The Current - Does Canada stand a chance in the 2026 world cup?

Episode Date: December 5, 2025

For the third time in 40 years team Canada has qualified for the World Cup, but who will they play? How good is this squad and what is their ceiling in the upcoming World Cup? We take a look at arguably the best men's soccer team ever as Canada gears up to co-host its first World Cup.

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Donate at lovescarbro.cairbo. This is a CBC podcast. Hello, I'm Matt Galloway, and this is the current podcast. In 2021, during the qualifying round for the World Cup, Team Canada had something to prove. The men's squad had not earned the right to compete the biggest sporting event on Earth since 1986. But that all changed with this goal against Mexico in Snowy Edmonton. Good ball to score! Six!

That goal sent team Canada on to the World Cup in Qatar. The team did not make it past the group stage. But four years later, there is an opportunity for redemption. Canada, along with the United States and Mexico, hosts the World Cup next summer. Today is the FIFA draw to decide who plays in the opening games. We'll learn who Team Canada is facing. It is a big day with big days to come. come. John Molynaro is a soccer journalist, founder of the website, TFCRepublic.Ca. He's with me in studio. Good morning.

Hey, good morning. You have been to a World Cup before. Yes. Set the scene for us. How big of a deal is it to have this party come to this country? It's massive, Matt. I mean, this is the, as you sort of mentioned, this is the biggest sporting event in the world. This is bigger than the Olympics are bigger than anything in the world. And you have this conflicts of, you know, tens and hundreds of thousands of people from around the world congregating to your ones. sort of to your country to follow their team. So it's a big party and it's a multicultural party and it's just fantastic. It's just amazing to see people from all over the world come to one place just to watch

soccer. I was going to say, what is it like when you're there? I mean, not even in the stands, but in and around the venues. What is it like? It's amazing. So I had the good fortune to cover the 2010 FIFA World Cup in South Africa for CBC. And it's just amazing. I can't quite describe it just to see people from around the world and you sort of meet new friends

and sort of learn about their experiences and their culture and everything. I learned so much being in South Africa about what it was like to be South Africa and, you know, meeting people from Ghana and from other parts of the continent. Just an amazing experience. And I can't sort of overstate this.

The buzz and the energy, even from people who don't necessarily have a horse in the race of the World Cup is just phenomenal. And you just can't help but feed off that. And so there will be games in Vancouver and in Toronto in this country. You think, well, there's been big events before.

We've had Olympics, we've had great cups, we've had, what's going to be different about it? What is it going to be like in those two cities, do you think? Well, again, I think it's just that you're going to have people from all over the world, right? Coming to those one places and sort of, you know, embedding themselves in that city and sort of experiencing what Toronto and what Vancouver has to offer. And at the same time, sharing their experience of what, you know, their sort of traditions and their languages and their experiences from those countries. And it's just amazing how, you know, I think soccer fans, with all due respect to other sports, are a lot different from other fans. They're very passionate and they're very sort of emotional and they exhibit their sort of passion in different ways. So you'll see huge caravans of like Dutch fans just clad in orange and it just becomes a big street party.

And I just think it's going to be an amazing experience. And so Canadians have the opportunity to go and maybe see a game in person. If you can take out a mortgage or donate a kidney. Why is it so difficult? I don't know anybody who's been able to get. tickets yet. It's just the demand, right? I mean, because you have people from all over the world are like clamoring to get tickets. So the competition for, you know, limited seating has to be said, is just fierce. And so, and FIFA, of course, makes it extra complicated and extra expensive

because, as we know, they're a company that, um, an organization, you know, can find out a way to squeeze a dollar from you any way they can. So it's just, uh, it's way more difficult than it should be. And I don't necessarily think a lot of true football fans get a chance to go to the tournament. And if they do, then as you said, they have to pay an arm and a leg. Have you managed to score any tickets? Well, I'm lucky in that I'll be accredited as a media member, so I don't have to sort of, it spares me that huge expense. How good is Canada?

I mean, again, we as a team, because we're the host nation, we get to play in the tournament. But are we, are we just there because we're there? Or are we there because we deserve to be there? Is this team going to do well? I think we deserve to be there, and I think they're going to do well. You know, obviously as a co-hosts, we didn't have to go through the qualifying process. But I think had Canada been forced to go through the Kalki Kav qualifiers, they would have easily qualified with all due respect to the other nations in the region. I do think they're going to be a competitive force.

