Running around my basement with a long stream of loud gibberish emitting from my vocal chords feeling a joy I hadn’t felt since watching Crosby pot that goal in Vancouver. That was the result of seeing Alphonso Davies soar through the air and smash a wonderful cross into the back of the net.
A World Cup goal scored less than two minutes into Canada’s game against Croatia brought serious jubilation (and a three-year-old daughter very confused at why her father was dangerously jumping through the mine field of children’s toys on the floor). I was younger than her when Canada made their only other trip to the World Cup. Most of my life has been spent watching teams that should have enough talent languish while players that could have pushed them over the top chose to play for other nations. Rarely getting televised, often it was the box score at the back of the Toronto Star that showed the latest result – losing to a Central American team that didn’t even have a full-time coaching staff.
Like many things that I once adored with childlike admiration, the World Cup and its organizing body, FIFA, has lost a bit of the shine. Fuelled on greed and tarnished with the veneer of corruption, there has been no shortage of stories outlining the specific abuses of this particular World Cup. Failure to pay workers while subjecting them to horrible living conditions coupled with the host country of Qatar being a theocratic authoritarian state that imprisons people for loving whom they love. It would be easy to be weighted down by all of that, yet when that goal was scored I felt nothing but happiness. It was a good reminder of how pure sport can be.
There was nothing corrupt about that goal… it was a thing of beauty. A splendid long ball from Borjan that was equalled by a phenomenal run and cross by Tajon Buchanan and finished by a powerful header from a run by Davies that began on the Canadian 18-yard box. Canada did not win the game and its 2022 World Cup journey only has a game left – a game in which they can spoil things for the Moroccans. Unfortunately the dream of moving on in this tournament ended with that flurry of Croatian offense, yet here on Monday, Nov. 28, I don’t care.
I am choosing to look at what is good here. The feeling that came with seeing Canada’s first-ever World Cup goal cannot be taken from any who chose to celebrate it. No number of uneducated hockey fans griping about soccer at the local watering hole can diminish the impressive feats of athleticism that were stacked up in close succession for that goal to happen. But more lasting than the jubilation of that goal is the joy that can be taken from looking at this team and hoping for Canada’s future.
This team is a walking example of what makes Canada a beautiful nation. Our best player, Alfonso Davies, was born into a world of war to Liberian parents seeking a peaceful place to raise their six children. Canada was that place and it was through a free drop-in soccer program in Edmonton, for at-risk youth, that the best left back in the world came to be.
The elder statesman and keeper of the squad, Milan Borjan, came to Canada as a child to escape the war-torn regions of the former Yugoslavia. When asked why he chose to play for Canada over Serbia, the country of his birth, he answered that he needed to give back to the country that opened its arms to his family to provide safety and opportunity.
There will future pitfalls for the squad as they prepare for the next World Cup here in North America in 2026. Just like Canada as a nation, it is the suits in charge who will ruin things. For example, in the lead up to this tournament, Soccer Canada already managed to bungle taking part in the fund that would see monies delivered to the very workers who were mistreated during construction of stadiums in Qatar. Soccer Canada also managed to fight with the men’s squad, nickel and diming them on everything from kits to travel, while leadership flew business class to personal vacations in far away places like Greece. A loathsome display that sadly is becoming the norm here in Canada.
Perhaps it is just being caught up in the moment, but this team feels like an allegorical representation of Canada right now. We have so much promise. We are young, we are skilled, and we are hungry to achieve new levels of success. We honour those who came before but our ambition is to find heights not yet reached as a country. We have what other nations can only dream of… on the pitch it may be the best winger in the world, but where it really matters we have a country that is a safe place with the resources needed to keep growing.
We just need the suits to get out of the way and who knows where we can go.
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Stewart Skinner is a local business owner, former political candidate, and has worked at Queen’s Park as a Policy Advisor to the Minister of Agriculture, Food, and Rural Affairs. He can be reached at stuskinner@gmail.com or on Twitter: @modernfarmer.
