Men have stood broken on her piers. It can be a desolate place, too, especially in winter, which is of course when the lobster boats do the bulk of their fishing. But the weather had improved by the time Canadian men’s national team head coach Jesse Marsch ferried his squad from around the world to Halifax, Nova Scotia, for a training camp ahead of last summer’s Gold Cup. It was the first time the men’s national team had visited the province.

But it was not Marsch’s first time in town, having previously kicked off a cross-country coaching clinic – a whirlwind tour meant to share with local soccer communities what he’d done with the national team at Copa América in 2024 – at a local hotel and convention centre. He’d promised, and pitched a vision, to make the national team truly national in a way no coach had before him. And he was delivering, having also made similar coaching stops in Québec City, Saskatoon and Calgary.

That summer camp in Halifax also served as an opportunity for Marsch to gather further information on his growing player pool through the Wanderers, one of eight clubs in Canada’s top flight. Tiago Coimbra, a 21-year-old striker, was in the midst of a breakout season, one that earned him the league’s best Canadian U-21 player award and, at that time, a seat alongside Marsch for a local fundraiser.

Nearly seven months after sitting together on stage in Halifax, Coimbra is one of several promising players Marsch invited to his January camp in California. The gaffer had kept tabs on him. And his call-up speaks to both what the Brazilian-Canadian has accomplished since arriving in the CPL in 2023 and the ethos Marsch believes in.

“I just want to go out there, give my best, get on Jesse’s good side, hopefully, and show him what I can do.” Coimbra said. “I want to give nothing but my best, not just for the national team but also for myself.”

Make no mistake: Camp Poutine, as the January camp affectionately been dubbed in Canadian soccer circles, is not a normal camp. It falls outside an official Fifa window, meaning many of Canada’s projected starters for the World Cup are with their European clubs. Questions concerning Canada’s starting XI in June will not be answered here. But the camp is still intriguing as Marsch continues to take a holistic approach to shaping not only the national team but the country’s soccer pyramid as a whole.

“I know, in the end, people are going to love me or hate me based on how the team does in the World Cup. But along the way, I take this [grassroots] responsibility very seriously,” Marsch told reporters in Halifax last year. “This is different from coaching a club team. I have a responsibility to the nation to try to do the best I can in every way possible to help the sport and I’m committed to do that.”

Jesse Marsch said he is using Canada’s January camp with an eye to the future of the program beyond 2026. Photograph: Icon Sportswire/Getty Images

That responsibility has manifested itself in Camp Poutine – a new occasion on the Canadian soccer calendar, a parallel to January’s Camp Cupcake held by the US men’s national team annually until recently. The capstone, a 17 January friendly against Guatemala, provides Marsch the opportunity to test young, domestic talents such as Coimbra (21), Atlético Ottawa’s Noah Abatneh (21) and Inter Toronto’s Shola Jimoh (17). They’re also buoyed up by some of CanMNT’s more experienced hands looking to gain traction, be it the experienced Jonathan Osorio or 23-year-old breakout Jayden Nelson.

Canada’s program has in the past felt as though players rose to the professional ranks despite their ecosystem. Now, with several current and former CPLers called into camp plus strong representation from the country’s MLS academies, it feels there’s now a pipeline to the national team.

“There’s a reason why we have quite a bit of the structures in our league to incentivize opportunities for younger Canadian domestic talent,” CPL executive vice president Costa Smyrniotis said. “That’s a structure that didn’t exist when a lot of these [current national team] players were growing up in the system.

The CPL has had its growing pains since starting play in 2019, but Marsch has taken a particular interest, urging the league to play younger players when he scouts matches and makes visits, including to the 2025 CPL final that included the viral “icicle kick”.

He is also taking a more active role in players’ careers than may be expected of an international manager, having already used his connections across Europe to help find homes for his players who needed a fresh start (Ismaël Koné) or new challenge (Nathan Saliba). Marsch’s impact is so widespread and obvious that he has joked with the media that at times he feels like an agent.

Coimbra says he hopes the national team spotlight can be a springboard for the next chapter of his career.

“I feel like these past three years in Halifax, I’ve learned a lot and I’ve grown a lot but I really believe I’m ready for a move,” he said. “If a transfer can come from that as well, it would be amazing. I don’t want to get too ahead of myself but this is every player’s dream.”

It remains to be seen how Marsch will distribute minutes against Guatemala but knowing that it’ll be Coimbra’s birthday, it wouldn’t be a surprise to see him earn his first senior cap for Canada.

Yet it’s also an opportunity borne of a head coach’s interest beyond coaching Alphonso Davies or Jonathan David, and well beyond the World Cup opener on 12 June in Toronto.

It’s a bond – between a coach and his players – that will only grow with time.

Josh Healey is a Canadian soccer journalist based in Lunenburg, Nova Scotia. His work appears in various publications, including The Athletic, OneSoccer, DARBY Magazine and others.