Ali Ahmed credits Canada coach Jesse Marsch for elevating his game to the World Cup

Ali Ahmed has become a model of the fast, aggressive style Jesse Marsch wants from the Canadian men’s national team.

That wasn’t always the case.

When Marsch first took over as Canada’s coach two years ago, he challenged the lean, five-foot-11 winger to add a more physical dimension to his game, feedback Ahmed says helped take his play to another level.

“Him not calling me up the first camp and then telling me at Copa America that I lack playing with pace and power and everything was good for me,” Ahmed said in a recent interview. “I needed that, and it’s the truth. It was the truth.”

Ahmed, then a member of the Vancouver Whitecaps, took the message to heart.

He returned home, reviewed film and worked on combining his technical gifts with the intensity Marsch demands of his players.

Within months, Marsch went from telling Ahmed he needed to “get in the gym” more often to describing him as having “an extra player on the pitch” when Canada is pressing.

“He can cover ground, he’s intelligent in his position, he’s aggressive when he goes after things,” Marsch said before Canada faced Ecuador in a November friendly.

“He’s adapted and learned exactly what we need out of him in that position.”

The improvement coincided with the best stretch of Ahmed’s professional career.

Already a promising talent, he blossomed into one of Vancouver’s best players during the 2025 season with four goals and 13 assists across 34 games, helping the Whitecaps win a fourth consecutive Canadian championship and reach the MLS Cup final.

That earned the 25-year-old an early-January move to English second-division side Norwich City, where he was instrumental in pulling the club out of the relegation zone. Ahmed produced four goals and three assists in 19 league appearances, leaning on Marsch’s lessons.

“The pace of play, the power of play, the speed of the ball. Everything is just sharp and fast,” Ahmed said of playing in England. “It’s everything he’s been emphasizing to us.”

It has all led Ahmed to the World Cup, a stage he always believed he would reach, even while bouncing from hostel to hostel as a teenager during trials in Portugal, Spain, England and the Netherlands, barely scraping by financially.

“A combination of belief in myself and the people around me really, really helped me in those moments not to give up,” he said. “To keep going and believe that moments like this will come.”

Not only has the moment come, but it’s arrived in the same place the dream began.

Born to Ethiopian parents, Ahmed grew up in Toronto’s Lawrence Heights neighbourhood, a community that has grappled with gun violence. Some 11 kilometres south sits BMO Field, where Ahmed and his friends used to hop the fence after hours.

It’s also where Canada opens the World Cup group stage on Friday against Bosnia-Herzegovina.

“There’s not a lot of people that can say they played in a World Cup, let alone a home World Cup in a stadium that you grew up in, you grew up attending, watching matches,” Ahmed said. “It’s a special place for every Toronto player that grows up playing football.

“And now you get to represent your whole country on that field in a World Cup.”

Ahmed strained his hamstring in his final match for Norwich, keeping him out of friendlies versus Uzbekistan and Ireland, but he returned to full training Monday and could be an option off the bench Friday.

He estimates roughly 12 to 18 friends and family will be in attendance, numbers he said would be higher if tickets were more affordable — not that it will diminish the experience.

“It’s not a lot of words that can really describe the moment, and the magnitude of the moment,” he said.

SAVE THE ‘CAPS

Ahmed hopes the Whitecaps stay in Vancouver amid uncertainty about the club’s future. The Whitecaps have been for sale since 2024, and fears of relocation spiked in late April when a Las Vegas group submitted a bid to move the MLS franchise.

“Save the ‘Caps. I hope that they don’t go anywhere. We need that club in Vancouver,” Ahmed said. “That club obviously means so much to me. It really, really means so much to me. You can say it changed my life. The club changed my life.”

Ahmed saw the Whitecaps transform into one of the league’s top teams, adding German superstar Thomas Muller en route to last year’s MLS Cup final. But ownership has cited ongoing challenges tied to revenue generation at the provincially owned BC Place Stadium.

“The club in the past few years has turned a corner,” he said. “Fans are showing up and excited about games, excited about the players and everything that the Whitecaps bring.

“You get 25K at BC Place every Saturday. It’s beautiful, man. We need it to progress the game in Canada as well. Having an MLS club leave the city is not a good thing, so I hope it stays.”

This report by The Canadian Press was first published June 9, 2026.