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Canadian soccer on the rise while U.S. team falling apart

Adam Laskaris
Adam Laskaris
|
Jun 11 2025, 5:03 pm
Canadian soccer on the rise while U.S. team falling apart
Beau Chevalier/Canada Soccer

The story of the rise of Canadian soccer over the last decade or so has been told many times.

The Canadian women’s team got a head start on their male counterparts by a few years.

Since 2003, they’ve never ranked lower than 13th in the world, and have picked up three medals at the Olympic Games since 2012, including a historic gold in 2020.

On the men’s side, it’s been a slower progression, but a 2022 FIFA World Cup qualifying that saw them place first in the Concacaf group signified a seismic shift in the nation’s potential and perception around the world.

While the program still has its struggles selling out stadiums, (and the odd drone scandal and mass board of governors exodus), fan vibes are generally more positive than negative around the two programs, and a stark contrast to the early 2010s when the men’s team hit an all-time low FIFA ranking of 122 back in 2014.

Factor in an all-time high FIFA ranking of 30th, a semifinal berth at their first-ever Copa America appearance last summer, 13 2026 FIFA World Cup matches being played on home soil a year from now, and a bevy of young talent in stars like Jonathan David, Stephen Eustaquio, and Alphonso Davies (though he’s currently sidelined), and the feeling is generally pretty good about the future of Canadian soccer.

It’s not perfect by any means, but it’s so much better than many generations of fans are used to.

The same can’t be said south of the border.

While the American men’s national team is currently ranked 16th by FIFA, they might have the worst vibes in the world of any country with a significant World Cup history, and certainly worse than either of their two host counterparts in Mexico and Canada.

Under coach Mauricio Pochettino — who earned his chops leading Tottenham Hotspur, Paris St-Germain, and Chelsea, three of the biggest European clubs — the Americans have now lost four matches in a row, and picked up just five wins to match five losses in his first 10 games in charge.

While FIFA thinks more highly of them, as per the Elo ratings world rankings, the Americans have fallen to 41st in the world, with Canada at 29th and Mexico at 24th.

At their last major tournament — last year’s Copa America — the Americans lost their final two group stage matches to be knocked out in the round robin, an embarrassing performance on home soil.

American soccer legend Landon Donovan is in a rather public feud with team stars like Christian Pulisic — and his dad for skipping out on this year’s Gold Cup tournament, and fan sentiment around the team, and the team is barely two years removed from a major blackmail scandal involving their former coach Gregg Berhalter and a number of team executives.

Why compare so much to America?

Part of the essence of being Canadian is, by nature, comparing one’s success to their southern neighbours. It’s why the Four Nations Face-Off victory seemed like so much more than an exhibition. It’s why the ongoing tariff war has been dominating headlines for months.

Canadian fans have seen similar program scandals, player strikes, and political conflict, but they’re much easier to fathom when the team’s generally still on an upward trajectory.

Last fall, men’s national team coach Jesse Marsch made a bold claim that his team wanted to win next year’s World Cup, with the current 85-1 odds of doing so. It would be the longest shot in men’s major tournament history.

But the American-born Marsch, who previously worked as an assistant on the U.S. team early in his coaching career and picked up two appearances as a player for the side, is all in on the Canadian project since his hiring last year.

“The group has responded every time [I’ve challenged them]. Even though it’s not been perfect, I think we continue to understand what we, what every moment needs, and then we are ready to deliver,” Marsch told Offside on Tuesday.

“We try to make training as intense as matches, so that everything they do when they’re here is at a really high level. The demands are high, the game the levels of the games are high. This is exactly what is necessary to help a team get better,” Marsch added.

“[We’re considering] what are the immediate next steps, what are the progressions for what’s going to be necessary in a month? Who are the players that are most necessary to include in the project, and how do we give them the right kinds of challenges?”

Over the course of two matches at Toronto’s BMO Field this week, Canada beat Ukraine 4-2 and lost to the Ivory Coast 1-0 in a shootout, with the results good enough to give the hosts victory in the inaugural four-team Canadian Shield tournament that also included New Zealand.

“The final destination, which is the World Cup, is as important as the journey,” midfielder Stephen Eustáquio said last week. “The games from now on are going to be very tough.”

And as long as the two countries are pitted next to each other geographically, Canada and the United States will always be ripe for comparison, particularly with the two of them hosting one of the biggest sporting events in the world together next year.

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