León Stadium, Mexico, 1er June 1986. The more the game progresses, the more one wonders – with excitement, in the Canadian camp, and with dread, in the French camp – if one of the two teams will end up scoring a goal before the final whistle of the match. ‘arbitrator.
This first match of the group stage should however have been only a formality for France. Reigning European champion and one of the favorite teams at this 13e Soccer World Cup, it can count, among other stars, on the great Michel Platini and the “magic square” he forms with Alain Giresse, Jean Tigana and Luis Fernandez, to name a few.
In front of them is a Canadian team that already considers it a feat to have managed to qualify for the first stage of the final phase of the World Cup in its history. Several of its players are still without professional teams since the North American Soccer League closed its doors a year ago, while most of the others had to fall back on an indoor soccer league.
However, less than a quarter of an hour from the end of the 90-minute regulatory period of play, the score is still 0 to 0. Slow to get going and often messy, France bumps into a defense physically strong, hardworking, and sometimes lucky Canadian, you have to admit. Less talented, with an attack that mainly boils down to sending long balls forward that we then try to recover, Canada is not completely harmless and offers, on occasion, some scares to the French.
The closer the game is to the end, the more it seems that the latter are telling themselves that they may not finally be able to find the back of the opposing net, but the Canadians are also at their wits’ end. of strength. At the 79e minute, a long cross at the far post goes just over the head of the young Canadian goalkeeper of 20 years, Paul Dolan, before finding the foot of the French Yannick Stopyra who immediately puts the ball in front of the goal to his teammate Jean- Pierre Papin, who has missed half a dozen chances to score since the start of the match, but who finally releases, with a whim, his team from a terrible weight.
This will be the final score: 1 to 0.
Not even scared!
Joël Bats was keeping goal for France that day. He assures that he and his teammates never doubted that they would eventually have the upper hand over their Canadian opponents. “I wouldn’t say we’re scared,” the man who also coached the Montreal Impact from 2017 to 2019 said last month on RDS. that we did not materialize, but we still had control of the match. And the Canadians themselves weren’t really dangerous. There was no need to panic, not to panic. And think until the end that we could make a difference. »
I would say that this great performance against France hurt Canada a bit because the others then made sure not to take it lightly.
The comment made Francis Millien smile, who was also there, but in the press gallery as an analyst for Radio-Canada alongside the host, Jean Pagé. “I really like Joël, he said a few weeks ago in a telephone interview with To have to. But I can assure you that, just looking at them, you could see that the French players thought the end of the match was coming quickly and that they were wondering if they would end up succeeding in putting the ball in the back of the net. As for the fellow French journalists around us, they went, between the start and the end of the match, from a calm, almost condescending assurance, to dread and panic. »
France will continue their journey until the semi-finals, where they will be defeated by the Federal Republic of Germany and will finish in third place. The Canadian team will continue to offer good opposition, but will not pass the first round, being beaten, back to back, by Hungary and the USSR by identical scores of 2-0.
“I would say that this great performance against France hurt Canada a bit because the others then made sure not to take it lightly,” observes Francis Millien. “It’s a credit to the Canadians, but it’s still a shame. They deserved to score at least one goal. »
See you next time
At the time, it was thought that Canadian soccer had just passed a major milestone and would return, sooner or later, to the World Cup. This second meeting for a men’s team with the high mass of sport will take 36 years.
“For me, it was because I watched the World Cup on television in 1986 that I got the taste for playing soccer. It was so rare to see a game on television,” recalls Patrick Leduc, former Impact player from 2000 to 2010 and now a member of CF Montreal management. He was then 8 years old.
It took all this time to set up professional teams, sports infrastructure and talent development systems in Canada and Quebec, he says. “We, when we were young, it was impossible to make a living from soccer because there was no professional team. Once the first teams were created, it was necessary to wait for these teams to have real soccer stadiums, and not just converted baseball or football fields. Today, we can count on a good pool of players of all ages who have the chance, contrary to what it was in the past, to regularly compete against the best from the United States, Mexico and elsewhere. . We can now aspire to go to the World Cup, and not just to be an extra. »
The Canadian team that qualified for the World Cup in Qatar this year turned many heads. Full of young talents, some of whom, like Alphonso Davies, have even distinguished themselves on the big European stage, it will however have a lot to do. Officially ranked at 41e world rank, they will play their first three games of the group stage against one of the big favorites of the tournament, Belgium, on Wednesday (at 2 p.m. EST), then against the runners-up of the last World Cup, Croatia (Sunday 27 November at 11 a.m.), to finish with Morocco, 22e best team in the world (Thursday 1er December at 10 a.m.).
Six of the twenty-six players of the Canadian team will come from CF Montreal, that is to say the Quebecers Ismaël Koné, James Pantemis and Samuel Piette as well as the defenders Alistair Johnston, Kamal Miller and Joel Waterman. “It’s so difficult to get a place at the World Cup, it will be exciting to see players from here, even if Canada’s journey should be short,” rejoices the president and CEO. of the Montreal club, Gabriel Gervais, himself a former player of the Montreal Impact and of the Canadian team in the early 2000s.
A goal
Canada will once again automatically qualify in four years as host country, along with the United States and Mexico, of the next World Cup in 2026. “This will be another big step for Canadian and Quebec soccer, explains Gabriel Gervais. We would all have liked at least a few games to be played in Montreal, but it will still be a powerful engine of dreams in the coming years for the players, the supporters, everyone. »
But before that, we’ll be watching Canada’s first appearance at the World Cup in almost four decades from a distance. “I think they’re going to play well. It was sad in 1986 that Canada couldn’t score a single goal. We hope, this time, that the ice will be broken. »