Forward Jonathan David expresses excitement after Canada beat South Africa 1-0 to progress to the World Cup round of 16.Fran Santiago/Getty Images
Everywhere else in the world, the oldest soccer story told is about soldiers kicking the skulls of their enemies around a field. In the top part of North America, it’s, “Soccer has arrived.”
The American version of this genre stretches back to 1994 (‘Soccer has finally arrived in the United States’ − Los Angeles Times); 2002 (‘U.S. Cup run ends … There’s a bright future’ − Washington Post); and 2014 (‘A nation is learning to love soccer’ – New York Times).
The Americans finally gave it up at this tournament. Now it’s our turn to row this oar. Canada made a World Cup and, for a nice change, didn’t humiliate itself. Soccer has arrived.
Soccer has just arrived in Canada in the same way sticking to a protein-rich diet has. Just because you weren’t thinking about it before the internet told you to doesn’t mean it hasn’t been around a while. People who’ve converted to the sport over the last month – and I’m not sure who these people are exactly, or if they exist – aren’t leading the vanguard. They’re bringing up the rear.
If we’re talking about a specifically Canadian version of soccer, then that’s old news as well.
Canada’s World Cup games are over. What’s left behind?
I’m no gender warrior when it comes to professional sports. It is utterly unimportant to me that a few hundred women get to be as fantastically rich as a few hundred men.
That said, there at least a smidge of sexism at work around the whole “Soccer is suddenly a Canadian thing” conversation. Unintentional, I have no doubt, but sexism nonetheless.
I can tell you the exact day Canadian soccer arrived because I was there – August 6, 2012, a holiday Monday in much of the country.
That’s the day Canada’s women’s Olympic team was epically jobbed in its semi-final with the U.S. in Manchester, England.
It was the first time everybody in this country cared about soccer – not just the guys who hang out at the Portuguese bar down the corner, or the snobs, or the video-game obsessives. Everyone.
Whatever good thing has happened to soccer in this country since is the fruit of that tree. You want to thank a player for making Canadian soccer happen? Make sure it’s a woman.
Canada striker Christine Sinclair, centre, celebrates one of her three goals against the U.S. in the infamous 2012 London Olympics semi-final.Nigel Roddis/Reuters
The next phase of this “soccer has arrived” idea is “how do we take it away from everyone else?” If Canada can be unembarrassingly mediocre at a World Cup, then it should stand to reason that we can also win it, right?
It’s just a matter of finding the right developmental strategy, convincing the corporate cheapskates in our country to fund it and then, having failed at that, asking government to pay for everything itself, right? No.
Why must everything be in a state of constant improvement in order for it to be enjoyed in the moment?
This is as good as it gets for Canada. A round more is unlikely. A round less, much moreso. Somewhere in the top 30 or 40 is where we belong in a World Cup.
Canada was gifted the easiest draw in the tournament. That won’t happen again. So why didn’t the team advance beyond the round of 16?
It wasn’t because Alphonso Davies was absent, though that didn’t help. It was because its other star, Jonathan David, was missing while present. David’s three goals against hapless Qatar obscured his misfiring tournament. If David was a duck hunter, he’d be a hero to all ducks.
I suppose the “Canada can do more” crowd thinks we should be Norway. It plays England on Saturday in the quarters, and has a puncher’s chance.
What’s the difference between our two nations? Norway takes sports and pedagogy more seriously than we do. Its programs are better funded. It owns something we covet – the Winter Olympics.
But the big difference is that we have Jonathan David and they have Erling Haaland. If Canada and Norway swapped centre forwards, Canada might be in the quarters, but Norway definitely would not be.
Cathal Kelly: Haaland is the big winner at the World Cup
Can Canada create a Haaland? Sure, but it’s not a manufacturing process. If it was, Norway wouldn’t be appearing in the World Cup for only the fourth time. Haaland is a stroke of good fortune. You don’t make him. You inherit him.
This idea that Canadians – who don’t play the game just for fun, or practise it in their backyards en masse, or obsess about it in their media – can suddenly gin up a soccer super-production line is fanciful.
We can achieve a modest success – like the one we’ve just seen. We can produce one or two superstars – a la Davies or Haaland. But we will never have the layers of talent that an Argentina or an England have. We just don’t care enough.
You cannot impose that caring with one good run in a World Cup. It must be organic.
Morocco goalkeeper Yassine Bounou prevents Canada forward Promise David from getting his head on the ball during their round of 16 encounter.THOMAS COEX/AFP/Getty Images
In his World Cup wrap-up call with media, Canada Soccer CEO Kevin Blue laid out his wish list going forward. This was mostly the usual corporate blather, with one odd request layered in. Blue said he would like the media who’d covered the tournament to cover Canadian soccer all of the time.
Why? To say what? And, most importantly, to whom?
There’s no point in blanket coverage nobody tunes into or reads. Childhood participation does not automatically translate into interest. If it did, I’d watch more schoolyard handball. You can wish that Canada is Brazil or Germany, but it isn’t and never will be. No amount of funding can make it be so.
For a wealthy nation that likes to think of itself as a citizen of the world, Canada was once embarrassingly poor at soccer. Now we’re okay, and sometimes good. That’s the sweet spot. That’s more than fine.
It is possible that, through an enormous stroke of luck, we might momentarily be something more than that. But planning for it isn’t a bold project. It’s a make-work scheme for people who want to work in and report on soccer.