Toronto’s Front Street was alive with it all week \u2014 Croatian jerseys, Brazilian colours, a street vendor getting scolded for selling Blue Jays gear when someone wanted Croatia merchandise. But across the street, six women’s soccer players in Northern Super League uniforms stared down from the CBC’s headquarters, a quiet reminder that Canadian soccer, with all its domestic ambitions and institutional growing pains, exists beneath the spectacle too.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
That contrast captures the central tension of this World Cup for Canada. While the United States and Mexico have dominated the headlines as co-hosts, Canada is the only first-time host among the three nations. Mexico is staging its third World Cup; the United States its second. Canada, by contrast, arrives at this moment with everything still to prove \u2014 and, arguably, far more to gain. The hope, shared openly by those building the sport here, is that 2026 does for Canadian soccer what 1994 did for the American game: crack it open.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
“This World Cup is our coming out party,” said Tosaint Ricketts, a long-time Canada men’s national team forward who now works with the Vancouver Whitecaps and served on the hiring committee that brought Jesse Marsch in as national team manager. “The stakes are massive.”<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
The Canadian Soccer Association arrives at this moment with real momentum, but also with the weight of a difficult recent history. The organization has spent years navigating dysfunction, a lack of transparency, and internal structural upheaval \u2014 problems Ricketts does not shy away from naming. “Over the years, we’ve gone through our fair bit of controversy, a little bit of lack of transparency, and changes within the organizational structure of Canada Soccer,” he said. “But that is all behind us and now we’re steady on the path of growth, the path of creating a foundation.”<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
The foundation he describes has tangible markers. The men’s national team qualified for the 2022 World Cup in Qatar \u2014 their first appearance since 1986, and only their second ever. The women’s program has been even more consistent, winning three consecutive Olympic medals between 2012 and 2020, including gold at Tokyo. These are not small achievements for a country whose dominant sporting culture remains centred on hockey, and whose broader sporting landscape is crowded and competitive.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
Yet a striking gap persists. Soccer is, by participation numbers, the most popular sport in Canada \u2014 over one million registered players across the country. Corporate investment, professional infrastructure, and elite development pathways have not kept pace with that grassroots reality. “I’m not sure people know that it’s the most participated-in sport,” Ricketts said. “The next step is to get the corporations investing in the game, improve the infrastructure so these million participants have the facilities and resources to grow and get better.”<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
James Johnson, commissioner of the Canadian Premier League \u2014 the country’s eight-team domestic professional circuit now in its eighth season \u2014 frames the opportunity in deliberately long-term terms. “I think the biggest opportunity is not just the five weeks hosting and participating in the tournament,” he said. “It’s really in the legacy that the tournament leaves behind, which can be transformation for soccer in this country.”<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
The analogy Johnson reaches for is instructive: Major League Soccer emerged as the institutional legacy of the 1994 World Cup in the United States, transforming from a condition attached to hosting rights into a genuinely significant professional league over the following three decades. Johnson wants the Canadian Premier League to occupy that same position after 2026. “How can we position the CPL as really the legacy story of the 2026 World Cup, just as Major League Soccer was the legacy story coming out of the 1994 World Cup?” he asked.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
Achieving that requires sponsors drawn in by World Cup visibility to remain engaged once the tournament ends \u2014 a notoriously difficult conversion. “We want to bring investment in,” Johnson said. “We want to scale and we want to take advantage of the momentum the World Cup creates. We want to increase our marketing spend for the Canadian Premier League, to increase the playing time on the pitch and our clubs’ infrastructures to develop better players. It requires investment. It’s positioning the sport in the mainstream and making sure when the World Cup comes and goes, people can still see soccer in Canada on billboards and on linear TV.”<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
The men’s national team’s performance shapes all of this. Having already secured Canada’s first-ever World Cup point, first win, and first run to the knockout rounds, Les Rouges<\/strong> extended their tournament with a victory over South Africa in the round of 32, setting up a last-16 fixture against the winner of Netherlands versus Morocco. Every additional match deepens the connection between new fans and the sport. “The legacy for a sport is very heavily influenced by the performance of the national team,” Johnson said. “The longer the host nation stays in the tournament, the deeper the connection new fans have with the sport.”<\/p>\n<\/p>\n Ricketts, looking ahead with the measured optimism of someone who has watched this sport struggle and grow for decades, put it plainly: “All this history is going to create a legacy and inspire the next generation. Kids are going to talk about this for the next four years and beyond.” The World Cup, he suggested, is not a destination for Canadian soccer \u2014 it is a runway. “It really feels like we have the foundation now to really grow and take this game even further in Canada. We’ve been in it for a while, but it really feels like it’s just the beginning.”<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Toronto’s Front Street was alive with it all week \u2014 Croatian jerseys, Brazilian colours, a street vendor getting scolded for selling Blue Jays gear when someone wanted Croatia merchandise. But across the street, six women’s soccer players in Northern Super League uniforms stared down from the CBC’s headquarters, a quiet reminder that Canadian soccer, with […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":1203,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[37,47],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1204","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-news","category-world"],"yoast_head":"\n