Canada's Tajon Buchanan will look for more touches on Thursday against Qatar, as he and his teammates look to generate some offence to separate themselves in an even Group B.Claudia Greco/Reuters
Given everything that has happened to Tajon Buchanan in the four years since he exploded onto the global soccer scene in Qatar, great things were expected from the speedy winger heading into the World Cup.
He became the first Canadian man to play in Italy’s Serie A with Inter Milan, winning a championship in 2024, then promptly moved on to Spain, becoming the first from this country to score a hat trick in La Liga when he found the net three times against Girona last fall.
It wasn’t all positive though, as the 27-year-old suffered a broken leg in training at the Copa America two years ago that caused him to miss the team’s unexpected run to the semi-finals, ultimately ending his time in Italy and causing him to question his future in the game.
But all that was behind him last Friday as the Brampton, Ont. native lined up for the national anthem at a feverish Toronto Stadium, preparing to kick off his second World Cup. Unlike four years ago, however, when Buchanan won Canada a penalty less than 10 minutes into its opener, the winger struggled to make much of an impression against Bosnia-Herzegovina.
He toiled up and down the right wing without much to show for it. Despite scoring eight goals in 61 appearances for Canada, Buchanan had no shots and made just two crosses, half the total Liam Millar put up on the other wing, and one less than Ali Ahmed, the player who replaced Buchanan after 61 minutes.
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He’ll likely get another shot to make an impression on Thursday against Qatar, with Jesse Marsch, the Canadian head coach, previously describing his winger as “a weapon.”
“I think everyone who plays with him knows we’ve got to feed him, we’ve got to get him the ball, we’ve got to get him in the game,” said Marsch back in March, before watching one of his star players get only 26 touches of the ball against Bosnia, one fewer than his replacement, Ahmed.
But if ‘electric’ is one word to describe Buchanan’s play at his best on the pitch, ‘resilient’ might be an apropos way to describe his mindset.
He showed it when he moved from Major League Soccer to play in Belgium as a 22-year-old, as well as in moving across some of the highest-profile leagues in the world, ultimately scoring seven goals in 34 La Liga games this season, by far the most he’s had since coming to Europe.
“I think the football, the league, suits me very well,” he said when asked how living in Spain suits him. “I think I’ve been able to show that, and outside of the pitch, yeah, it’s been very good. Can’t complain, weather is amazing, food is good.”
Whether it’s gazpacho, tapas or paella, the food, Buchan explains, is “very different.” He admits he misses the home cooking of his mother or grandmother, and though there are now a number of Tim Hortons located across Spain, there are none in Villarreal.
“I don’t go to Tims over there, but obviously if there was [one] in the city, I would. It’s little things like that you do miss,” Buchanan says.
If he was looking for a little injection of Canadiana in Spain, he possibly got more than he bargained for last August, when Canadian teammate Tani Oluwaseyi was sold from Minnesota United to Villarreal.
While the two do hang out occasionally – beyond training and travelling together as part of their day jobs – it can be hard to get Buchanan, a self-confessed “homebody” to go out.
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“Tajon hates leaving his house, so that’s been a little bit harder,” Oluwaseyi said. “But yeah, we’ve grabbed dinner here and there.”
As far as Buchanan is concerned, home is definitely where the heart is, living with girlfriend Valentina Nivicki, and basically watching a lot of soccer.
“All of it,” he said when asked which leagues he watches. “Obviously if I’m not playing, or maybe I’m playing on a Sunday, and they’re playing on a Saturday, and say [Canadian teammate Ismaël] Koné is playing, I’ll tune in and I’ll watch the game. I just watch a lot of football.”
He watched more than he was hoping to during his convalescence while rehabbing his broken leg. He told TSN recently that he “truly felt like my career was finished,” adding that his other fear was that he would never be able to get back to the player he was before the injury.
Buchanan (left) wondered during the rehab process for a broken leg if he'd get back to the same level he'd achieved prior to the injury.NATHAN DENETTE/The Canadian Press
But since the injury, he scored the winner in a 3-2 victory at Barcelona in May last year that secured Champions League soccer for Villarreal. That was before he’d add to his burgeoning legend with his hat trick last fall in another campaign that ended with qualification to European soccer’s flagship competition.
Off the pitch, he’s trying to learn Spanish, but adds that even without it, he’s getting by.
“My Spanish is not the greatest,” he said. “Maybe it’s easier because there’s a lot of guys on the team that speak English, so we kind of do speak to each other. But the coach was always pushing to try and speak Spanish.”
From playing in front of 75,000 at Milan’s San Siro Stadium to competing now in Villarreal, whose total population is around 53,000, Buchanan finds himself back home at the most pressured and frenzied time of the Canadian men’s national team’s entire existence.
After dominating Bosnia for large swathes of the game and just barely scraping a draw, the livewire winger knows more is expected, with the tournament now switching west to Vancouver for Thursday and beyond. But Canada is hardly alone in the profligacy stakes, as tournament favourite Spain discovered to its embarrassment on Monday when a 40-year-old goalkeeper from Cape Verde repelled every attack.
“We’re creating a lot, we’re getting in dangerous situations,” Buchanan said. “Now it’s just about being a little more clinical and finishing those chances off.”