The Current - Canada makes World Cup History!

Episode Date: June 29, 2026

Team Canada is making Men's World Cup history. With Sunday’s 1-nil win over South Africa, it’s their first time in the round of 16! We talk to Simon Kuper, a journalist and the author of World Cup Fever: A Soccer Journey in Nine Tournaments, about what’s next in FIFA’s World Cup 2026.

All right, summer is here. You're out and about. You've got a barbecue to go to or you've got some picnics or, I don't know, maybe a concert. I get it. You are busy. Who's got time to keep up with pop culture? The answer is me. I do.

I've got the time. My name is Elamine and on my show, commotion, we go beyond the surface of what's new and exciting on television or at the theater or on a bookshelf near you. So if you need help, staying up to date, you can find and follow commotion on YouTube or wherever you get your podcasts. This is a CBC podcast. Hello, I'm Matt Galloway, and this is the current podcast. Team Canada is making men's World Cup history their first time ever in the round of 16. And what a tournament it's turning out to be with yesterday's 1-0 win over South Africa. We've seen so many first for our men's team, first ever World Cup win,

and now they have two wins under their belts, first time in the knockout round, and first knockout win. Fans across our country watching that stoppage time goal from Stefan Estacchio yesterday were, I think it's fair to say, losing their minds. Like a dream come true, we've been waiting for that time. It was amazing. I felt like my heart beating. Words that can't be to explain.

First time round of 16, we're going to go all the way. It's history. Come on, Caddo. We keep going. This FIFA World Cup is Simon Cooper's 10th tournament. He's a journalist writing for the Financial Times, and he's also the author of World Cup Fever, a soccer journey in nine tournaments.

Simon's in Boston this morning. Good morning. Good morning. Can we please start with Canada's win yesterday? They're now through to the round of 16. What do you think of how Team Canada's been playing so far? I mean, this is by far the best Canada I've ever seen. I would love to see Alfonso Davis,

who's one of the world's great players, play in the center of your team. But for now, it's a highly organized, very fit, high-paced team with no obvious weak links. I'm not saying it's a world-class team, but I think nobody wants to play them. I say this with particular thought because my team is the Netherlands, and I am hoping we will play you in a few days. Yes, we'll find out tonight if it's Netherlands or Morocco, that team Canada will play. Simon, let me ask you about Captain Alfonso Davies, because, of course, he'd been sidelined with injuries, but we played yesterday. not so long, but in the game.

What are you seeing from him in terms of how he's playing despite the injury? He hasn't been... I mean, I think of Alfonso Davis when he's fit, and I think of him as the Byron left back, and then at the last World Cup, when I did watch Canada a couple of times in 2022, he was the playmaker.

I realized a completely different role than at Bayern. He is by far the best Canadian player ever, and you'd put him at the center of the team. So I'm sorry that this World Cup has not been his moment because World Cups are so much about the couple of individuals who can elevate a whole team. And often in a team is very clear who is the best player. So Messi at Argentina is an extreme example of that,

but Harry Kane with England also. And a team tends to structure itself around the best player. Brazil does that with Venetius. And Canada has not been able to do that with Davis because of injury. So many of us in Canada are so proud how our men's team is playing. And I don't want to reign on our parade, but as you said, Canada is doing very well in this tournament, but we're not with those sort of elite teams. So next we will take on either Morocco or Netherlands. What are you expecting to see from us there? I think the problem is a kind of

lack of creativity. You saw that against South Africa, that you don't have players who can hit a line breaking pass where you kind of jump a line. It goes through a line of the opposition. You need kind of imagination and creativity to hit that. It's given to very few at this level. You don't have players who can dribble past somebody and open up space that way. So against an international class defense, you need those kinds of gifts of individual brilliance,

which is the one thing I find a little bit lacking. Okay, so at every FIFA tournament, there are the standout stories, you know, and sometimes they are those little teams that go big. And this year it's Cape Verde. They divide all odds when unbeaten in the group stage. they're now to the knockout stage. It's a tiny island country off the coast of Africa,

the smallest country by population ever to make it to a men's World Cup knockout round. What's standing out for you with Cape Verida, Simon? Yeah, one of the smallest. They have half a million inhabitants, and then they have this huge diaspora. And it's just a wonderful story. A lot of this World Cup is a story of diaspora.

