There are 26 players on the Canada squad at the FIFA World Cup.<\/p>\n
There are players from as far west as Vancouver and as far east as Kentville, NS, but the largest concentration of players comes from a city in the central part of the country and, while it\u2019s near Toronto, it\u2019s not Toronto.<\/p>\n
A whopping 23 per cent of the Canada squad is comprised of players who were either born in Brampton, Ont. or grew up there: Cyle Larin, Promise David, Tajon Buchanan, Jayden Nelson, Liam Millar and Jonathan Osorio. A city of fewer than 700,000 is responsible for nearly a quarter of the team.<\/p>\n
Beginning with the emergence of former Canada captain Atiba Hutchinson to winger Junior Hoilett to the crop of players currently at the World Cup, Brampton has become Canada\u2019s preeminent football factory.<\/p>\n
How did that happen?<\/p>\n
\u201cIs there something in the water?\u201d Buchanan joked. \u201cI wish I knew. I don\u2019t know. It\u2019s just a very diverse city. You\u2019ve got a lot of people from different backgrounds.\u201d<\/p>\n
Now 31, Larin remembers his early days of playing the sport in the city. Nicknamed \u201cThe Brampton Bagsman\u201d at Southampton, the UConn product says part of the rise of Brampton soccer is due to money and infrastructure catching up with talent.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think we\u2019ve always had a lot of kids playing soccer, but when I was growing up, I don\u2019t think it was as [popular] back then because you had the other big sports \u2013 hockey and basketball, they were really the most-played sports,\u201d Larin said. \u201cAnd the money was mostly put into that back in the day. But I think it\u2019s changed a lot. You have a lot of talented players coming out now, but [the talent] has always been there. I think it was just overlooked because there wasn\u2019t the money to scout players and to find players in these places.\u201d<\/p>\n
Jahkeele Marshall-Rutty is the latest Brampton-born player to make his debut with the senior side. The 22-year-old New York Red Bulls winger played 15 minutes in the team\u2019s scoreless draw with Tunisia in March. The most recent addition to what is now a long line of Peel Region talent, Marshall-Rutty points to the systems in place that Larin and those before him didn\u2019t have as key to his development.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s a huge credit to the youth system they have in place \u2013 [teams like] Brampton East, Brampton Youth, Brampton Blast, Brampton West \u2013 because it just seems like there\u2019s so much talent coming from Brampton,\u201d Marshall-Rutty said. \u201cIt\u2019s player after player, but arguably, Atiba Hutchinson is the best player [from Brampton], who set the standard for us.\u201d<\/p>\n
Marshall-Rutty is now standing shoulder to shoulder with those he looked up to as a kid and he doesn\u2019t feel out of place being there.<\/p>\n
\u201cObviously, in the beginning, it was a bit weird, but these are my teammates,\u201d Marshall-Rutty said. \u201cI\u2019ve earned the right to be here. They\u2019ve earned the right to be here. I\u2019ve looked up to them in so many ways, guys like Jonathan Osorio, who I played with starting my whole career [at Toronto FC]. They set the foundation for the younger players like me, like Atiba set for them, working around here to make sure the national program stays in a good place.\u201d<\/p>\n
Conversely, for players like Larin and Hoilett, they are now peers with the Bramptonians who once looked at them as examples of what was possible in their wildest dreams. The inspiration has become reciprocal, Hoilett says.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s a surreal moment,\u201d Hoilett said. \u201cIt\u2019s good that we inspired the kids, the youth, not only in our city, but throughout Canada to fulfill their dreams. Jahkeele\u2019s now part of the squad. He\u2019s a talented player and he has a bright future. It\u2019s very inspiring for us that we could inspire the youth to live out their dreams.\u201d<\/p>\n
And Marshall-Rutty won\u2019t be the last. As the current generation of Brampton-born players transitions into the next, Larin believes soccer in his city is in good hands.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt feels good to just know there\u2019s guys coming up and just to see them growing in their career and making steps in their career, believing in themselves and being proud [of where they\u2019re from],\u201d Larin said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"There are 26 players on the Canada squad at the FIFA World Cup. There are players from as…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":758147,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[194339],"tags":[712,51759,49,48,227756,227754,270443,201060],"class_list":["post-758146","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-brampton","tag-apple-news","tag-brampton","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-canada-sports-soccer-team-team-statscom-7590","tag-cyle-larin-sports-soccer-player-player-statscom-827513","tag-jahkeele-marshall-rutty-sports-soccer-player-player-statscom-1210306","tag-tajon-buchanan-sports-soccer-player-player-statscom-1156066"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/758146","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=758146"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/758146\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/758147"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=758146"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=758146"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=758146"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}