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The influence the 2026 FIFA World Cup will have on the youth soccer scene in this country cannot be understated.

Canada is already the home to a thriving soccer community, but it is a community that is inherently focused on the nationalities of our familiar backgrounds.

Growing up in Hamilton, each World Cup or Euro was an opportunity to wear your grandparent’s colours with pride and show where you and your family came from.

My Italian friends would all wear their three (then four) starred jerseys in June, and my ‘fellow Englishmen’ would all mysteriously not show up to school on days where England played a game.

If you are reading this, you are no doubt a fan of ‘the beautiful game’ and have similar memories throughout your childhood. And while those memories are all well and good, they aren’t the same as the truly ‘Canadian’ memories. Memories like Sidney Crosby whipping his gloves to the ice and jumping for joy after “the Golden Goal”, or Christine Sinclair leaping into the air after an Olympic hat trick.

We will finally have a Canadian World Cup memory, something that is not owned by a few similarly dressed children in a classroom, but all of us.

In 2026, Canadian soccer will truly be united, and there will be an additional team for each of us to skip school and work for.

Such an opportunity has only happened once before, and it is so far back in time that it is a distant memory to most Canadian sports fans.

The Canadian men’s national team’s debut at the FIFA world cup level was in 1986, when they were drawn into a group with France, Hungary, and the Soviet Union.

That team failed to score a goal, and while the experience was a first for this country, it has not held up as Canada’s iron-clad “moment” in soccer history.

This tournament looks to continue the momentum the 2007 U20 world cup and MLS expansion have created, growing the country into a hot-bed for international soccer.

And while it might be seven years away, world cups have a funny way of sneaking up on fans.

And the U14 and U15 kids who watched last summer’s tournament with admiring eyes will be in their early twenties when the 2026 tournament finally kicks off.

Some of those kids will probably be on the team, playing in front of their home nation on the world’s biggest stage.

A dream that is now a reality.

Originally published at https://www.ontribune.ca on June 14, 2018. Repurposed on April 18, 2019.