Alphonso Davies, Jesse Marsch, World Cup prep: Canada looks for big 2025

As 2025 begins for Canada Soccer, anticipation has to be the prevailing emotion.

The worst of a few scandal-plagued years seem behind them. New leadership established in 2024 is gaining traction and trust among players. And the men’s national team’s strong run of results suggests brighter days are ahead.

The 2026 World Cup is a little over a year-and-a-half away. Canada is set to host 13 of the 104 games, equal to Mexico. Considering Canada was an afterthought in the men’s game when the World Cup was awarded to the united North American bid in 2018, these feelings of anticipation are warranted.

That leads to a natural next question: What could 2025 look like for men’s Canadian soccer as they prepare for a landmark moment in Canadian sports history? 

Remember the most prominent sporting event on Canadian soil in recent memory? The 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver had it all: events that went off without a hitch, the most medals ever from Canada at the Winter Games at the time, a swell of patriotism not often seen outside of a Tragically Hip concert and, um, a hockey goal forever cemented into the memories of generations.

Can 2026 top that?

“Hosting a World Cup is like nothing any of us (understand),” FIFA vice president and former Canada Soccer president Victor Montagliani told a media roundtable in Toronto earlier this month. “I don’t even think I know what it’s going to be like. And I’ve put on a few of these things. And I still don’t know. I think I’m underestimating the impact. And if I’m underestimating, the person on the street is underestimating it too.”

Between a shift in demographics in Canada over recent generations, increased participation in soccer among Canadian youth and hockey suffering numerous black eyes through scandals, Canadian soccer will never get a better opportunity than the 2026 World Cup to challenge hockey as the country’s top sport.

And so 2025 will be the final year for Canada Soccer to prepare for and promote this opportunity. Alphonso Davies cannot be the only household name on the men’s team by the end of the year. Jesse Marsch has done his part to traverse the country and change the way people look at the national team through coaching conferences and speaking events.

Canada Soccer must follow suit with the players, putting their faces and stories in front of wider audiences. Atiba Hutchinson, who retired in 2023, would often tell anyone who would listen that he could not walk down the street in Istanbul — where he played his club soccer for Besiktas — without being stopped. But in the country he was born in, he could move with relative anonymity.

That can’t be the case any longer. 2025 should be when Canadian players follow Marsch’s lead and grow closer ties with the Canadian soccer community they hope to grow. They can do so with results.

With 105 caps, the now-retired Atiba Hutchinson is Canada’s most-capped player. (Christopher Morris / Corbis via Getty Images)

The toast that the gregarious Marsch raised among family to end 2024 was undoubtedly a joyous one. How could it not be? After taking over a fledging team in the first half of 2024, Marsch guided the team to the Copa America semifinals, their highest FIFA ranking ever and back on the path of both respectability and competitiveness. Yet the upcoming year will see even greater challenges.

Marsch and his group aren’t foolish enough to believe their continued ascent won’t come without hurdles. 2024 was a year without major stumbles. Those bounces won’t continue. The competition will likely get even stronger for Canada in 2025.

“It’s coming,” Marsch recently admitted to The Athletic of the other shoe dropping and Canada facing challenges.

If Marsch can limit how far Canada veers off course and prevent a loss-filled year like 2023, his team will be in the right headspace to contend for a knockout round spot and take the sport to new heights in 2026.

To do that, Canada has an opportunity to win not just one, but two trophies in 2025: the Nations League finals or the Gold Cup. They have not won a major trophy since the 2000 Gold Cup.

The time for incremental steps of growth came and went when the ball dropped on 2024. Inside Marsch’s group, they not only believe they can win a trophy in 2025 but also believe they must.

And that’s the right attitude. What this Canada core has lacked through their ascent beginning in 2019 under John Herdman is the ability to win decisive games — particularly against stiff competition — continually. That’s why their Copa America quarterfinal win on penalties over Venezuela mattered so much.

Winning games, particularly a knockout round game, on home soil in 2026 marks the greatest games for men’s soccer in Canadian history, bar none. The best — and frankly only — way to prepare for those must-win games in 2026? To come away from 2025 with a newfound, hardened winning mentality.

Adding a trophy to Canada’s resume in 2025 isn’t just on their shopping list: it should be the only thing that matters this year.

Many outside the national team’s core ply their trade within the three MLS clubs north of the border. And 2025 will be defined by how much clarity is delivered over the future of these three critical pieces of the sport’s landscape.

