AL-RAYYAN, Qatar – The conventional wisdom gave Canada a snowball’s chance in the desert.Les Rouges had to make their long-awaited, deliriously anticipated return to the men’s World Cup stage against vaunted Belgium, the No. 2-ranked side on the planet and a popular pick to make a very deep run at this strange tournament. It was an encounter with soccer royalty 36 years in the making, in an alien setting many thousands of miles away from home.No matter. Pressing high and working ferociously, Les Rouges dominated the run of play, most of the match statistics and even the stadium itself on Wednesday night as thousands of loud, maple leaf-clad Canadians turned Ahmed bin Ali Stadium into a loud little patch of the Great White North on the Persian Gulf.
Alphonso Davies, Stephen Eustaquio and their teammates forced Kevin De Bruyne and the rest of the Red Devils to chase and scramble for most of the match, flashing both cleverness and bravery in a riveting affair.“I thought they really tried to win the stadium tonight, they were brilliant,” said head coach John Herdman of his team and its fans postgame. “They walked away, I’m sure, proud and feeling like we are a football nation. We came into that game with a couple of goals. The first one was to play fearless, and the second goal was to entertain.”Fearless was indeed the word of the night.“It’s our first time here in 36 years,” said defender Alistair Johnston. “We wanted to come here and give joy to the Canadian fans. It’s been a long time, it’s been a long wait, let’s go out there and give them a team they can be proud of. And for us, sitting in, bunkering in, it’s not really our identity. It hasn’t been us through Concacaf, it doesn’t really resonate with any of the players. So we had a discussion as a group over the past couple months, how we wanted to play that one, and everyone was unanimous that we wanted to be on the front foot, put them under pressure.
“We’re trying to play Canadian football that we believe that Canadian fans, and us as fans of the game as well, would want to watch … We want to be exciting, we want to play fearless football and I think we did that.”All they needed was an actual goal or two to translate their quality onto the scoreboard. Alas, that last part never materialized.Despite an expected goals more than quadruple that of Belgium’s, Canada was undone by Thibaut Courtois’ save of an Alphonso Davies penalty kick and a hopeful Toby Alderweireld long ball that dropped to Michy Batshuayi to slam home just before halftime, eking out the tightest and most unimpressive of 1-0 wins for a title contender.“At this level, this is how the game is: one chance, one goal. You can win a game like that,” said midfielder Jonathan Osorio. “We have 21 shots, dominate the game. They save a penalty. It’s the way the game goes. It’s football, right? You have to finish your chances. But we definitely can take so much positive from this.”The entire stadium, even Canada’s fans, seemed shocked by the extent of the upstarts’ superiority right out of the gate, and while it took a VAR review to earn it, their 10th-minute penalty kick was a fair reward. Up stepped Davies, setting the stage for a storybook moment, a Liberian refugee kid turned soccer phenom scoring the nation’s first-ever men’s World Cup goal.But Courtois spoiled the narrative with a firm stop of the Bayern Munich star’s pedestrian spot kick.“When you have Courtois in net, anything’s possible,” said Johnston with a rueful grin.
Coach and teammates alike refused to engage in anything resembling finger-pointing with their young talisman. Though somewhat surprisingly, they revealed that the team has no defined list of set penalty takers, instead deciding on an ad hoc basis: “The brotherhood sorted it out,” said Herdman.“I’m proud of Fonzie, he’s picked the ball up. I mean that’s a big moment for any player to do that, you’re carrying the weight of a nation, 36 years of waiting – longer than 36 [for the] first goal,” the coach added. “And when you’ve got an $85 million player, a player with that sort of confidence and swagger, let him pick the ball up and take it.”Clearly aggravated by their inability to find a breakthrough despite a relentless pursuit all second half, Les Rouges emphasized that they’re not in Qatar for moral victories. If they are to advance to the group stage, they must now find a way to pick up points versus the 2018 finalists — “we’ve got a big effin game coming up against Croatia,” said Herdman – and then Morocco, who held the Croatians to a 0-0 draw in Al Khor earlier in the day.“There’s a lot that we can be proud of. But I want to be clear that we’re not satisfied with our performance,” said center back Steven Vitoria. “We need to be proud that this is what Canada’s about. But we want points, we want points.”Still, for those who experienced the dark days of Canadian soccer’s not-so-distant past, when North America’s third-largest nation repeatedly failed to even reach the final round of Concacaf World Cup qualifying and struggled for relevance in their hockey-obsessed homeland, this was a deeply inspiring night.“We definitely made a statement,” said Osorio. “I think we opened the world’s eyes to what Canada has and what we’re growing here, what we are now, and I think what the future is going to hold here — the mentality of this group and the ambition and bravery that we have and the belief that we have in ourselves.”
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