Canada players celebrate the win over Jamaica at BMO Field that clinched qualification for the 2022 FIFA World Cup, on March 27.Dan Hamilton/USA TODAY Sports via Reuters
Tajon Buchanan slipped away from the defence in front of the net on Sunday afternoon. The wintery Toronto cold was making a mockery of the start of spring. Not a fun day to play soccer.
Nearing halftime, Canada’s men’s national team was up 1-0 against Jamaica, and on the brink of qualifying for its first World Cup in almost four decades. Cyle Larin, who like Mr. Buchanan grew up in nearby Brampton, had scored early. The red-and-white crowd was raucous.
After a free kick for Canada and a scramble in the Jamaican end, Jonathan David popped a pass over a crowd toward Mr. Buchanan. A defender almost headed it out of danger, but it was Mr. Buchanan who collected the ball. He buried it in the net. 2-0. World Cup berth secured. Mr. Buchanan celebrated with a cartwheel and backflip.
Men’s soccer in Canada, not long ago, was so irrelevant it didn’t even merit public consideration as a laughingstock. The last, and only, time the team made it to the global sporting spectacle of the World Cup was in 1986. Canada promptly lost three games, scored no goals, and was out.
This time, with a team to be led by emerging superstar Alphonso Davies and all the aforementioned, Canada will land in Qatar in November as a potential force. The party may just be getting started.
The squad has the makings of something special. They’ve minted iconic moments. Last November, on a harsh winter night in Edmonton, Canada defeated perennial power Mexico. After Mr. Larin scored his second goal, Sam Adekugbe expressed the collective joy with a leap into a snowbank. It wasn’t quite as important as, in hockey, Paul Henderson in 1972 or Sidney Crosby in 2010, or Julia Grosso sealing the women’s soccer gold medal at last summer’s Olympics, but it was pretty great.
Recalling that glorious Olympic gold, this men’s team soars in the slipstream of a soccer flight path forged by Canada’s women. That squad, led by Christine Sinclair, won a bronze medal in London in 2012 and another bronze at Rio 2016. Then came the gold.
Canada’s rise in the global game of soccer is a reflection of a changing country. Hockey has forever been the de facto sporting badge of citizenship. Soccer existed in perpetual disarray. Hundreds of thousands of kids, then and now, played the game. And yet, on the elite level … well, let’s not talk about it.
Immigration is the root of change. It starts with Mr. Davies. War in Liberia displaced his family and he was born in a refugee camp in Ghana. His parents made a home in Edmonton. When he was 16, Mr. Davies took the oath of citizenship. He joined the national team the same day.
Consider the coach, John Herdman. He grew up poor in England and left the country to find a future in soccer. He eventually landed in Canada to coach the flailing women’s team in 2011. He transformed the squad, promoting unusual ideas, an array of analytics and, most of all, playing together with shared purpose. “He’s the best coach I’ve ever had,” Ms. Sinclair told The Globe in 2015.
The men’s team cycled through other coaches before finally giving Mr. Herdman a shot in 2018. The team was ranked 94th in the world. While it helps to have the likes of Ms. Sinclair and Mr. Davies on your roster, Mr. Herdman has been a central force.
“I love this country,” Mr. Herdman said in 2015. “I feel more at home here than I’ve ever felt anywhere.”
Consider the goalkeeper. Milan Borjan’s veteran presence – and numerous shutouts – have helped carry the team. He was a teenager when his family, displaced by war in the Balkans, emigrated. “Canada gave my family everything,” he said recently.
Soccer – or basketball – is not about to eclipse hockey at the fore of the national mythos. But our narrow, one-sport-defines-us-all identity is dissolving and becoming something bigger, broader, more exciting and interesting. Canada now welcomes more than 400,000 immigrants a year, an escalating record pace. Our sense of what our country is and can be expands by the day.
In sports, hockey remains a pillar. Soccer rises. The men’s World Cup beckons this fall. And don’t forget about the 2026 men’s World Cup, when Canada co-hosts with the U.S. and Mexico. It’s a young team. The win on Sunday sparked jubilation. There’s a lot more to come.
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