One night in Nashville just might breathe life into Canada’s dormant rivalry with the U.S. in men’s soccer

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 05/09/2021 (1853 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

In the annals of Canadian sports, the St. Louis Public School Grounds don’t get a chapter. Not a page nor barely a mention. It’s difficult to nail down which particular school grounds we’re even talking about.

Perhaps it’s because those present in St. Louis on July 6, 1957 never imagined the day would stand alone. Isolated and aging through the test of time but still standing 64 years later as the only occasion in history that Canada’s men’s soccer team has defeated the U.S. in a competitive game on American soil.

A qualifier for the next year’s FIFA World Cup in Sweden, Canada won 3-2 thanks in no small part to the influence of three Ukrainian-Canadians drafted in for the contest. Ostap Steckiw, a former volunteer with the Ukrainian Insurgent Army during the Second World War, was one of the recruits and duly got on the scoresheet. The U.S., meantime, was so disillusioned at being destroyed by Mexico in the first two rounds of qualifiers that they sent the entire club team of the St. Louis Kutis, named after a local funeral home, out to face Canada.

And so that was it. A glorious moment in Canadian history filled with blow-ins and makeshifts with funereal overtones just for good measure. You can understand why coach John Herdman talks so much about his current team needing to create new moments for the men’s sport here.

Herdman and Canada head just a little further south than St. Louis to Nashville on Sunday night, with their eyes and minds firmly set on creating a prime-time moment and, in the process, truly igniting a rivalry that has been nothing of the sort for the vast majority of the past 64 years.

A fact-checker might be inclined to take issue with the use of the r-word when it comes to Canada and the U.S. men’s soccer teams. Is a rivalry even a rivalry when just one side wins for decades on end? (Perhaps Toronto Maple Leafs fans have an opinion?) It’s likely that more competitive sporting rivalries between the countries — on the ice, on women’s soccer pitches — gave enough wider context for men’s soccer to pretend they were similarly fierce foes. They weren’t.

But Herdman and his new generation at least provided enough cover against the fact-checkers with a soul-stirring CONCACAF Nations League victory over the U.S. at BMO Field in late 2019. It was Canada’s first triumph of any kind over the noisy neighbours for 34 years, and first in a competitive game for 39.

“I feel like this is a new Canada,” striker Jonathan David said that night.

Herdman equally felt the history of it: “There’s been a lot of us that have been grinding away, waiting for a night like this on the men’s side. But it’s only one step, it’s only one little drop in the ocean I’m hoping for this team. There’s more to come.”

More has duly come. Plenty more.

Sunday’s meeting is the second of 14 matches for Canada in the final round of CONCACAF qualifying for the 2022 World Cup, Herdman having guided his side to this final stage for the first time since 1997. Thursday night’s pulsating 1-1 draw with Honduras in Toronto was perhaps not the start Canada was looking for. But as the U.S. was frustrated and held 0-0 in El Salvador later that night, it was an early reminder that this campaign with eight teams competing for three automatic tickets to Qatar, while condensed, will be an arduous one.

If Thursday night wasn’t quite a must-win game, it was must-not-lose. In battling for the point they deserved, Herdman’s side ensured they’d travel south with much of the momentum built from nine wins in 12 games already this year.

“There is that belief and that hope,” Dwayne De Rosario, Canada’s all-time leading goal scorer in men’s soccer and former captain told the Star this past week. “Hope that we beat them recently, we can go and beat them again. We have nothing to lose … let’s take it to them.

“Canada and the U.S. is always going to be a rivalry whether that’s on the ice, on the track, on a soccer pitch. We always wanted to beat the U.S. and they always wanted to beat us. We have the talent; there’s no doubt about it. Now we finally have platforms where their talents can shine. I think our boys could do it.”

While so much of Herdman’s success has been built on a gifted young Canadian generation led by Alphonso Davies, David and Cyle Larin, he has made progress by focusing on areas where the U.S. have been so much better than Canada for so long. The Englishman has diligently scouted the diaspora of foreign-born or foreign-based talent and deepened Canada’s playing pool significantly. He has fostered a clearer identity and culture, speaking often about how much more connected this team feels to the country.

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For its part, the wider country does seem to be taking notice. A genuine high-stakes rivalry with the U.S. would likely make Canadians sit up straighter again. That starts on Sunday night with a return date in January.

Seeing so many Canadian players breaking though and establishing themselves in the upper echelon of the European club game is only dampened by the sight of American players doing it in greater numbers. So much, you feel, will come down to the team’s respective young talismans. Davies helped to drag Canada back into things against Honduras, and harnessing his absolute best remains Herdman’s priority. The U.S. was glaringly lacking a similar focal point in El Salvador, but hopes that Christian Pulisic can return to provide it in Nashville.

If both sides appear well-matched in attack, it is in defence where a gulf more familiar to recent generations appears. Herdman’s rearguard was exposed too often against Honduras and must to be tighter Sunday. U.S. counterpart Gregg Berhalter has helped mould a miserly defence, the Americans keeping seven clean sheets in nine games this year and winning five of them 1-0. Some fine margins and some a little wider, then. All of which makes the tactical and touchline battle particularly mouth-watering.

It feels like 1957 has stood long enough and it’s high time it had company. Herdman and Canada know it’s not so simple, of course. At the very least, a rivalry which counts among its high points a victory over a U.S. team plucked from a funeral-home outfit has had new life breathed into it. The hope is there’s more to come.

Joe Callaghan is a Toronto-based sports and feature writer and a freelance contributor for the Star. Reach him via email: joecallaghan84@hotmail.com or follow him on Twitter: @JoeCallaghan84