Canada Soccer announced the official home for Canadian soccer fans in Toronto at this summer’s FIFA World Cup on Monday, unveiling Canada Soccer House Toronto, to be hosted downtown at Harbourfront Centre. The Toronto location is the first to be announced, with more to come in the future.
It will be free to attend, and is expected to bring thousands of fans of all ages to the Toronto waterfront to celebrate the sport’s biggest event. Canada Soccer House “will blend the energy of a watch party, street festival, and national celebration” according to a press release.
There will be large screens to watch matches, along with music, DJs, and live entertainment. Fans can also expect food and beverages, social gathering spaces, places to buy official merchandise, games and prizes. GE Appliances will be the title sponsor, but other partners of Canada Soccer will be present with activations, and there will be several other surprises.
The announcement came about an hour after Canada’s head coach Jesse Marsch met the media ahead of Tuesday night’s match at BMO Field against Tunisia. While the two were unrelated to each other, Marsch also used his platform to call on Canadians to come together and support the team in a bigger way than they ever have before.
Marsch said he has requested that Canada Soccer president Peter Augruso and CEO Kevin Blue pull out all the stops to make sure that BMO Field is packed with red when they open their tournament on June 12 against either Italy or Bosnia and Herzegovina. He wants it to happen in the two friendlies in Edmonton and Montreal as well, leading up to the tournament in early June.
“I’ve spoken to Peter and Kevin about this,” Marsch started. “I would like specifically now, looking ahead to the World Cup, I want to start instituting what I think I want to call Red Out. Like, I want to see our fans all in red in the whole stadium. In Edmonton, I want the stadium to be red.
“We’ve talked about, ‘Do we hand out t-shirts? What do we need to do?’ but certainly, there’s opportunity to buy jerseys. That’s obviously a viable option but I think for the World Cup, we need to have a red out. We need every stadium to be packed with red.
“If it’s Italy, man, then we should be ripping all those blue jerseys and burning them,” Marsch said with a laugh. “It should be a red out, even if we play Italy.”
While Canada wore red on Saturday against Iceland, Tuesday’s match will see them debut their new black World Cup kits.
Expect to see plenty of red in the stands as always, though, and a lot more this summer between BMO Field and BC Place if Marsch gets his wish.