Liam Millar of Canada celebrates the team’s progression to the quarter finals after the CONMEBOL Copa America 2024 Group A match between Canada and Chile at Exploria Stadium on June 29, in Orlando, Fla.Leonardo Fernandez/Getty Images
When it was announced a year and a half ago that North American teams would participate in the Copa America for the first time, the reason provided was to “ensure football in both regions continues to thrive.”
Somehow, I think soccer in Brazil was going to be okay without Jamaica’s help.
Nobody needed to say the real reason – the imminent arrival of Lionel Messi.
Messi was about to turn the United States into soccer boom town. Everybody knew it, and they still underestimated the effect.
Everyone also understood that the boost would be temporary. Messi is 37 years old and they aren’t making any more of him. The U.S. GDP is five times that of all of South America combined. It was a unique opportunity plus that math vs. more than a century of tradition. Tradition didn’t make it out of its own corner.
It helped that putting the tournament on in the United States would act as a soft opening for World Cup 2026. Make sure none of the stadiums would fall apart under persistent foot stomping.
The agreement would look like this:
South America would provide Messi plus a bit of class; America would produce several hundred thousand hicks to buy shirts they didn’t quite grasp the significance of.
South America would beat the hell out of opponents; North America would say, ‘Thank you, señor, may I have another?’
From the South American perspective, there were a lot of reasons to fret about watering down the Copa, but none of them was fear of embarrassment.
South American soccer is the most two-fisted on the planet. Forget about balletic Brazilians coming at you with midfield pirouettes. Think more Huns coming at you on a screaming pack of Steppe ponies. Chile recently won two Copas in a row with a style that might be described as 1970s Philadelphia Flyers Extra.
North American footballers pride themselves on toughness. The world allows them to persist in this delusion because it’s kind of cute.
Now, for the first time really, America & Friends would find out what full-contact football feels like when you’re playing for real.
And it has played out just like that, but for one exception – Canada.
For a few minutes against Argentina in the opener, Canada looked like it might fluke its way into a famous win. That had its moments, until it didn’t.
The next two games against Chile and Peru were more typical of the occasion. It couldn’t have been more dour if the players had stripped off their shirts at the whistle, then stood at the centre of the park trying to wrestle each other into submission. But it’s worked. On Friday, Canada play Venezuela in the quarters.
You wouldn’t call what’s happened so far good, or watching it fun. But this is what a Copa looks like, especially in the early stages. Nobody’s trying to win. Everyone’s trying not to lose.
You’d expect Mexico, with its combo of human resources and connections south, would be best at this. Nope. They got sumo wrestled off the group-stage platform by Venezuela and Ecuador. This is a special humiliation for them, and a terrible psychic setup for 2026.
The U.S. expected to look good, if not exactly perform well. Same story. As of this writing, it was a defeat to Uruguay – the most explosive team in the tournament so far – away from elimination.
When America was putting together its application to play host to the World Cup a decade ago, it must have fantasized about the shock to come. The world was changing, but America would reassert its dominance by winning at a sport it didn’t even care about. That would grind gears in Moscow in a way trade blockades never could.
That dream is rubbing up against reality this summer. If America can be beaten by Panama, then who can’t it lose to? If it is out by Saturday, it will find itself in a Joe Biden/Democratic Party situation – no choice but to try something radically different, having left it too late to expect any major change to turn out well.
By Tuesday night, Canada could be the only North American side left standing. From World Cup burnout to continental standard bearer in the space of 20 months – not too shabby.
The reason this country bombed out so badly at Qatar 2022 wasn’t the results. It lost all three games, but it lost them to two eventual semi-finalists (Croatia and Morocco) plus the then-No. 2-ranked team in the world (Belgium).
It was the way Canada lost that was the problem. It couldn’t adapt. It never settled. Good teams ease into major tournaments. Canada arrived on the threshold of nervous hysteria and got more wound up as the days passed.
The less it adapted, the louder it talked and the more ridiculous it seemed. Then manager John Herdman’s decision to crudely insult Croatia – then gleefully repeat the insult when asked about it – ought to be studied in war college. It is a textbook example of reverse gamesmanship.
Canada’s problem wasn’t talent, or the federation that runs it, or how much the players are paid, or even coaching as such. It was approach.
When you don’t have a Messi on your side, you don’t get to dictate how the game is played. You also don’t get to come into the room shouting and expect people to make way. There is confident and there is cocky. Two years ago, Canada was the wrong one.
