
“For me personally, the calmness that I have going into this game is night and day compared to what it would have been in Qatar,” he said. “That’s something you can’t trick yourself into doing. It’s something that is only built by actually having true and honest experiences in those moments, and that’s something that I think that a lot of our core guys have.”
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That game in Doha was played with Canada already eliminated from the tournament after its opening two losses. And Morocco wasn’t the Morocco that we know today in 2022 either.
Back then, Morocco was in the same boat as Canada, having never won a knockout match at the tournament. It entered the tournament ranked 22nd in the world, but after knocking off Spain and Portugal before losing to France, it showed exactly how a program can change its perception on the world stage.
That exact same opportunity now awaits Canada. To Johnston, it’s worth remembering that for all the hype in the buildup and all the talk of David and Goliath, in soccer, some things never change.
“You do all the preparing you want in the world, it comes down to it’s 11 v. 11 on the pitch,” he said. “Pitch is still the same size, the ball is still round, so just focusing on that, and I think that our team is in a good place in that sense.”