World Cup showcase inspires new generation

For an elementary school kid growing up in rural Manitoba 40 years ago, soccer was something you played for fun during an open recess. Sometimes.

There was no active youth soccer association where I lived down in the Pembina Valley, no organized teams. Or at least none that I was aware of. There was little professional soccer to watch in Canada either — no nationally televised games on CBC or CTV, no heroes to envy and emulate.

At least nothing that could remotely compare to the Canada versus Qatar World Cup match played in Vancouver on Thursday evening.

While the beautiful game has been an international juggernaut for more than 100 years — FIFA itself was founded in 1904 and the first FIFA World Cup took place in 1930 — for us farm kids, it just wasn’t a thing. Hockey dominated, and to a lesser extent, football and baseball.

But that appears to be changing.

Last fall, Global News reported that the small town of Altona, Man., will be building a brand new soccer facility with two full-size quality competition-level pitches and additional practice spaces. According to the article, the new build is intended to meet a “rapidly growing” passion for the game in the community.

January of this year saw the launch of the Prairies Premier League, an elite pro-am soccer league for men and women in Manitoba, Saskatchewan and northwestern Ontario. The first season started up in May and will run until July 18.

Even though the new league is still in its rookie season, there have already been calls from rural sports writers like The Carillon’s Cassidy Dankochik in Steinbach to have the league expand outside of Winnipeg to help it increase the pool of new and upcoming players.

Here in Brandon, the Westman Regional Soccer Association boasts that soccer has become the single most popular youth sport in the city and in western Manitoba generally. The organization’s youth base is already huge, with more than 700 players aged nine to 18 within its organized competitive leagues for both boys and girls. The WRSA website says more than twice that number have enrolled in Mini Soccer, which includes ages three to eight.

Demand is so high that soccer and its indoor cousin futsal are being played year round in this city. Some of that is no doubt due to the fact that sports like hockey have become too expensive for local families.

Some of that growth success can also be attributed to the fact that Brandon already has a wealth of post-secondary soccer success with the Brandon University Bobcats soccer program, and that of the rapidly expanding varsity soccer program at Assiniboine College. Only just this year, Assiniboine started using Cougars Field — the newly developed Maple Leaf Foods Sports Complex on the city’s east side.

However, soccer’s rise in Brandon has arguably been fuelled by the rise of our community’s newcomer population, many of whom hail from countries in Africa and South and Central America that are wild about the sport.

For years, I have witnessed newcomer kids and young men alike take over open grass in Stanley Park on warm summer evenings and Sunday afternoons in an impromptu game of footy. And these are scenes that are being repeated time and again in neighbourhoods all over the country.

After South Korea and Japan co-hosted the FIFA World Cup in 2002, both nations experienced a massive and lasting surge of interest in the sport, creating a foundation for continued development of young players.

No doubt the three hosts of the 2026 FIFA World Cup — Canada, the United States and Mexico — will experience a similarly mighty boost to the sports popularity all over North America. And with that growth, Canada’s own national men’s and women’s teams will continue to grow and improve at the international level.

Of course, Canada’s women need no lessons on that front — the Canadian women’s national soccer team is already a major force in global sports as gold medal winners at the 2020 Tokyo Olympic Games.

It has been thrilling to see athletes at the top of their game representing Canada this month, and doing it well on the international stage. While Canada is certainly not favoured to make it very far into the 2026 tournament, the 1-1 tie with the Bosnia and Herzegovina national team and then the historic 6-0 win over Qatar on Thursday evening has energized die-hard soccer fans and occasional viewers alike.

But to be honest, the best part about the 2026 FIFA World Cup is not FIFA. The egregious ticket prices FIFA is charging for admission for any and all of its games, and the terrible treatment of both officials and international players in the United States has given the organization and one of the trio of hosts an international black eye.

No, the best part of Canada hosting World Cup games is that a new generation of Canadian kids will be enticed to put on some cleats and a uniform and go enjoy the sunshine, kick around a ball and get a little exercise in the process.

And if they happen to chase the dreams created by the discovery of a few new Canadian national heroes as a result of this tournament, so much the better.

» Matt Goerzen, editor