How Canada’s unlikely World Cup bid evolved

TORONTO — It started in November 2010 with a meal at Vancouver’s Il Giardino restaurant.

Victor Montagliani, then vicepresident of the Canadian Soccer Association, and Peter Montopoli, the association’s general secretary, were sharing a meal with mentor Walter Sieber — directorgeneral of sports at the 1976 Montreal Olympics and a man plugged into the world governing body of soccer.

“We were in the middle of our (2015) Women’s World ‘Listen, once you become (CSA) president, I think the time is right for Canada to look at bidding (for the men’s World Cup),’” Montagliani recalled in an interview.

“I looked at Peter at that moment and I said ‘Peter, we’re going to do it and it’s going to part of our strat (strategic) plan when we launch it after I become president. And this is what we’re going to do,’” he added. “Peter didn’t say yes or no. He just said it with his eyes — basically saying ‘OK, we’re ready to go.’”

Much has changed since that day.

A 32-team affair when Montagliani hatched his plan over pasta, the men’s World Cup has morphed into a 48-country behemoth. Montagliani, subsequently elected to two terms as president of Canada Soccer, has moved up the world soccer ladder to become president of CONCACAF, which covers North and Central America and the Caribbean, and a FIFA vice-president.

But Canada carried through on its World Cup bid, albeit now in conjunction with Mexico and the U.S. On Wednesday, the three countries will learn whether they have bested underdog Morocco in a vote of 200-plus FIFA members associations at the FIFA Council in Moscow to decide the host of the 2026 World Cup.

It’s a multibillion-dollar decision.

The so-called united bid of Canada, Mexico and the U.S. comes with a budgeted cost of US$2.16 billion — about the value of the New York Mets baseball franchise, according to Forbes magazine. It projects revenue of $14.3 billion, which is about the same as the annual GDP of Bermuda and the Bahamas combined.

Back in 2010, Sieber had been regaling Montagliani and Montopoli with stories of how Canada had bid for the 1986 World Cup. Originally awarded to Colombia, that competition became in need of a new host when the South American country pulled out in 1982, saying it did not have the economic resources to meet FIFA’s demands.

Fast forward to February 2011, when Canada submitted its official bid for the 2015 Women’s World Cup to FIFA House in Switzerland. Montagliani, Montopoli, Sieber and CSA president Dominic Maestracci were dining in Zurich with Gary Lunn, then Canada’s minister of state (sports).

“We told him ... ’This is what we’re doing.’ He was totally excited about it, all on board,” said Montagliani, who grew up in the same part of East Vancouver as former Canadian international and coach Bob Lenarduzzi.

After becoming president in 2012, Montagliani spoke of his World Cup plans. But Canada’s intent to bid was made formal in January 2014 when the CSA released its 2014-18 strategic plan titled “Leading a Soccer Nation” at a downtown Toronto hotel.

“The process has to start now,” Montagliani said at the time of a bid to stage “the granddaddy of them all.”

Montopoli told reporters then that talk of a co-hosted bid

“might be a little premature but it certainly is possible.”