I mean, I appreciate that four years ago, Canada kind of washed out in Qatar and only scored one goal and had the benefit of their own goal and they didn't win a game. But now they have a World Cup under their belt. They're more experienced. They have more players playing at top level, a top European clubs. You know, Jonathan David is now playing for Juventus, an Italian club, which is one of the biggest in the world. They have more players like that. They're more mature. And I think the coaching change as well.

Jesse Marsh, you know, the American who took over the team last year, has really whipped this team into shape. And I think introduced a different style of play that makes it more effective. So I think they're going to be much more competitive this time around. And they're playing at home. At home. Yeah. That matters, except for the fact that this is, and we've seen this in World Cup past, perhaps when Canada wasn't playing. This is a nation of soccer-loving people from around the world.

And you will often see on the side of a car, maybe a flag, maybe two flags, because maybe the family supports different nations. I wonder whether people will get behind Canada because there will be other nations that they can support as well, that perhaps they have roots to. Yeah, I think that's, and that's been historically a problem for the Canadian men's team. So just for an example, there's a possibility that Italy, if they qualify, could play Canada and it's opening game in Toronto. And as we all know, there's a massive Italian population in Toronto.

So that could essentially turn into a road game for Canada. Likewise, if they get drawn against South Korea or Japan, which would those matches would be in Vancouver. And again, Vancouver, a huge Asian population. This isn't something new. It's something that's happened historically with the Canadian men's and the women's teams on both sides throughout their tenure. It's happening less and less over the years, I find, just because the prominence of Canada as a footballing nation. but I don't think it's going to entirely go away. It will be an issue potentially at the World Cup.

This is the largest World Cup ever. Yeah, 48 teams. And Italy's not there yet. Republic of Ireland not there yet. Czech Republic not there yet. But there are teams that, Kurosau? Yeah. First time, the smallest nation to ever play in a World Cup is there.

Haiti is there as well. What does that tell you about the game that you love? Well, that it's truly a global game. It's truly a game for everyone that, you know, even the tiniest nation. like Kurosau and Haiti can somehow find a way. Now, I think they've been helped along by the fact that the tournament has expanded from 32 to 48 teams. Yeah. So that's an extra 16 teams.

And we can debate whether that's good or bad for the tournament in terms of the quality of play. But it does speak to the global reach of the game. I mean, there are more sort of nations who are members of FIFA than they are of the United Nations. I think that says a lot that this is truly a global game. This is the biggest sporting event in the world, bigger than the Olympics. and it's truly global in its sort of outreach. What would you say to somebody who's like they're in Toronto or Vancouver and all these people, I don't want to be here.

It's going to be, I'm not going to be able to get around. The traffic's going to be terrible. How would you convince them to stay? Just embrace it. I mean, if one of the things you like about this country is it's multiculturalism and experiencing cultures from different parts of the world. You're going to see it on overdrive. Then you're going to see it on full display because you're going to have thousands of people

from all over the world coming. So if that appeals to you, then absolutely. Think of this as like one sort of big giant street party that's going to go on for a couple of weeks. If none of that appeals to you and if none of, if crowds would bug you, then I would humbly suggest you should probably leave town for a couple of weeks because the city is just going to be overtaken in a lot of ways. John, thank you very much. No problem, Matt. John Molinaro, soccer journalist. He's with me in our studio in Toronto.

The FIFA World Cup is not. It turns out just about soccer. With the United States, Canada and Mexico all hosting together, it will be hard to overlook political tensions involved. The prime minister, Mark Carney, is using today's draw as. an opportunity to speak with President Donald Trump on the sidelines as trade tensions remain front and center. Aaron Ettinger is an associate professor of political science at Carlton University, looks at how sports can overlap with politics. Aaron, good morning to you. Good morning.

The cliche used to be that what, sports is war minus the shooting. Do you think that we will see a political dimension to this World Cup as it plays out? Oh, of course. Any sporting event is laden with political symbolism and these mega, events like the World Cup or the Olympics are all the more laden with political symbolism. So it's going to be there. Now, is it going to be explicit? Well, that's exactly the kind of thing that we watch out for because the possibility of political tensions boiling over in some degree are always present.

