Canada's Alphonso Davies plays in a match against Croatia at the 2022 World Cup in Qatar.Nathan Denette/The Canadian Press
The last World Cup – featuring Canada’s first appearance in 36 years – started in a way that is now beginning to seem familiar.
Alphonso Davies was hurt.
Instead of rehabbing with his countrymen, he chose to do so with his professional club in Germany. He showed up for the tournament in Qatar four days before Canada’s first game.
The team’s coach at the time, John Herdman, hemmed and hawed when asked if Davies would play. It was left to the player to make that announcement, on live TV, like a reality-show reveal.
The Canadian team trained at the grounds of a small Qatari club called Umm Salal SC – two verdant fields in the middle of endless desert on the outskirts of Doha.
Most camps at a World Cup have a loose affect, in order to convince the media that things are going great. The Italians do a buffet.
Canada’s base was puckered up tight, and they didn’t supply bottled water. The temperatures were scorching. Everything ran late. The players talked as if they would be interviewed later about their interviews. Davies didn’t submit himself to questioning until it was already over.
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The Canadian team runs a drill during practice in Qatar.Nathan Denette/The Canadian Press
Ahead of match days, FIFA expects both teams to show up and present themselves to the world press. Lionel Messi shows up for these things in good order. Cristiano Ronaldo is there on time.
At their first-ever rodeo, Herdman et al. showed up 40 minutes late and blamed traffic. They were so late that Belgium, which was slated to speak second, had to go first. The whole event gave off an air of disarray.
All of that seemed like a bad sign, but then Canada played. If you had to pick a high-water mark for Canadian men’s soccer, that first game against Belgium is a strong candidate.
To call them favourites would be putting it too strongly, but when World Cup 2022 started, the Belgians were a popular dark horse to win the whole thing. Canada ended that, and their whole golden generation mystique.
Canada didn’t win that game, but it stood and swung with what was then one of the starriest national sides in the world. For long stretches, Canada was the better team. Belgium sneaked one out 1-0, but Canada was the story.
It wasn’t that people suddenly thought they were for real. No one had bothered thinking about Canada at all up until that point. They were nothing; then they were something. For a single evening, the Canadian team was the talk of the tournament.
But it wasn’t long before the signs started to pile up again.
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Davies missed a penalty. Afterward, Herdman, in an unhinged excess of zeal, announced, “We are going to go and eff Croatia” – Canada’s next opponent. That’s when the wheels started to come off.
Herdman repeated his “eff” line several times, in front of several cameras. Croatians like a joke as much as the next guy, but they aren’t cool with sweary banter from people they don’t know.
This sort of thing may fly in a pro game back home, but it is not done on the international stage, and especially not by countries that have never scored a World Cup goal. Canada was starting to look very green indeed.
On the ground, the Croatian team played it off, but its media went berserk. The Croatians – finalists in the previous World Cup – had dozed through their first game, a draw with Morocco. They were awake now.
Then the game against Canada started. In the second minute, beginning at midfield, Davies floated through the entire Croatian team. His sprint was so effortless that no opponent noticed it. By the time his run ended, he was connecting his head to a crossed ball, which was driven into the Croatian net. A month later, it would still stand as one of the best goals of the tournament.
And then, for the next 88 minutes, Croatia slowly wrestled Canada into a headlock and commenced to pummelling it. The game ended 4-1 for Croatia. The last goal was so slow to develop that all the Croatian subs had time to get up and rush to the touchline to cheer as it was going in. That’s when the real violence began.
The Croatian coach ripped Herdman for not shaking his hand: “He is a good coach. He is a high-quality professional. But it will take some time for him to learn some things.”
Said Croatian goal scorer Andrej Kramaric: “In the end, Croatia demonstrated who eff’d who.”
Herdman didn’t have the sense to be embarrassed, but the country he represented was getting there in a hurry. Two games in, and Canada had already been eliminated.
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Canada coach John Herdman looks on during the match against Morocco in Qatar.The Canadian Press
Canada played Morocco in its final match. The team kept banging on about its “learnings,” like getting your doors blown off in front of the whole world is an educational opportunity. The air around the squad was oddly self-congratulatory.
Against Morocco, the Canadians were game, but outclassed. Had the third match been the first, maybe they’d have had a chance. But by that point, no one was going to congratulate them on losing 2-1.
Canada was the only qualified team at Qatar 2022 that lost all three of its matches. Its reputation as a comer on the world football stage lasted four days – the distance from the Belgium game to the Croatian one.
Looking back at it nearly four years later, Canada’s first World Cup in ages wasn’t a disaster. A disaster implies something beyond your control. This was a self-inflicted injury.
All Canada had to do was play it cool, show up on time and put away their chances and who knows what could have happened? Instead, they panicked and began acting out. The brightness of the lights overwhelmed them.
Between that, the drone scandal at the Paris Olympics and the exiling of Herdman, the program has since been humbled across the board. Canadian soccer has entered the next phase of sporting progress – the “Show Me” stage.
Now it’s time to find out if Canada took anything useful from the collapse of 2022. Presenting itself a respectable 15 minutes early at its first press conference would be a big step in the right direction.