And it's a kind of a new idea of what a country is. So most of their players are born in Rosadam, a couple in the United States, in France, in Portugal. And so it's saying what is Cape Verde? Cape Verde is not just the half a million people who live on these few islands, you know, off the west coast of Africa, where it's so dry that most of the population has to emigrate.

Cape Verde also includes a diaspora and even the children of the diaspora. And that's been very much the theme of this World Cup, which they embody. And what I love about watching them is a lot of small teams come to the World Cup to defend and to foul because they obviously don't. have a talent pool that can compete with the best. And Cape Verde really go out to play. They do quite a bit of attacking. They, against Spain, they committed just one foul the whole match against the European

champions. Against the European champions. So they're really a team that tries to play attacking soccer, even with the limited means they have. They're up against the defending World Cup champions, Argentina next. Yeah. I don't think we've ever seen a match up that kind of disproportionate in a knockout round. that Messi, who at 39, has already scored six goals,

which in many World Cups would be enough to make you the highest score of the entire World Cup. He's done that, you know, playing fewer than four games. It's astonishing. And then to have him against this country playing its first ever World Cup. I think for a lot of Cape Ordeans, just the idea of being on the same field as Messi is something that they could never have imagined in the history of the island. Let me ask you about one more superstar. This is Portugal's Cristiano Rojas.

Ronaldo, his team is playing against Croatia here in Toronto. He played in his last game when they were facing Colombia this past Saturday. He played an entire 90 minutes. I mean, that is so amazing and so hard to do. At those highest of high-level ranks, who else is standing out for you? Well, Ronaldo is not standing out. I mean, he is playing the whole game because he doesn't like to be substituted. He seems to be the boss on the Portuguese teams, so the coach has to pick him.

But this is a wonderful team and they have Ronaldo, who was a great player, one of the greatest in history, but is now 41 years old. And as you say, he plays, which is admirable, but it's like saying, you know, I jogged around the park, that's pretty good. But he doesn't care of which would contribute very much. So he's definitely not standing out. So there's a big debate in Portugal about whether he drags the team down by kind of insisting on still remaining. I mean, you've never really had that in the history of soccer that at a World Cup, a major nation, is led by a guy aged over 40. uses to leave the team. Okay. Let me ask you about another team, and this is Norway, and I bring Norway up, because along with Japan is a potential underdog in this statement. That's what you say,

Simon, what's caught your attention with this team? Why do you think they might go far? I mean, Norway come up every 25 years or so, and now they have the best player in the history of Norway, Erling Harland, who plays from Manchester City, is one of the world's great goalscorer. He, you know, he's about nine feet tall, also very fast, has the feet of Messi. He's just this brilliant footballer from this small country. He's quite a cheery guy who seems happy to play for a team where he's by far the best player. He doesn't, you know, he likes the karma around a degree. He doesn't complain about the lack of quality.

And with a well-organized team with a couple of good players and one kind of world historical individual up front, anything is possible. And also, you know, I picked Norway as my dark course early because They're from Western Europe, which is still the dominant region in terms of football, Western Europeans. You know, everybody plays. You have a large talent pool even for a small country. And they kind of know how to play soccer, which is a game of geometry. It's about increasing space when you have the ball and reducing space, shrinking space when you don't have the ball.

We'll be right back with more of the current podcast. All right, summer is here. You're out and about. You've got a barbecue to go to or you've got some picnics or maybe a concert. I get it. busy, who's got time to keep up with pop culture? The answer is me. I do.

I've got the time. My name is Elamine, and on my show, commotion, we go beyond the surface of what's new and exciting on television or at the theater or on a bookshelf near you. So if you need help, staying up to date, you can find and follow commotion on YouTube or wherever you get your podcasts. You have been to every World Cup since 1990, right? So this makes us your 10th FIFA World Cup. And I'm wondering how this one is sort of thus far fitting in to the previous ones for you, Simon.

