Canadian soccer fans are sick of waiting for the future. It’s that simple.
Tired of finding the positives; exhausted with measuring the tiniest of successes; completely done with trying to sniff out promising little hints of better times to come.
A lot of us (and I’m writing this as a fan, first and foremost) invested the last lingering bits of our emotional capital in the under-23 team during the recent Olympic qualifiers. It looked so promising for a minute, the biggest men’s tournament berth since our one-time World Cup appearance was right there for the taking. We beat the Americans, the heavies of the competition, on their own turf. There’s no better win for any Canadian team in any sport, but this one was especially unlikely and sweet.
Suddenly the London Olympics looked possible. What could it mean for our game? Canadian soccer fans — miners of hope in a barren landscape — were quietly agog at the possibilities.
Exposure, money, recognition.
Then it all slipped away. Gone with a last-gasp goal to Cuba — the worst side in the tournament — two days later, handing them the draw. Losing us the easier, top-of-group semifinal matchup. Dooming us to face Mexico, the only team to rival the U.S. in talent and the one that could likely surpass them in home support.
Our allotment of miracles ran out, and we fell to a respectable, hard-fought and totally inevitable loss. No Olympics for Canada. No bump in cash, or support or credit. But aren’t we fans plucky for thinking we might just make it?
Such is life for supporters of any Canadian men’s teams. We want so much to have something to hold onto, to prove that we’re as good as we consistently let ourselves think we are. We look so hard at our game in hopes of spotting it. And we never let ourselves believe that that proof might actually not be there, that things might be as bad as they seem.
Fans know the problems that run rife through the game in Canada, all of them, by heart: backwards governance, poor coaching fundamentals, wrong-headed youth development structures, a relatively weak domestic game, poor fan support and a plain old lack of money to do anything about any of it. So many Canadian fans know all the problems, but at frustrating times like this, scarce few have an answer for the question that rattles after Canadian soccer like a ball and chain: Why aren’t we better than this?
That’s the question, the sum total of the Canadian soccer fan’s experience. It covers just about everything.
Why can’t we fill the stands at our own stadiums to see our own national team? Why can’t we regularly finish at least third in a regional group that, as far as teams that anyone ever actually expects to be any good, never goes any deeper than the U.S. and Mexico? Why can’t we get full-blooded commitment from all of our most promising talent? Why can’t we turn a million kids playing the game in our country into eleven men playing for our country with any kind of success?
And, of course, why can’t we keep a clean sheet against the Cuban under-23 team?
Now, I’m not having a go at our U23 boys. I’m not trying to kick them when they’re down. They beat the USA, and I’ll always be grateful for that memory. The rest, the collapse against Cuba, the loss to Mexico, it’s almost as if it’s bigger than them. They’re just the most recent victims of that toxic confluence of everything — call it fate, mixed with karma, saddled with the weight of years of failure — that counterbalances every high with a heavy, crushing low.
The normal procedure for Canadian fans after a bitter failure — and I’ve been one for long enough to know the rhythm of this like the change of the seasons — is to look ahead, and swaddle oneself in a nice little blanket of hope. This time is harder. We’ve been waiting for a breakthrough for so many years now, talking ourselves into thinking we’re just this close to making good, that it’s starting to seem like we’re stuck.
Then again, maybe this is the death of all that. The last frustrating rattle before Canada starts to get things right. Governance reform is finally beginning, youth development finally being taken seriously. MLS clubs are spreading the game, and their academies are incubating budding talent. Even our U23s, despite their loss, show promise, and their especially young age hints at the idea of a whole new generation coming in.
But there I go again: finding the bright side. Sorting through the rubble to find a few scraps of hope. I can’t help myself. Such is life for a Canadian soccer fan.
Jamie Doyle is a Toronto-based writer, who is also a senior editor for Sportsnet Magazine. Follow Jamie on Twitter.