{"id":747330,"date":"2026-06-19T13:45:23","date_gmt":"2026-06-19T13:45:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/747330\/"},"modified":"2026-06-19T13:45:23","modified_gmt":"2026-06-19T13:45:23","slug":"canada-earns-first-world-cup-win-in-front-of-raucous-vancouver-crowd","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/747330\/","title":{"rendered":"Canada earns first World Cup win in front of raucous Vancouver crowd"},"content":{"rendered":"

Canada routed Qatar 6-0 Thursday night at BC Place, \u201csending the sold-out stadium into celebration\u201d over the team\u2019s first World Cup victory. But the \u201cexcitement surrounding the game had begun long before kickoff.\u201d National pride was \u201con full display, with Canadian flags mounted on hockey sticks bobbing above the crowd and bursts of red smoke billowing overhead.\u201d The World Cup atmosphere also \u201cextended well beyond\u201d BC Place to \u201cwatch parties scattered across Metro Vancouver\u201d (Vancouver PROVINCE, 6\/18<\/a>). The announced attendance at BC Place was 52,497 (SBJ). It was \u201cVancouver\u2019s greatest sporting moment.\u201d The game result, a \u201cdominant win for the home team, setting up a titanic encounter with Switzerland next week, was all the better.\u201d Canada \u201cmarched to the stadium with expectation and the players delivered.\u201d More fans are \u201csure to be won by this game, by this day, by this tournament\u201d (Vancouver PROVINCE, 6\/18<\/a>).<\/p>\n

The run-up to the \u2060World Cup in Vancouver \u201chas been a difficult one for the sport in the city, dominated by discussions around the future of the Whitecaps<\/a>\u201d and whether the franchise \u201cmight be set for\u202fa move to Las Vegas.\u201d But on Thursday, \u201call \u200bthat faded into \u2060the background,\u201d and the win \u201cput Canada top of Group B on goal difference ahead of Switzerland.\u201d Should they emerge victorious from the group, they will stay in Vancouver for the first knockout round (REUTERS, 6\/18<\/a>).<\/p>\n

If the\u202f1994 World Cup, the first held in the U.S., \u201cforever altered the direction of American soccer,\u201d this summer\u2019s tournament \u201chas the potential to do the same\u201d for Canada. This tournament is \u201calready the most successful on the field for Canada,\u201d which had lost all six previous World Cup games it had played. Now the team is \u201cpoised to advance to the knockout rounds for the first time ever.\u201d And while that success on the field — \u201ccostly or not — is significant,\u201d former Canadian Soccer Association President Steve Reed, who \u201cwas instrumental in bringing the World Cup to Canada, said the real goal wasn\u2019t to win games as much as it was to win over the public\u201d (L.A. TIMES, 6\/18<\/a>).<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, three-and-a-half years after \u201cits\u202fbiggest failure on the World Cup stage\u202fin half a century,\u201d the Mexican national team \u201cneeded only two games to advance to the knockout round of this year\u2019s tournament\u201d as winner of Group A after taking down South Korea by a score of 1-0 Thursday night at Guadalajara Stadium in front of \u201ca fiery announced sellout crowd\u201d of 45,522 (L.A. TIMES, 6\/18<\/a>). San Pedro Square in San Jose drew \u201chundreds of people\u201d to watch the Mexico-South Korea match (San Jose MERCURY NEWS, 6\/18<\/a>).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Canada routed Qatar 6-0 Thursday night at BC Place, \u201csending the sold-out stadium into celebration\u201d over the team\u2019s…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":747331,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[49,48,44,561,13009],"class_list":["post-747330","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-canada","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-news","tag-soccer","tag-world-cup"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/747330","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=747330"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/747330\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/747331"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=747330"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=747330"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=747330"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}