It's been a really good World Cup, and that's against my expectation. I haven't been to Canada or Mexico yet. I hope to get there. But I've been in the United States. And of course, you know, we've all spent 10 years fearing and loathing the United States as it's become under Donald Trump. And I thought it would be a World Cup of Trump speaking about the World Cup all the time, ICE, arresting people all the time, kind of the U.S. hating the war. world being expressed through this World Cup. And it's not been like that. Trump has not paid any

attention to the World Cup, thankfully. Americans have got really into it. Foreign fans love being in the United States. We're all kind of remembering things we used to love about America, which are still in large part there. And so it's a kind of rekindled love affair between the United States and the world has been my personal experience of the World Cup. And I think of many people going around the US. Yes, that's true. Many people have been saying they're surprised. watching games in the United States. One Scottish fan wrote that she'd had her faith restored in the U.S. after being in Boston for some of the games there. As you say, plenty of people had fairly negative views about the U.S. as a host country.

And so what do you credit sort of turn around, the positive view of the U.S.? Well, we've been hearing rightly for 10 years about all the terrible things and this terrible man who runs the country. and of course it changes your view of Americans that an actual majority of them could reelect him. And yet when you're here, and I lived in Boston, I studied here over 30 years ago, when you're here, you're reminded of, you know, the cheerfulness, friendliness of most people. You're reminded that the US is this possibly the most diverse country in the world, with the possible exception of Canada, that there's also a joy that often hits a country during hosting a World Cup.

I hope you're experiencing it as well. The sense of being at the center of the world, the kind of excitement that, you know, the Scots are there, the Norwegians are there, the Dutch are there, everybody is here. And in the US, I think what also makes this a Great World Cup is every country has a diaspora already in place.

So when Brazil played Haiti, the stadium is full of people in Brazil shirts, people in Haiti shirts, Haitian fan singing. And of course, I guess 95% of those people actually live in the United States. So the US, it has its own fan base, in place. And, you know, I've been to World Cups and countries like Japan where there are no foreign fans where, you know, Nigeria are playing and there's 27 people in the stadium sports in Nigeria.

And Simon, you've compared the cultural exchange in the US at this World Cup with what we saw when Russia hosted back in 2018. So draw those parallels for us. Yeah. I mean, that's what I was reminded of. In Russia, you know, a country that's not used to welcoming the world. world like the US as a president that presents the world as a danger and, you know, all these bad people who want to take us down. And then when suddenly in Russia, all these foreigners showed up, probably the largest foreign, most visible foreign presence in the history of Russia. So you had Poles and Senegalese and Peruvians dancing on the streets of Moscow and kind of trying to take selfies with police officers who actually obliged, again, for the first time in Russian history.

Russians really, most of them really loved this. And they would dance on the streets. And they would dance on the streets and foreigners, and there'd be kind of street parties on red square in front of the Kremlin until all hours of the night. I went around the country staying in Airbnb's, you know, ordinary Russian apartments and sort of entered Russian apartment life in a way I'd never expected. And again, found it terrifically welcoming. So I was struck by that parallel between Russia 2018 and the US now. Of course, we know with Russia 2018 that it did not open up and become a happy, world-loving country. So I don't have the illusion that World Cups change anything, but they do show you the world in a new way. They illuminate the world in unexpected ways.

Yeah, because, of course, critics would say, well, this is what sports washing is all about, that you put your best face forward to the rest of the world. You try to mitigate the things that people are critical about, and you try to say, look, we're the good guys here. What do you think of that? Well, that's what Russia is definitely doing, and Qatar. You know, sports washing is you're an ugly regime and you show yourself as nice or kindly a more welcoming than you are. Trump never wanted to do that because Trump is proud of hating the world, proud of deporting immigrants, proud of his sadism. And that's what he wanted to showcase.

Trump was never going to be the guy saying, oh, I'm so happy that all these Haitian and Brazilian fans are here. Trump likes to be the bad guy. But what has made this World Cup better is Trump, perhaps through age, lack of interest, has shown zero interest in it. And so we're having, to surprise, a Trump-free World Cup. The U.S. was not trying to do sports washing, was not trying to ever the idea was to present the Trumpian regime as more cuddly than it is. Trump doesn't want that. Except, Simon, we are going to see the U.S. President at FIFA. He's going to present, along with the FIFA President Gianni Infantino, at the final. He's going to present the Cup to whatever team wins. That's not happened at other World Cups. What do you make of this break from

tradition? I think Mussolini in 1934 in Italy presented the cup and Mussolini had had his own trophy made much bigger than the actual world. Okay. So there is a precedent. I mean, it's going to be horrendous. But the thing about Trump is that he learned when he went to watch the New York next a few weeks ago that he was just very loudly booed by the crowd in New York.

