Three cheers for North America’s World Cup coup

GOALLLL!!!

Canada scored a huge one this week when it was named one of three co-hosts for soccer’s 2026 World Cup.

The decision by soccer’s international governing body, FIFA, was a fantastic win for the world’s most popular sport and for Canada, which will welcome jubilant fans from every corner of the Earth for Canadian soccer and, to top it all off, for North American unity.

The future of the North American Free Trade Agreement between Canada, the United States and Mexico may be up in the air.

What a great example can be set between now and 2026 as these three neighbours plan and work together to jointly host the World Cup. On an occasion like this, soccer could be more than a game; it could be a continental matchmaker.

Ignore the naysayers who complain about the looming costs to Canadian taxpayers, about FIFA’s checkered past or about the other worthy causes that could better use the money that will instead be spent on grown men kicking a ball around a field for 90 minutes at a time.

Because Canada will likely host just 10 of the tournament’s 80 games and because those games would be played in cities such as Toronto and Montreal where there are already suitable stadiums, the costs can be kept in line and will be small change compared to the billions we spent on the 2010 Winter Olympics.

Meanwhile, international soccer fans will pour into Canada — and pour out the contents of their wallets here.

It is unnecessary to defend FIFA’s past, and the corruption that has tainted it, to believe it made the right choice of World Cup hosts this time around.

Whatever dubious baggage it sometimes carries, the World Cup is, once every four years, the planet’s biggest party. It’s a combination of a month-long family reunion, wedding reception and Christmas. A feelgood occasion like this, in a troubled world like ours, is priceless.

After the Summer Olympics, the World Cup is the planet’s second biggest sporting event. But for millions, possibly billions of people, it is the most beloved.

This year’s World Cup, which began in Russia Thursday, will show why.

Rightly known as “the beautiful game,” soccer offers sublime athleticism, the pure simplicity of players running their hearts out after a ball, as much drama and heroism as a Shakespearean play and as much brilliant strategy as a grandmasters’ chess tournament.

Yet Canada, which boasts 835,000 registered soccer players, is conspicuously absent from this World Cup and never a serious contender in the men’s game. Our women’s team, by comparison, is very good.

Our men’s soccer team, however, has made it to only one World Cup — the 1986 version — where it failed to score a single goal. Little has changed since then with the Canadian men’s team currently ranked 79th out of 206 countries in the world.

We can do better. Tiny Iceland, with a population of just over 300,000, earned a place at this year’s World Cup while the U.S. and Italy did not. If Iceland can up its game, why can’t Canada, who, as a co-host, will likely gain an automatic berth in the 2026 World Cup?

Thanks to significant federal investments in relatively minor winter and summer sports, our athletes have stood proudly on Olympic podiums, medals draped around their necks.

Canada has eight years to do the same with its soccer program and reap a similar harvest of athletic glory.