Bosnia<\/a> and Herzegovina upset 12th-ranked Italy 4-1 in penalties on home soil in a playoff qualifier final \u2014 the teams were tied 1-1 after full time \u2014 to advance and become Canada\u2019s first opponent in Toronto.<\/p>\nLater in the month, Iraq will face Senegal in Ontario\u2019s capital \u2014 after the team beat Bolivia in the final World Cup qualifier on Tuesday evening.<\/p>\n
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Toronto Mayor Olivia Chow lamented Italy\u2019s failure to qualify, which would have seen their match in the city coincide with the start of the Taste of Little Italy festival.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s heartbreaking,\u201d she said. \u201cWe were so looking forward to the Italian fans being here in Toronto. We have a huge Italian community here, ready to welcome them.\u201d<\/p>\n
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Canada will now kick off its World Cup campaign in Toronto at 3 p.m. on June 12 against Bosnia and Herzegovina.<\/p>\n
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Canada is in Group B, with 19th-ranked Switzerland and 55th-ranked Qatar rounding out the group. The top two teams from all 12 groups and the eight best third-place finishers advance to the knockout stage.<\/p>\n
The next match in Toronto will be on June 17, when Ghana plays Panama, before Germany takes on Cote d\u2019Ivoire on June 20. Three days later, Croatia plays Panama.<\/p>\n
Then, on June 26, Senegal will face Iraq. Toronto\u2019s final match will be an as-yet-undecided Round of 32 knockout match on July 2 at 7 p.m.<\/p>\n
\u2014\u00a0with files from The Canadian Press<\/p>\n
\n\t\t© 2026 Global News, a division of Corus Entertainment Inc.\t<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Descrease article font size Increase article font size The final two international teams to play group stage matches…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":575675,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[194291],"tags":[221009,49,48,3274,4996,714,3302,13009],"class_list":{"0":"post-575674","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-toronto","8":"tag-bosnia","9":"tag-ca","10":"tag-canada","11":"tag-fifa","12":"tag-italy","13":"tag-politics","14":"tag-toronto","15":"tag-world-cup"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/575674","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=575674"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/575674\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/575675"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=575674"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=575674"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=575674"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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