He doesn't get out much since the assassination attempt. He's also been worried about kind of going out. out in public. So I think the World Cup final is almost a safe space for him because the crowd will be cheering the winning team. And if he's not kind of announced in a big and visible way, people won't notice until suddenly he's presenting the trophy to the team. There'll be cheers. And he will be able to bask in that. Because if people, if there's announcement here is, you know, President Donald Trump to present the World Cup trophy, the stadium will erupt in cheers and whistles. So even doing that is a difficult thing for this man who no longer goes out much,

partly because he is very unpopular in his own country. But yeah, I mean, clearly it will hugely, it will be a blot on the day to have him there. There's always criticism of World Cups. This one in particular is being seen by many as a cash grab from FIFA, from Gianni Infantino, things like the cost of tickets, transportation. Isn't Fantino changing the World Cup in FIFA more broadly by further prioritizing profits? Yeah, I think that he's setting a precedent, which is we can charge just whatever the market will stand. And that will be more in the U.S. than in, say, Spain, Portugal, Morocco in 2030.

But let's just gouge the fans because they really want to watch the World Cup. We'll make them pay the back. And that's never been, you know, the idea of the World Cup. and at all previous World Cups that I've been to, there would always be tickets for under $100, even for big games. And so I think they want to do this going forward, so they have more money to give to the presidents of national federations,

who vote for a plenty of who might then some of them stick money in their personal pockets. And the other change that he's introduced, which I hope doesn't stick, is the advertising breaks, which they call hydration breaks, and fans hate them. So that might be a reason to end it, But of course, it does allow TV companies who fund a lot of the World Cup to sell more space. So I'm worried that those two things will persist.

High ticket prices and hydration breaks even after this World Cup. There is a thing about the World Cup, Simon. Maybe it's a little bit like the Olympics. But I can't tell you, and you know this to be true as well, how many people that aren't in sports who have never watched a soccer game in their lives that are just drawn to their televisions or on the streets, you know, celebrating a particular team or whatnot? What is it about the World Cup that makes people,

want to do that. People watch partly because other people are watching. So it's the biggest thing in your country. I mean, I'm sure yesterday's game was something that everybody was talking about and that at work today. You know, people are going to be talking about at school on the bus. And so you want to be part of it. And I think it's not that the quality of the soccer is so good. I mean, a game like Canada, South Africa would not be as good as a Champions League knockout game and club soccer. But it just matters more because the nation is at stake. And you see, you know, those 11 guys, and I wish they were wearing maple leaf shirts. I don't understand why you don't do that in soccer, but they kind of incarnate, they embody Canada at that moment. They are the country with all its

strengths, its flaws, everything you love about it. And so it's very rare to have your country embodied. Of course, Canada has it in ice hockey. But for most countries, soccer is the principal way. And so the whole nation is in it. And in our book, Sokonomics, Stefan Schumanskin, show that suicides fall in European countries when a country is participating in a World Cup. And it's because even quite lonely people are drawn into the national community. They feel part of something bigger and they're something to talk about with other people. And so it's a very special moment in the life of a country. It's not really so much about quality of soccer. It's about the meaning and the drama. Okay. I only have about a minute left with you and we still have a ways to go. But if you were to

place your bets now or had your bets, I know you said you're cheering for the Netherlands, but who do you think we're going to be seeing in the final? And World Cups are made of chance. and fluke. So I would say France and Argentina, knowing that's almost certainly going to be wrong. All right, Simon, we will leave it there. Thank you for joining us. And go Canada, go, along with all the other teams people are cheering for. We appreciate your time so much. Take good care. Thank you. Simon Cooper is a journalist who writes about soccer for the Financial Times. His latest book is World Cup Fever, a soccer journey in nine tournaments. Simon was in Boston. You've been listening to the current podcast. My name is Matt Gallagher.

away. Thanks for listening. I'll talk to you soon. For more CBC podcasts, go to cBC.ca slash podcasts.