In 1986, Patrick Roy left us all speechless. And Maradona left us all gaga. It was the end of my first year in high school. The Canadiens had just beaten the Calgary Flames in the Stanley Cup final at the end of May, thanks to their rookie goalkeeper. A week later, the Canadians participated in the first soccer World Cup game in their history.
I was 13 years old and I didn’t realize how much I took these two exceptional events for granted. The Canadian, who had been Stanley Cup champion one year out of two since my birth, has won only one other final since, almost 30 years ago. And it took 36 years before I found the Canadians in the World Cup, this Wednesday against the Belgian Red Devils.
The 1986 World Cup was to take place in Colombia, not at all ready to host the competition due to serious economic difficulties (the drug cartels do not fill the coffers of the State, it seems). It was therefore Mexico that took over despite an earthquake that left almost 10,000 dead and 30,000 injured, just a few months before the start of the tournament.
Besides the host country, Canada was the only other CONCACAF representative qualified for the competition. Even the United States failed to find a place among the 24 participating nations. The World Cup being broadcast on Radio-Canada, we were soon to discover the team of Canada coach, Englishman Tony Waiters, thanks to reports by Camille Dubé, the late Jean Pagé, Francis Millien and Georges Schwartz, the jeweler with a passion for soccer, to whom colleague Robert Frosi devoted a documentary, Georges Schwartz the protesterbroadcast on RDI, this Friday at 8 p.m.
Team Canada executives included Bobby Lenarduzzi, Bruce Wilson, Ian Bridge, Randy Samuel, Paul James, Gerry Gray, Igor Vrablic, Carl Valentine and Dale Mitchell (who had played for the late Manic of Montreal a few years earlier). Among the 23 players on the roster, there was only one Quebecer: Tino Lettieri, born in Italy but raised in Montreal, who was Canada’s starting goaltender for his second and third games. Lettieri is the father of Vinni, a forward in the Boston Bruins organization.
It was Igor Vrablic who ensured this first qualification for Canada, in September 1985, thanks to a goal scored from the knee in the 61e minute of a 2-1 knockout game over Honduras in St. John’s, Newfoundland. Vrablic, a 20-year-old striker who had just signed a contract in the Greek first division with Olimpiakos, was embroiled in a match-fixing scandal shortly after the World Cup with three of his teammates. national. They were charged with accepting $100,000 in bribes. Vrablic never played for Canada again.
As the NASL (in which the Manic as well as the New York Cosmos played) had ceased its activities in 1984, most Canadian players mainly practiced indoor soccer in the country and in the United States. Some didn’t even have a professional contract when they went to Mexico.
To say that it was not ideal to prepare for the most important soccer competition in Canadian history is an understatement.
However, the Canadians entered the tournament with certain hopes. They were reigning CONCACAF champions (the equivalent of the Gold Cup) and were eliminated on penalties by Brazil in the quarter-finals of the 1984 Olympic Games in Los Angeles. , the Reds neutralized the Blues, reigning European champions, until the 79e minute, before Frenchman Jean-Pierre Papin, a revelation for FC Bruges, converted one of his many chances in the match.
Five years later, JPP (for those close to him) was to become, in the jersey of Olympique de Marseille, one of the five French people in history to win the Ballon d’Or – after Raymond Kopa and Michel Platini, and before Zinedine Zidane and Karim Benzema, a month ago.
After that very respectable 1-0 loss to France, Canada lost 2-0 to Hungary and then again 2-0 to the Soviet Union. Three honorable results, but not a single goal. Against the USSR, Bobby Lenarduzzi, future coach of the national team, froze two meters from the Soviet cage, alone with the ball at his feet, like a deer in front of the headlights of a car in Glacier National Park.
It was the closest Canada came to scoring in a Worlds game. After decades of disappointing performances and humiliating defeats, sometimes against modest Caribbean soccer nations, hardly anyone believed that the Canadians would return to the greatest sporting competition on the planet after the Olympics.
Until the World Cup is granted in 2026 to Canada, as well as Mexico and the United States, and qualification as a host country becomes a formality. But this team led by Alphonso Davies, Jonathan David, Stephen Eustaquio, Alistair Johnson, Kamal Miller and Samuel Piette did not want to wait another four years.
United like the national team of 1986, it has accumulated good results.
For the first time since 1997, Canada made it to the final round of CONCACAF qualifying.
For the first time since 2007, the Reds reached the semi-finals of the Gold Cup. And we all started dreaming.
In September 2021, I was at BMO Field in Toronto for Canada’s 3-0 win over El Salvador (minus Alphonso Davies). There was no longer any doubt in my mind that this team, on a mission, was going to go all the way. I still shed a tear last March, when it was confirmed that after 36 years of waiting and misery, the Canadians would once again be at the World Cup.
This Wednesday, the Red Devils just have to behave themselves.