BEHIND THE PLAY #24

I had a morning meeting scheduled downtown and had been able to get it so that it ended just before kick-off. I’d then called around downtown pubs and bars to find one that was showing the game. Back in 2012 this was not a given for a Canadian World Cup qualifier (WCQ).

We wouldn’t even have needed a result, not even a draw, if we hadn’t blown the home game against them in Toronto. We’d be through but instead we tied 0-0. So now we found ourselves needing to get at least a draw. In Honduras. In San Pedro Sula, Honduras, which at the time had the highest per capita murder rate in the world, on a hot day in the middle of the afternoon.

8-1.

It’s become a code for perhaps the lowest moment in Canadian men’s soccer history. The wheels fell off completely after coming very close to scoring inside ninety seconds through Tosaint Ricketts. 90 minutes later we would be out of qualifying for the 2014 World Cup. To top it off this wasn’t even the Hex, the last qualifying round. Once again, we had been eliminated before even reaching the last round robin stage of qualifying.

It would take two more World Cup qualifying campaigns before we made it to Qatar. It had been 36 years since our previous and only World Cup appearance. I went. I realized I probably don’t have another 36 years I can afford to wait. When we scored our first ever World Cup goal against Croatia, TV cameras captured me having a moment.

Quite honestly, my phone has never lit up the way it did within minutes of Phonzie scoring that goal. It actually continued for days. A friend of mine who was working in media relations for the Qatar World Cup organizing group texted me to say the video of it was being included in promo material they were sending out to all licensed broadcasters for upcoming games.

I don’t remember the first men’s national team WCQ I went to. I know it was challenging, charitably, to see them on TV through the 90’s and into the 2000’s. I do know that when I first started going in person they were played at Swangard Stadium and not larger stadiums. And we lost a lot of those games.

That’s where we were at. Not qualifying for World Cups. Not even making the last qualifying round. For decades. And losing 8-1 away to Honduras. A psychological scar that still haunts long time national team supporters.

Fast forward to the 2024 Copa America. As I already covered a couple newsletters ago, I made a very spontaneous decision and found myself in Atlanta 16 hours later for the Canada v Argentina game that kicked off the tournament. Last Friday, I found myself at a bar in Vancouver, once again having contrived to ensure fitting the game into my schedule as I did twelve years previous, watching the quarter final against Venezuela. A game we earned through coming second in our robin group.

I will repeat in more detail. Having lost 2-0 to the defending World Cup champion after being level at half-time and only conceding the second with just a few minutes left in the game, we tied Chile and beat Peru.

And we advanced to the quarter finals of the Copa America. Mexico didn’t do that. The USA didn’t either. Let’s be clear here. The Copa is a slugfest. South American teams take it incredibly seriously. Manic tension prevades. You earn every yard you advance the ball and every point you can muster from games.

So the fine patrons of the Wicklow Pub were treated to a hyped up weirdo, who had once again called ahead to make sure they were going to be showing the game, leaping off his chair multiple times shouting what must have been gibberish to the majority there who had no knowledge or interest in soccer never mind this particular game.

I was there with my wife and two friends, ostensibly for a few drinks before heading across False Creek to see the Rolling Stones. I was the only one with anything more than a passing interest in the men’s national team but they knew what they’d signed up for.

“That’s a yellow!”

“How did that not go in?!”

I honestly flew off my high top table chair at least five times, raging, pleading, even silently at least once. There was only one other guy there watching the game with any real interest so it must’ve looked weirdly entertaining for the others there to enjoy a quiet meal and a drink.

But it matters. To me. There’s no empirical, rational, explainable reason for why it does. But it does and I don’t feel the need to examine it too closely. It’s probably the only thing that could get me acting like that in a bar (note: I’d only had two pints of Fat Tugs).

And now after beating Venezuela on penalties, we are in the semi-finals. Brazil didn’t do that.

Just as the Stones started playing an hour or so after the final whistle, I got a text from a group I’m in with two friends that I stuck on my Twitter.

I’m not going. But if we beat Argentina and make the final…