Roberto Martinez praised the grass. Canada spent roughly a billion dollars, and the Portugal coach's highlight was the quality of the turf at training. That's Canada's World Cup in a sentence.
"The training session yesterday, the quality of the grass was fantastic, and everything around the beautiful facilities here. Even the dressing room, it reminds me a lot of the old-fashioned Premier League rooms, a wonderful feel. Congratulations to everybody." Canada will take it. Being noticed is the goal. Being celebrated for cheap dressing rooms is a bonus.
The tournament itself? Logistically sound, atmospherically present, and emotionally complete — right up until Morocco put three past the hosts in the second knockout round and Jesse Marsch told the cameras Canada were the better team.
Marsch made himself the story — and it worked
Morocco coach Mohamed Ouahbi's response said it all: "It takes some nerve to say that when you lose 3-0." He's not wrong. But Marsch understood something important about Canadian sports fandom — if you can't win, lose with conviction and make enough noise that everyone's talking about you anyway.
His tactical record here won't fill a highlights reel. But his ability to position himself as an outsider fighting the football establishment gave Canadians something to either rally behind or reject. In a country that doesn't take its soccer obsessively seriously, that kind of drama does half the job for you. It wouldn't fly in England or Germany. Here, it ran for weeks.
The Alphonso Davies situation — persistently unresolved, endlessly discussed — added a layer of dramatic tension the team couldn't manufacture on the pitch. His absence cost Canada when it mattered most, and everyone knew it. That unanswered question hung over the entire campaign.
What a billion dollars actually bought
Canada kept hope alive for almost the entire duration of their home fixtures. They didn't embarrass themselves. Crowds showed up, the atmosphere was real, and no stadium collapsed. By World Cup hosting standards, that's a passing grade.
Compare it to Berlin in 2006 — a country that considers itself a football superpower barely registering its own tournament unless Germany were playing. Canada, a nation still earning its football credibility, generated genuine street-level buzz. That gap matters.
- Canada exited in the round of 16, losing 3-0 to Morocco
- A win over Switzerland in the group stage would have set up two home knockout games
- Alphonso Davies's fitness and availability remained a talking point throughout
- Jesse Marsch's post-match comments after the Morocco defeat became international news
A quarter-final run would have transformed this. Two home knockout games, the country locked in, and the kind of memory that sticks for twenty years. That didn't happen. The dishes need washing, the leftovers need putting away, and the party's done.
What Canada got was nice. What it cost was a billion dollars. Martinez is right about the grass, at least.
