​Indoor soccer inadvertently helped Paul Dolan start Canada’s maiden World Cup match

The 20-year-old was 11 minutes away from a clean sheet against Platini, Papin and Co

It was Dolan's first and last World Cup appearance

Sitting on the team bus on the way to represent your country in their maiden FIFA World Cup™ match, you would be forgiven for feeling a little nervous. However, Paul Dolan, aged 20 at Mexico 1986, was unperturbed.

To increase his confidence, he and his team-mates also thought they had the backing of the locals in Mexico. As they peered out of the window of the coach on its way to Estadio Leon, local fans were swarming around them. On closer inspection, those supporters were holding up their hands, in a slightly cheeky message ahead of Canada’s World Cup opener against France, reigning champions of Europe.

“The Mexican fans, the foreign fans were giving us the numbers of how many goals they thought we would lose by and there were some big numbers, sevens and eights and all the rest of it.”

The youthful Dolan, who was in goal for the biggest football match in his country’s history, would go on to defy those digit-based predictions.

“Going into the game I remember that it wasn’t easy, it was at altitude against one of the World Cup favourites,” Dolan recalled in an exclusive chat with FIFA.com. “But I felt calm, because of my team-mates, I took the warm-up in a very professional manner and focused on what I was doing. Walking out, you’re staring at the European champions in this really tight hallway and it was more a feeling of excitement and anticipation than nervousness.”

Huge stars such as Jean Tigana, Alain Giresse, Luis Fernandez, Michel Platini and Jean-Pierre Papin were crammed up against their Canadian counterparts in the tunnel in Leon, and they were to face a goalkeeper who had certainly not expected to start the historic match a few months earlier. However, the more experienced Tino Lettieri was short of match practice due to the disbandment of the North American Soccer League, which led to the regular No1 playing in the Major Indoor Soccer League, in which his Minnesota Strikers side reached the Championship final played in late May. That took Lettieri out of contention for the World Cup warm-up matches.

“I played well enough leading up to the tournament that [coach Tony Waiters] felt comfortable in going with me,” Dolan said.