In an empty stadium, more than 1,000 miles away from Canada, a piece of footballing history began. Sometimes it starts in the places you least expect.
Finally, after months of pandemic delays, the Canadian national team were commencing their World Cup qualification campaign in March 2021, against Bermuda in Orlando. Canada was nominally the home team, but the country’s strict quarantine rules made cross-border travel difficult, forcing its three MLS teams to base themselves in the United States. Now, the national team were having to do the same.
Just four days after trouncing Bermuda 5-1, Canada hammered the Cayman Islands 11-0 in an ‘away’ qualifier, also played in Florida. A June encounter in the same state delivered a 7-0 win over Aruba, before a 4-0 triumph over Suriname in Chicago, at least vaguely near the Canadian border.
It was the start of an epic adventure, all crammed into the space of 12 months – no nation had to play more games to reach the 2022 World Cup. Fully 36 years since they had last made it to the final tournament, Canada began as outsiders but finished it as CONCACAF’s top team, thanks to an English manager, John Herdman.
“It was a massive journey – 20 matches to qualify for the World Cup, from the Cayman Islands, playing home matches in Chicago, and going all the way to Haiti in the middle of a pandemic,” Herdman tells FourFourTwo. “When we got to the last round, we topped the group above the USA and Mexico. We wanted to send a message to the rest of the world that we’re a football country.”
MAY A HEX BE PLACED UPON YOU
Canada hasn’t always been viewed that way though, even by some of the people who live there. Ice hockey has long been regarded as the dominant sport – the country produced Wayne Gretzky, after all – and football culture has sometimes been considered a little more restrained, at
