World Cup<\/a> moment this summer are, also, temporary. The getting has been awfully good for the scaffolding men and rivet women of Canada in recent times.<\/p>\nWhat the football public here crave now and over the next five and a half weeks is something permanent. A legacy which can last. Marsch and his players do too, desperately so. The most gifted squad Canada have ever assembled sometimes talk about having already turned their homeland into a football country. At others they reference it as an ambition. The truth is somewhere in the middle \u2013 a work in progress, one which maybe feels closer to its start than finish. Which makes Friday afternoon\u2019s World Cup opener, and all that follows, so precious.<\/p>\n
Four years ago Canada\u2019s men made their World Cup return after nearly four decades and it was the most fleeting of things. They were the first country sent home, the only team to join hosts Qatar in putting a zero on the board. John Herdman\u2019s claim that he\u2019d already turned Canada into a football nation looked as naive as his tactics proved on the biggest stage.<\/p>\n
\u201cAhhhh. That was one of our biggest regrets in Qatar,\u201d defender Alistair Johnston told the Guardian this week. \u201cWe knew the whole country was right there. We couldn\u2019t give them something to really grasp on to and ride the coat tails of. This summer now, we\u2019re so much more experienced, less naive, less deer in the headlights. We\u2019re ready for this moment and, this time, instead of having to feel that passion halfway around the world, it\u2019s going to be right there in the stands, in the streets.\u201d<\/p>\n
Johnston and his teammates felt it up close on Monday with a raucous community training session, hundreds of schoolchildren creating one hell of a din. They were loudest when Canada\u2019s captain came by, \u201cPhonzieee, Phonzieee!\u201d the cry.<\/p>\n
Alphonso Davies is the face of this golden generation, a prolific winner with Bayern Munich. In Qatar he scored Canada\u2019s first World Cup goal, the liftoff moment until Croatia scored four in reply. Along with Celtic\u2019s Johnston, Jonathan David at Juventus, Tajon Buchanan and Tani Oluwaseyi at Villarreal, Isma\u00ebl Kon\u00e9 at Sassuolo and a clutch of others, Davies spends his club days among Europe\u2019s upper end. In two whirlwind years under Marsch, upwards of a third of this squad have earned moves from MLS to Europe or from smaller European outposts into big five leagues.<\/p>\n
Interest has grown and grown. The run to the Copa Am\u00e9rica semi-finals months after Marsch took charge relit the fire after the post-Qatar lull. The American\u2019s magnetism and willingness to push back against US President Donald Trump\u2019s 51st State rhetoric won new fans. Expectations have risen and so a team that under Herdman carried a ceremonial sword as a symbol (gimmick?) of their warrior spirit now find themselves with a double-edged one.<\/p>\n
As co-hosts, the draw and schedule was soft and favourable. In Group B, Marsch\u2019s team kicks off against Bosnia and Herzegovina here Friday before making for Vancouver to face Qatar and Switzerland. A golden path, staying home through two knockout rounds, is on offer if they can top the group. Marsch has spoken of achieving that goal, of his \u201cpeople\u2019s team lighting the country on fire\u201d.<\/p>\n
Recently, the team\u2019s profile has rocketed anew. Rapper Drake designed Nike tournament tracksuits for them. Canadian NHL and NFL stars attended training last week in Montreal. Prime minister Mark Carney has been in the dressing room. Actor Simu Liu, singer Alanis Morissette and hockey hero Sidney Crosby are ambassadors. It\u2019s head-spinning; not long ago, Canada Soccer had to pay TV networks just to show national team games.<\/p>\n
Crosby gave Canada its signature sporting national team moment with his Olympic golden goal in 2010. It\u2019s what Johnston and others have pointed to when they speak about legacy.<\/p>\n
Yet as their moment finally approaches, things around the team feel as if they\u2019ve tightened slightly. Davies\u2019s fitness is a fragile thing. Friday will come too soon for him. Mo\u00efse Bombito, Canada\u2019s best defender and a key piece of the high-pressure, high-risk Marsch system, could be ruled out of the entire tournament on its eve. Luc de Fougerolles, a 20-year-old veteran of just 44 games of professional football, will slot in to replace him. Scoring from open play has become a huge issue \u2013 it\u2019s happened just twice in the last nine games. On Friday night against Ireland, Canada created countless chances and butchered a buffet\u2019s worth.<\/p>\n
Marsch began his post-match press conference with a directive: \u201cI\u2019m going to be positive, guys \u2026 if you ask me negative questions, I\u2019ll move on.\u201d<\/p>\n
Not quite the walls closing in but a sense of something shifting. When playmaker Kon\u00e9 skipped Wednesday\u2019s training there was a brief panic of further serious injury issues, even a disciplinary problem. The fever pit that is the online community of Canadian football was briefly afire. It turned out to be, well, fever.<\/p>\n
Marsch likes his team to play with a chip on its shoulder. He certainly has one from being spurned by US Soccer for its own head coach opening. No first goal at this World Cup looms larger than the one in Friday\u2019s home opener. Marsch has insisted Canada will score it. After that the firsts line up to be knocked down: a first tournament point, a maiden win, a first knockout game, even a first knockout victory. Getting to the last 32 feels like a bare minimum for this home summer to be remembered as a success.<\/p>\n
Perhaps the last-minute jitteriness is both natural and, ultimately, temporary too. Overcoming it is essential if Marsch and Canada are to make their point a permanent one.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Canada\u2019s best had about as close to a day off as you get in Jesse Marsch\u2019s world Wednesday…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":487681,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[85,46,105],"class_list":["post-487680","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sports","tag-il","tag-israel","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/487680","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=487680"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/487680\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/487681"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=487680"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=487680"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=487680"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}