World Cup in Canada looks like good bet

Here’s a humble prognostication regarding the planned North American bid for the 2026 FIFA World Cup announced Monday in a New York City press conference: It’s as close to a fait accompli as we’ve seen in the dubious, fraudulent history of the FIFA bidding process.

Racked by corruption and humanrights scandals that surrounded the awarding of the 2018 and 2022 World Cups to Russia and Qatar, the blue blazers who run global soccer are surely looking for a safe place to land in 2026. Considering they’ve ruled out countries from Europe and Asia from bidding, name a better spot for a no-drama success than an unprecedented international partnership between the United States, Canada and Mexico, the three amigos of continental trade?

Yes, there is the small matter of kicking a proverbial political football over the soon-to-be-built wall along the U.S.Mexico border. The bid’s proponents are optimistically pushing the idea that such friction won’t be an issue in making what would be the first three-nations World Cup a success. Donald Trump won’t be president in 2026, after all — barring a change in U.S. law decreeing his eternal supreme leadership.

And as Sunil Gulati, the president of the U.S. Soccer federation, insisted to reporters on Monday: “The president of the United States is fully supportive and encouraged us to have this joint bid … (He) is especially pleased that Mexico is part of this bid.”

After all, Iran will have to play its games somewhere, right?

So, mark it down. Come 2020, around the time the successful bid is expected to be announced, we’ll be looking forward to the prospect of World Cup games on Canadian soil for the first time.

“First thing that went through my mind is that, as the largest city in Canada, we should be hosting some games. Hopefully we’ll get a chance,” said Bill Manning, the president of Toronto FC. “I think it could be great for Toronto.”

And here’s another humble prognostication: Torontonians with vision and chutzpah are going to consider the 2026 World Cup and at least explore a possibility.

It’s the possibility of building the kind of stadium Toronto has never before enjoyed. The kind of stadium that could be the centrepiece of, say, that Olympics the city has been chasing in vain for decades. (And you’ll note that bidding for the 2028 Summer Games, the one insiders have been whispering about Toronto having a theoretically decent shot at winning, begins in 2019, around the time the 2026 World Cup bid will be down to the short strokes). The kind of stadium that could host World Cup matches on a field not made of carpet remnants like that concrete cavern in Montreal.

“I’ll tell you what: If you ever wanted a reason to build (a new stadium), this is it,” Victor Montagliani, the president of the Canadian Soccer Association, said in an interview Monday.

Now, this is hardly a call for our government agencies to begin breaking the bank in the name of a one-off circus. If you paid attention to Brazil around the 2014 World Cup and the 2016 Rio Olympics, you understand that publicly funded white-elephant building projects — when they’re undertaken in place of infrastructure projects of more pressing need -- can morph into national travesties. Nobody here is advocating for $300 million (U.S.) soccer palaces in the Amazon jungle. Brazil’s got one and, funnily enough, doesn’t seem to be getting a ton of use out of it.

But if you’re committed to spending public millions to host international sporting events – and there’s plenty of recent precedent to suggest Canada and its provinces and municipalities are very much in that business — well, let’s just say the World Cup of soccer is a tantalizing object of understandable desire.

It certainly has exponentially more cache than, say, the 2015 Pan Am Games. And think about it: The Hamilton Tiger-Cats managed to wrangle themselves a new stadium worth about $140-some million by tying construction to a modest schedule of Pan Am soccer matches. The FIFA World Cup is the world’s biggest sporting event. So scale your ambitions accordingly. Certainly the folks who’ve long pined for Toronto to become home to an NFL team could dream about the synergies here.

And “dream” is the operative word. We’re spit-balling here. There’s still a lot to be worked out. Heck, it’s still not clear if Canada, as one of the World Cup host countries, would get an automatic bid into the tournament — which would be helpful for a country that has only qualified for the tournament once, back in 1986. Montagliani said that because the 2026 World Cup will be the first in which the field is expanded from the current 32 teams to 48 teams, “there’s more than enough space to have the three hosts go in.” Still, as much as Montagliani, along with being the CSA president, is also the president of CONCACAF, the confederation that includes the U.S. and Mexico, he acknowledged that the matter of automatic bids will ulti- mately be up to the folks at FIFA.

Exactly how many Canadian cities will be interested in bidding to hold games remains unclear. Under the format of the proposed bid unveiled Monday, both Canada and Mexico would each get the right to host 10 games apiece. The United States would be the clear centrepiece, hosting 60 of the 80 games, including everything from the quarter-finals on. Still, Montagliani said it’s possible Canada could wind up with knockout-stage matches in the round of 32 or the round of 16. Such details, he said, are a long way from being negotiated.

Now, Toronto’s been left out of Canada’s World Cup plans in the past. When the country held a women’s World Cup that set attendance records in 2015, Canada’s most populous city wasn’t on the schedule. Toronto chose the Pan-Am Games.

“In retrospect it was a mistake. It would have been great to have Toronto as a part of the women’s World Cup,” Montagliani said. “But that was a choice the city made. The city has new leadership now. I’m not sure they’re going to make that same mistake twice . . . It would be strange to have your biggest city not involved.”

So if Toronto’s a no-brainer, and the NAFTA bid is, to this eye, a lock — and Montagliani, for the record, registered his opinion that “nothing in football is a fait accompli” — it only makes sense to think ahead. Where else in Canada could games be held?

The Western Canadian CFL stadiums that hosted many of the women’s World Cup games currently have artificial-turf fields, and natural grass is a traditional World Cup must. That problem can be overcome with money; temporary grass fields are expensive, but doable.

Toronto, of course, has a naturalgrass field ready for play today.

So the question becomes: In nine years’ time, will BMO Field be a fitting venue for World Cup matches?

It’s very possible it will be.