And given the fact that it's a major live event, just like the draw that's happening today, anything is really possible. It would seem that there are signs that politics and sports could overlap. Those signs are already being seen. The president of FIFA, Johnny Infantino, has moved to Florida. That's where the president happens to spend a lot of time. He set up an office in the Trump Tower. He seems to, people talk about a bromance between him and Donald Trump. What do you make of that?

It's rather embarrassing. Embarrassing. It's rather embarrassing. I mean, Infantino's approach has been almost embarrassingly sycophantic. And he's doing that because it's his job, right? He has to ensure that the host country, or at least the principal host country of the World Cup, is happy, that the rules and the regulations and the tax exemptions are going to remain in place so that FIFA can, you know, extract as much wealth, as much profit from the games as possible. And, you know, Infantino's no fool. Like, he knows that the way to Trump's heart is through praise, through moving to Florida, through handing him the FIFA World Cup.

Peace Prize, which is a prize that they made up just for Donald Trump. He knows his business and he's not ashamed to participate in it. Now, okay, we can, you know, roll our eyes at Infantino. I mean, just look at his speech from a couple of years ago about Qatar and inclusiveness for the degree to which he will debase himself in service of FIFA itself. But this is part of the bargain, right? FIFA is the global governing body of soccer, but it's also, you know, a profit-oriented organization, right? It is interesting. interested in its own survival and its own profit and its own continuation. And if that means sucking up to world leaders like Donald Trump, FIFA's going to do it. Do you worry, we just have a couple of minutes left. Do you worry about the politics of the United States right now interfering with what should be a huge sporting party? You have the head of the World Cup organizing committee at the White House talking about a global moment of unity, but we're also seeing immigration raids in the United States, people being pulled off the street by masked men and stuffed into vans. And there's a concern that that could interfere with the sense of celebration

that this tournament brings. Do you worry about that? Oh, of course. I mean, the possibilities of there being kind of counter symbolism to the World Cup sense of unity are always there. One can imagine a situation in which a team from Latin America is playing at the same time as There are ice raids on immigrant or Hispanic communities in Los Angeles or someplace else. All of this speaks to the risk that a country takes on when they host a mega event. Usually this is hosting a mega event like this is an investment in your soft power, right, as we call it in political science, about your prestige, your attractiveness, your persuasive influence in the world. You want to look good. But if you blow it, right, by performing poorly or your stadiums aren't.

up to par, or in the case of the United States right now, these really kind of aggressive antagonistic raids on immigrant and non-white communities or the trade wars or the immigration bans or all of this kind of stuff. Well, the United States risks disempowering itself when it comes to its prestige, its attractiveness, and its persuasive influence in the world. That's the bargain. Is there the, I have to let you go, but is there the possibility that sports wins out here? I mean, sports is tied in with money, as we've talked about. I mean, it's one in the same in some quarters. But it's also the beautiful game.

And will we see the beautiful game on display? Oh, of course we will. I mean, sports fans are also presented with a bargain, right? Do you want to watch the game and hold your nose to the politics or not? And I think most fans are going to be more interested in paying attention to what's going on in the field than what's going on in the dignitaries box, so to speak. So yes, sports is going to win out. And it's going to be a great show and it's going to be a fun six weeks.

and, you know, Toronto, as John Molyneiro said, is going to be a multicultural party. But what happens 24 hours later, six weeks later, eight months later? That is all part of the story of FIFA 2006. Aaron, good to talk to you about this. Thank you very much. Thank you. Aaron Ettinger is an associate professor of political science at Carlton University. All the latest on the World Cup draw, who Canada will be playing, who the other teams will be playing, where those games might be played across the country.

in Toronto and Vancouver. Two big spots for the World Cup coming up next summer. You can find all of that at cbcnews.ca.ca. This has been the current podcast. You can hear our show Monday to Friday on CBC Radio 1 at 8.30 a.m. at all time zones. You can also listen online at cbc.ca.ca slash the current or on the CBC Listen app or wherever you get your podcasts. My name is Matt Galloway.

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