Twelve years ago, Canadian-born Josh Geauvreau was sitting around the television with his family in Berlin, Germany, watching the 2006 FIFA World Cup final between Italy and France.

“I remember that it was incredible. I was watching it at my grandmother’s house on the Sunday, and it was so nerve wracking,” he said.

As a young boy, the experience was both memorable and influential as immediately after returning to Thunder Bay, Ont., Geauvreau began his own soccer career.

Soccer, or ‘the world’s game,’ reaches all four corners of the globe. It has the largest fan base in the world, with the 2014 World Cup reaching an audience of 3.2 billion people, according to FIFA.

Soccer has been slowly creeping its way into Canadian society since the early 2000s and the Canadian Soccer Association (CSA) is planning to further promote the game across the country within the next few years.

Beginning in 2014, the CSA decided to create plans to spread soccer culture throughout Canada. By using surveys and research, the association is talking to the Canadian public on how to create a better soccer scene in the country and improve their status domestically and nationally.

Canada’s Growing Success in Soccer

While Canada may be more dominant in sports like hockey, the men’s and women’s national soccer teams have their share of hardware with wins in the Confederation of North, Central American and Caribbean Association Football (CONCACAF) championships and the Olympics.

According to the CSA, the support for soccer “has never been stronger” as Canada recorded over 800,000 registered players in 2016, making soccer the number one team sport in the country, in front of hockey with just over 630,000 registered players.

Graeme Ivory, director of communications for the Ottawa Fury FC, said that these recent numbers are understandable.

“The affordability [and] diverse amount of countries that play soccer makes it the number one sport for families who immigrate to Canada. The number one identifier to help the transition is through sport, especially soccer,” he said.

Additionally, the expansion of Canadian teams in Major League Soccer (MLS) has also added to the growing soccer scene in the country.

Teams like the Vancouver Whitecaps FC, Toronto FC, and Montreal Impact (plus the Ottawa Fury FC in the United Soccer League) usually have large attendance rates and a solid fan base.

Growing Pub Scene Adds Attractiveness

Fans in sport-enthused cities can gather together in local pubs or other restaurants to watch their favourite teams play in an atmosphere filled with food, craft beer, and diehard fans yelling at television screens.

In particular, Ottawa’s local pub scene has grown very trendy amongst sports fans in the city.

One pub that has a huge reputation for the soccer community is Carleton University’s student pub, Oliver’s Pub and Patio.

The pub has more than 10 televisions that can show different games at once, making it a feeding ground for all kinds of soccer supporters to come together and enjoy the game.

Godwin Scott, a fourth-year engineering student at Carleton, is a frequent visitor to the pub during the soccer season.

“Going to Ollie’s brings all the soccer fans together and builds a sense of community, regardless if your team is doing good or bad. That unity it brings is astonishing, and that is what it [soccer] is all about,” Scott said.

Next Steps for Canada

With the plan to promote soccer across the country, the CSA surveyed Canadians on what they felt needed to change in order to bring the game to the next level in Canadian culture.

Hundreds of thousands of Canadians responded with suggestions on how to advance the game and the CSA came up with four ideal tactics to approach in the future. These include advancing leadership within the sport, encouraging support for soccer, and the need for both national teams to ensure world-class performances.

The key aspect here is the requirement of both the men’s and women’s national teams to be successful on the world stage, particularly at the FIFA World Cup.

“We have seen a tremendous amount of support and success on the women’s side with the Women’s World Cup and the Olympics. You’ve seen how much [national teams] impacts everything on a larger scale,” Ivory said.

The opportunity to achieve this goal is well within reach for Canada as the country recently placed a bid to co-host the 2026 FIFA World Cup, alongside the United States and Mexico.

Being a host nation for one of the most recognized tournaments in the world would give the men’s national team a platform to perform, as they would receive automatic qualification.

The bid proposal is popular amongst Canadians, according to the CSA, as only eight per cent of those questioned opposed Canada co-hosting the tournament.

Second-year business and communications student Kuukua Gyan-Tawiah supports the proposal and added that it could improve Canada’s overall involvement with the sport.

“Giving Canada that platform will give it a good name and a good face. North American soccer, even for the USA and stuff, they don’t do too well in the World Cup. If anything Mexico is the one that is out there,” Gyan-Tawiah said.

In addition to representing the country on a national stage, games would also be held in cities such as Edmonton, Toronto, and Montreal.

Ottawa would only be a host city for practices and other supplementary events, as the TD Place stadium’s capacity of 24,000 is beneath FIFA requirements for men’s soccer, however games from the women’s World Cup were played there in 2015.

Despite the games not being in the capital, Ivory said that if accepted as a co-host nation, the soccer atmosphere in Canada would still forever be changed.

If awarded the bid over Morocco on June 13, the CSA will use the tournament to continue promoting soccer both nationally and domestically within their second and thirds phases of their project.

The rising numbers, creation of teams and leagues, winning of titles and possible hosting of tournaments are factors that may help to positively change the perspective of the sport within Canadian culture.

Ivory said that this shift in focus from hockey to soccer is definitely something new but that soccer has the potential to grow into one of the country’s most popular sports.

“Where soccer was five years ago, few people would envision what it is today,” Ivory said. “Where this game is going with popularity and youth [involvement] plus if we land the 2026 World Cup bid in June, I think this game will grow dramatically in the next five years and beyond.”

Photo by Trevor Swann