It’s still hard to imagine, even though we’re now only hours from kickoff rather than months or years away. Canada was awarded co-hosting duties for this summer’s World Cup in 2018. On Friday afternoon, the first game in Toronto will finally be played.
For the first time in their program’s hardscrabble history, Canada’s men will take on Bosnia and Herzegovina, and next the world, here at home.
The interminable wait for action has been occupied with thousands of questions. We now know the answers to many of them.
Iran will participate, even though it’s being bombed by the U.S., another co-host. A Somalian referee won’t, after FIFA president Gianni Infantino declined to intervene in his American visa dispute. Tickets will stay expensive. Local economic impacts won’t meet promises. A shadow shaped liked President Donald Trump will loom over everything.
But now comes the soccer — the way it always does, as though in defiance, the antidote to every poison.
Now comes the gooseflesh and tears.
For the players, Friday afternoon will come as a relief, as a release. It’s as though they’ve been actors waiting backstage while their theatre is being built around them. (In Toronto, that’s literally true: BMO Field— renamed Toronto Stadium for the tournament — has gone from 28,000 seats to nearly 46,000 in amazingly short order, a cottage by the lake turned into a fortress.)
“I just want to get started,” Ismael Koné, who’s bounced back from Wednesday’s fever, said earlier this week. “We’ve been practicing and pushing and speaking about tactics, speaking about the opposite team, speaking about ourselves, speaking about the moment… The moment is now.”
After years of experiment and months of debate, Canada’s 26-man roster was finalized on Thursday afternoon, FIFA’s last deadline met with 13 minutes to spare.
Central defender and personality Moise Bombito, thought too damaged to keep his spot less than a week ago, has somehow shown enough to reclaim it.
“Moise has made incredible progress,” head coach Jesse Marsch said at Thursday’s suddenly crowded press conference. “It made the decision relatively easy to keep him in the group.”
Fellow defenders Ralph Priso and Zorhan Bassong, who have been training with the team in case of emergency, will fall just short of their dreams.
Alphonso Davies, Ali Ahmed, and Jacob Shaffelburg will also be included despite their own injury concerns, though Davies, Marsch said, will be unavailable in any capacity on Friday. Jayden Nelson, who replaced a stricken Marcelo Flores earlier this week, was the last lucky man through the door.