Do the names Paul Dolan or Mike Sweeney ring a bell? Unless you’re a hard-core Canadian soccer aficionado, it’s doubtful. But they have a place in history.



In the 1986 FIFA World Cup, Dolan stood tall against a French side that included Michel Platini and Jean-Pierre Papin and held the eventual third-place team scoreless for 79 minutes before Papin broke the deadlock. And Sweeney only logged 98 minutes over two matches, but made a memorable impact by earning a red card in Canada’s second match, a 2-0 loss to Hungary. There are no goal scorers on the team to mention. In the men’s national team’s only World Cup appearance, they were the only team of the 24 squads involved not to find the back of the net.



When it comes to the world’s biggest tournament, the story of Canada’s men’s national team isn’t exactly inspiring. And that makes the qualifying cycle for the 2022 World Cup in Qatar the most intriguing, well,...