You wouldn’t call the Canada team we’ve seen over the past two weeks confident, exactly. It hasn’t been particularly well organized, and it certainly hasn’t been fluid. At best, it has trod water.
The word to describe Canada after three games is adaptive. In international soccer, and South American-style international soccer in particular, there is no higher praise.
PARIS – Canada won its first Paralympic medal in women’s sitting volleyball and ended the country’s team sport podium drought Saturday.
The women’s volleyball team swept Brazil 3-0 (25-15, 25-18, 25-18) to take the bronze medal at North Paris Arena.
The women were the first Canadian side to claim a Paralympic medal in a team sport since the men’s wheelchair basketball team won gold in London in 2012.
“Oh my gosh, literally disbelief, but also, we did it,” said veteran Heidi Peters of Neerlandia, Alta. “It’s indescribable.”
Canada finished seventh in Rio de Janeiro in 2016 and fourth in Tokyo three years ago.
Seven players of the dozen Canadians were Rio veterans and nine returned from the team in Tokyo.
Eleven were members of the squad that earned a silver medal at the 2022 world championship.
“I know how hard every athlete and every staff member and all of our family back home have worked for this moment,” captain Danielle Ellis said.
“It’s been years and years and years in the making, our third Paralympic Games, and we knew we wanted to be there.”
The women earned a measure of revenge on the Brazilians, who beat Canada for bronze in Tokyo and also in a pool game in Paris.
“There’s a lot of history with us and Brazil,” Peters acknowledged. “Today we just knew that we could do it. We were like, ‘This is our time and if we just show up and play our style of volleyball, serving tough and hitting the ball hard, the game will probably going our way.’ And it did.”
Calgary’s Jennifer Oakes led Canada with 10 attack points. Ellis of White Rock, B.C., and Peters each contributed nine.
Canada registered 15 digs as a team to Brazil’s 10.
“Losing to Brazil in the second game was tough,” Ellis said. “It just lit the fire beneath us.”
Canada’s men’s wheelchair basketball team fell 75-62 to Germany in the bronze-medal game in Paris.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 7, 2024.
PARIS – Canadian para canoeist Brianna Hennessy raced to her first Paralympic medal with a reminder of her mother on her paddle.
The 39-year-old from Ottawa took silver in the women’s 200-metre sprint Saturday in Paris.
The design on Hennessy’s paddle includes a cardinal in remembrance of her late mother Norma, the letter “W’ for Wonder Woman and a cat.
“My mother passed away last year, so I said I’d be racing down the course with her,” Hennessy said Saturday at the Vaires-sur-Marne Nautical Stadium.
“In our family, a cardinal represents what our love means. My mum was my Wonder Woman, and this is a cardinal rising up. This is our family pet that passed away two months after my mum, of cancer, because I think their love was together.
“All this represents so much to me, so it’s my passion piece for Paris.”
Hennessy finished just over a second behind gold medallist Emma Wiggs of Britain in the women’s VL2 Va’a, which is a canoe that has a support float and is propelled with a single-blade paddle.
Hennessy’s neck was broken when she was struck by a speeding taxi driver in Toronto in 2014 when she was 30. She has tetraplegia, which is paralysis in her arms and legs.
“This year’s the 10-year anniversary of my accident,” Hennessy said. “I should have been dead. I’ve been fighting back ever since.
“This is the pinnacle of it all for me and everything I’ve been fighting for. It made it all worth it.”
After placing fifth in her Paralympic debut in Tokyo three years ago, Hennessy was a silver medallist in the last three straight world championships in the event.
She will race the women’s kayak single Sunday. Hennessy and Wiggs have a tradition of hugging after races.
“I always talk about the incredible athletes here, and how the Paralympics means so much more because everyone here has a million reasons to give up, and we’ve all chosen to just go on,” the Canadian said. “It’s more about the camaraderie.”
Hennessy boxed and played hockey and rugby before she was hit by the taxi.
She was introduced to wheelchair rugby by the Ottawa Hospital Rehabilitation Centre.
She eventually turned to paddling at the Ottawa River Canoe Club, which led her to the Paralympic podium in Paris.
“It has a good ring to it,” Hennessy said. “I’m so happy. I feel like we’ve had to overcome so much to get here, especially in the last year and a half. I’m just so proud.”
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 7, 2024.
