By Philip O\u2019Connor<\/p>\n
VANCOUVER, June 12 (Reuters) \u2013 Toronto may have hosted Canada\u2019s first men\u2019s World Cup match on home soil, but after Friday\u2019s 1-1 draw with Bosnia and Herzegovina all eyes now \u200bturn to the west-coast city of Vancouver, which hosts the \u200cgames against Qatar and Switzerland that will decide their World Cup fate.<\/p>\n
Thousands of fans who flocked to public viewings of the Toronto game in downtown Vancouver saw Canada\u2019s Cyle Larin come off the bench to grab the equaliser that gives them \u200cone \u200bpoint in Group B, and the locals \u2060are already looking forward to \u2060hosting their next game against Qatar at the city\u2019s BC Place stadium.<\/p>\n
\u201cAs soon as they announced the World Cup coming in Vancouver\u2026 I think there\u2019s definitely been an increase in interest in soccer, \u200bin football with the Premier League, with the locals,\u201d Canada fan Robert Paige told Reuters at a downtown viewing of the game.<\/p>\n
For \u2060local fan April Bates, the tournament is \u2060already making a difference, especially from a social perspective.<\/p>\n
\u201cI \u200bdo think the World Cup has brought people together in new ways, \u200bespecially with all these rallying points to bring people together to \u200cwatch at community centres,\u201d she told Reuters.<\/p>\n
\u201cI know some churches open their doors, we have public centres like Granville Island. I think you get the whole world coming together to watch, and it doesn\u2019t even \u2060matter what country you\u2019re from.\u201d<\/p>\n
Canada\u2019s remaining two games, against Qatar on June 18 and Switzerland on June 24, will now put the sport in Vancouver \u2060in the spotlight, and \u200csome residents are hoping that it will lead \u2060to increased investment.<\/p>\n
\u201cFootball is already really popular, but nothing \u200bhurts \u200cit growing more (than a lack of facilities),\u201d fan Lisa \u200bMcAllister told \u2060Reuters.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019d love to see more fields in Vancouver, you know. Not to get political, but we do have conflicts with dogs on our fields, so we\u2019d love to see the kids have more access to green space where they can play soccer.\u201d<\/p>\n
(Reporting by Benmansour Mohammed, writing by Philip O\u2019ConnorEditing \u200bby Christian Radnedge)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"By Philip O\u2019Connor VANCOUVER, June 12 (Reuters) \u2013 Toronto may have hosted Canada\u2019s first men\u2019s World Cup match…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":733785,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[440],"tags":[49,48,561,82],"class_list":["post-733784","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-soccer","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-soccer","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/733784","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=733784"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/733784\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/733785"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=733784"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=733784"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=733784"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}