The Vancouver Whitecaps are being put up for sale. Despite the team’s lack of recent deep playoff runs, they have remained a team where young Canadian talent can develop. An ideal scenario would see an enthusiastic new owner facilitate the building of a soccer-specific stadium in Vancouver. Between the turf and cavernous feel, BC Place remains one of the least attractive stadiums in MLS.

Even if getting shovels in the ground remains unlikely in 2025, don’t fans of a long-standing organization deserve to know if the team will stay in Vancouver? The whispers about a new ownership group moving the team persist. Moving a team out of a World Cup host city could set Canadian soccer back in an irrevocable way. A decrease in interest and professional opportunities for young players could harm the sport’s growth.

The Whitecaps are up for sale – what comes next? (Simon Fearn / USA TODAY Sports)

The questions about Canadian soccer franchises don’t end on the West Coast.

A massive change in the ownership structure within MLSE, owners of multiple Toronto-based teams including Toronto FC, could deplete finances invested in the club. Bell Media and Larry Tanenbaum were ardent supporters of Canada’s biggest MLS club. The serious investment in the club midway through the 2010s contributed to Canada’s only MLS Cup win in 2017.

But after a September 2024 deal saw Rogers Communications taking on a 75 percent share of MLSE, could investment in the club decrease? A recent lack of spending on the roster of the Toronto Blue Jays, owned principally by Rogers, should be concerning for fans of one of MLS’s highest-spending clubs.

We’ll find out through 2025 just how much Rogers value TFC. With no TFC games shown on Sportsnet, a Rogers-owned channel, it’s difficult to feel enthusiastic about where TFC stand within MLSE moving forward.

That leaves us with CF Montreal. They have consistently stayed towards the bottom of spending among MLS clubs under Joey Saputo’s ownership. How much longer will a lack of spending and a corresponding lack of playoff success continue? The outlook for the club in Montreal under the current ownership feels shakier than ever.

Concern over the state of Canada’s MLS teams will continue to grow through 2025 until clarity is provided. On the doorstep of the 2026 World Cup, that concern can’t be understated.

Enter the Canadian Premier League, who deserve credit for their growth over their six seasons of existence. They’ve connected smaller, soccer-hungry communities with a better-than-anticipated product. The league has shown there is a sea of young talent to develop in Canada. Attendance has climbed. They have attracted foreign investment.

Yet it remains a league whose reach doesn’t always stretch beyond those communities. Getting more eyeballs on the product has to remain a priority for the league ahead of 2026.

Canadian Soccer Business and Spanish-based Mediapro were previously partners in producing and broadcasting the CPL and some of Canada’s national team games on OneSoccer. A legal dispute between the CSB and Mediapro sees what was once a 10-year deal come to an end five years ahead of schedule at the end of 2024.

OneSoccer is now owned and operated by Timeless, a media company owned by Scott Mitchell, chairman of the CPL and CSB. Mitchell wants Rogers to carry OneSoccer as a television provider. Doing so would change the way Canadians consume the CPL for the better. But how much interest would Rogers — which barely offers any soccer on its current channels — have in that proposal?

The onus is on the CPL and the CSB in 2025 to find ways to get young Canadian players accessible on television. It’s the right step towards earning more public interest in the sport. If players and the product on the field itself are always prioritized, interest in grassroots soccer in Canada could expand.

The checklist for the most important people in the sport in Canada continues: in September, Canada Soccer announced they have a framework in place with the men’s and women’s player’s associations to sign a long-overdue CBA. The only remaining hurdle is a revision to Canada Soccer’s deal with CSB. The CSB signed a deal with the organization in 2018 to control Canada Soccer’s marketing and sponsorship rights in exchange for an annual fee believed to be approximately $4million a year.

Multiple sources with knowledge of talks between the two sides — speaking on the conditions of anonymity to protect their positions — have told The Athletic the discussions towards an agreement have moved slowly since September.

Both sides can’t afford to enter 2026 with questions about the deal hanging over them. Both sides have taken a hit in the court of public opinion in the last few years.

The sooner Canada Soccer and CSB can agree to a deal, the sooner public perception of each could change for the better. Because by the end of 2025, generating rampant public interest in the 2026 World Cup matters. If that doesn’t occur, Canadian soccer might not easily recover.

(Top photo: Ron Jenkins / Getty Images)