Joshua Kloke - The Voyageurs: The Canadian Mens Soccer Teams Quest to Reach the World Cup

THE CANADIAN MENS SOCCER TEAMS QUEST TO REACH THE WORLD CUP

JOSHUA KLOKE

Copyright Joshua Kloke, 2022

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise (except for brief passages for purpose of review) without the prior permission of Dundurn Press. Permission to photocopy should be requested from Access Copyright.

Publisher and acquiring editor: Kwame Scott Fraser | Editor: Russell Smith

Cover and interior designer: Laura Boyle

Cover image: Benjamin Steiner

Interior images: Canada Soccer, insert pages i, iii, iv (bottom), v, vi, vii; Canada Soccer/Tony Quinn, insert pages ii, iv (top); Kaj Larsen, insert pages viii, ix, x, xi, xii, xiii, xiv, xv, xvi

Lyrics from Draw Us Lines The Constantines. Used with permission.

Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

Title: The voyageurs : the Canadian Mens Soccer Teams quest to reach the World Cup / Joshua Kloke.

Names: Kloke, Joshua, 1983- author.

Identifiers: Canadiana (print) 20220272530 | Canadiana (ebook) 20220272751 | ISBN 9781459750456 (softcover) | ISBN 9781459750463 (PDF) | ISBN 9781459750470 (EPUB)

Subjects: LCSH: Canada Mens National Soccer TeamInterviews. | LCSH: Canada Mens National Soccer TeamHistory. | LCSH: World Cup (Soccer)

Classification: LCC GV943.6.C36 K56 2022 | DDC 796.334/6680971dc23

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For Bastian, who is learning to love the game

Let the hand move its people

And draw us lines from our fiery designs

Unknown unknowns

Let all our gardens grow

And overtake our history

Seeking strength in mystery

Bad weather

Anxiety and fear

Dont give in

Call on her

And live in fascination

Fascination forever

The Constantines, Draw Us Lines

MY PUBLISHER, FRIENDS, AND COLLEAGUES OFTEN ASKED ME WHAT role the growth of the womens game in Canada, and the womens national team, would have in this book. Its a valid question, and one I struggled with, especially as Bev Priestmans team accomplished one of their final steps in a decade-long rebirth with an Olympic gold medal in the summer of 2021.

Like the other 4.4 million people who watched it in Canada, I was engrossed in the final. That was the highest viewership in the country for any soccer game, female or male, since the 2014 World Cup final.

After I stopped leaping back and forth from my couch to my floor with every final penalty kick, my family peppered me with questions about the team itself, not all of which I could answer.

In the days afterward, I turned to the work of some of the reporters who have continually worked to get the womens national team into the public eye. I shared the stories of this team with my family, and they in turn began reading more about the program and the growth of the womens game.

Its those tremendous reporters who have covered the womens game in Canada far more extensively than I have and have contributed to the growth of the game itself that should be writing a book about the womens team. One of those reporters could do a far more thorough and interesting job than I could.

That this book focuses on the mens national team is not to suggest that the mens national team is more deserving of a book about them than the womens national team is. A book that tried to focus on both programs would be a disservice to the many people, and their stories, who propelled the womens program. Because any talk, say, of Alphonso Davies or Atiba Hutchinson being the best players in Canadian soccer history would be to overlook Christine Sinclairs historic achievements. No player, male or female, has scored more goals for their country than Sinclair has scored for Canada. No soccer player has inspired the country in the way Sinclair has. She was rightly awarded the Lou Marsh Trophy as Canadas top athlete in 2012, the first soccer player to achieve that honour.

Sinclairs achievements are only the tip of the proverbial iceberg, however.

While the Canadian mens national team lay languid for a generation, the womens national team rose to prominence, and did so with fewer resources than the mens team: a silver medal at the 2002 Under-19 world championship, which Canada hosted; a fourth-place finish at the 2003 World Cup; Olympic bronze medals in 2012 and 2016; a quarterfinal finish at the 2015 World Cup, which Canada again hosted and which set a record for highest total attendance in the process.

For an entire generation, soccer success in Canada was properly synonymous with the womens team and not the mens team.

And so, the womens national team and the program itself are deserving of multiple books that analyze and celebrate that success. Combining the growth of the two programs into one book would mean important insight about the womens national team would be lost.

I look forward to reading a book filled with those aforementioned peoples stories, and subsequent books about their impact afterward.

The Voyageurs is not an official biography of Canadas mens national soccer team or Canada Soccer. A portion of the royalties from this book will be donated to Grassroots Soccer Hamilton.

THE CLOCK HAD NEARLY STRUCK MIDNIGHT WHEN A RELATIVELY short man sat deep inside an empty stadium and made a plea with his towering dreams.

The words came out slowly. The man was exhausted, having led a team through four games in eleven days across North and Central America, sure. But it was also a deliberate effort to ensure his message landed.

Let your guards down and come with us, said the Canadian mens national team head coach John Herdman, in the distinct Geordie accent that Canadian soccer diehards had come to know and love. Because this is a special group of people. And thats all Im going to ask: stick with us now, and well get there.

For more than a generation, the mens national team getting there a World Cup seemed impossible. They remained something between an embarrassment and an afterthought in the countrys mainstream consciousness.