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Thursday, July 24, 2025

Canada heads home from the World Cup with work to be done

by

967 days ago
20221129

DO­HA, Qatar (AP) — While Cana­da is un­der­stand­ably dis­ap­point­ed to be head­ing home fol­low­ing the World Cup’s group stage, in a way the team's work is just be­gin­ning with an eye to­ward 2026.

The Cana­di­ans will turn their at­ten­tion to their prepa­ra­tion for the next World Cup, which they will co-host with the Unit­ed States and Mex­i­co. Part of that work will be to build a team that goes deep­er in­to the tour­na­ment.

Cana­da played in its first men's World Cup in 36 years, and just sec­ond over­all, in Qatar. A 1-0 loss to Bel­gium in the open­er fol­lowed by a 4-1 drub­bing by Croa­t­ia scrubbed the Cana­di­ans' chances of reach­ing the knock­out round be­fore their fi­nal Group F game against Mo­roc­co on Thurs­day.

“This last game is about get­ting a re­sult and win­ning for Cana­da, and re­al­ly mak­ing this coun­try be­lieve that we're in the right di­rec­tion for 2026,” coach John Herd­man said.

Cana­da has as­cend­ed on the world stage in the four years since Herd­man took over. In 2021 alone, the team went from No. 72 in the FI­FA rank­ings to No. 40.

Be­cause of that low rank­ing, Cana­da had to get through the two ear­ly rounds of CON­CA­CAF qual­i­fy­ing, but it emerged atop the field ahead of Mex­i­co and the third-place Unit­ed States, which both had byes to the fi­nal round.

How­ev­er, the best fin­ish­er among the North, Cen­tral and Caribbean na­tions was the sec­ond World Cup team to be elim­i­nat­ed, join­ing host Qatar.

Alphon­so Davies sal­vaged the team's World Cup run by scor­ing Cana­da's first-ever men's World Cup goal against Croa­t­ia. Davies, who plays for Bay­ern Mu­nich, is one of a group of Cana­di­an play­ers who have grabbed at­ten­tion in­ter­na­tion­al­ly, along with top scor­er Cyle Lar­in, who plays in Bel­gium for Club Brugge and Jonathan David of Lille in France.

A na­tion more known for hock­ey, Cana­da in­vest­ed heav­i­ly in its soc­cer in­fra­struc­ture head­ing in­to the 2015 Women's World Cup, which it host­ed. Herd­man led the home team at that tour­na­ment and is the first coach ever to lead both a men’s and women’s team to a World Cup berth.

The women's side has flour­ished, led by Chris­tine Sin­clair, in­ter­na­tion­al soc­cer's most pro­lif­ic scor­er among men or women with 190 goals. The Cana­di­ans, who won gold at the Tokyo Olympics, will next play at the Women's World Cup next sum­mer in Aus­tralia and New Zealand.

In­spired by a his­toric agree­ment for equal pay be­tween the U.S. men and women and their fed­er­a­tion, Cana­da's play­ers are cur­rent­ly in con­tract talks and look­ing for a sim­i­lar agree­ment with Cana­da Soc­cer.

This past sum­mer the men asked for 40% of World Cup prize mon­ey, a friends and fam­i­ly trav­el pack­age and an “eq­ui­table struc­ture with our women’s na­tion­al team that shares the same play­er match fees, per­cent­age of prize mon­ey earned at our re­spec­tive FI­FA World Cups and the de­vel­op­ment of a women’s do­mes­tic league.”

Cana­da’s women have said they do not con­sid­er an equal per­cent­age of prize mon­ey as equal pay. The Amer­i­cans' agree­ment splits pooled prize mon­ey down the mid­dle af­ter U.S. Soc­cer takes a cut.

Cana­da Soc­cer says there has been progress in the ne­go­ti­a­tions and be­lieves a re­su­lu­tion will come soon.

"Cana­da Soc­cer has been en­gaged in on­go­ing dis­cus­sions with our na­tion­al teams, which are and have al­ways been an­chored on our val­ues of fair­ness and pay eq­ui­ty — ad­dress­ing pre­vi­ous­ly un­bal­anced stan­dards," the fed­er­a­tion said in a state­ment to The As­so­ci­at­ed Press.


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