Alistair Johnston is sitting with one arm draped over a chair, looking as relaxed as you might expect for someone who has left the constant drizzle of a Scottish spring for the sun in Texas.
But when the Celtic and Canada defender reflects on the year just passed for his national team, he rubs his face and hunches forward.
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Remember the good vibes that surrounded Canadian men’s team of 2021 and 2022? Remember how that team rode that wave all the way to Qatar and its first World Cup in 36 years? Remember the belief that the men’s national team could finally do its part to usher the sport into Canadian popular consciousness?
One year can change a lot.
“There was fatigue,” Johnston tells The Athletic about the feeling within team after a disappointing World Cup in which Canada lost all three of its group-stage matches. “It got a little monotonous.”
Fans felt it, too.
When the team refused to play a friendly against Panama in Vancouver in June 2022 over concerns about pay issues and the Canadian Soccer Business (CSB) deal they felt restricted their ability to generate revenue, players garnered public support. Canada Soccer president Nick Bontis became public enemy number one — in part because of his animated responses in the media, and partly because he was at the helm of signing the CSB deal.
Over 2023, the players’ goodwill dissipated.
All parties continued to sling mud regarding a proposed collective bargaining agreement between the men’s team and Canada Soccer. Both Bontis and then Canada Soccer general secretary Earl Cochrane stepped down.
Canada was then outclassed in a crucial Nations League final against the United States that ended with then-coach John Herdman calling out the organization in his post-match press conference, with then-interim general secretary Jason de Vos seated just a few feet away. Middling draws against Guadeloupe and Guatemala in the Gold Cup followed, before Canada again fell to the United States, this time in the quarterfinals of the Gold Cup on penalties.
Herdman then left the team for Toronto FC. Canada looked on a different planet in a 4-1 loss to Japan in an October friendly, compounded by the concerns that they did not have the financial resources to book a friendly in the previous window.
The year ended with its loudest thud: after coming home for the second leg of a Nations League quarterfinal up 2-1 on aggregate against Jamaica, Canada capitulated and gave up three second-half goals in 15 minutes, squandering immediate qualification to 2024 Copa America with an ousting from the Nations League.
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Now, the players who once dubbed themselves “Kings of CONCACAF” have just two wins from their last eight matches and are fighting for their lives in one-game play-in against Trinidad and Tobago for Copa America qualification on Saturday.
“Over the past 18 months, there’s been quite a few black clouds swirling over both our program and the women’s national team,” Johnston admitted. “It’s been tiring. It’s eaten up a lot of time off the pitch as well. It felt like every month there was another window, another difficult match and just something going on that everyone (in the men’s team) became a little tired. And I think that the public became tired of it as well. The same old story over and over again. And we don’t want to be that.”
For the first time, there appear to be public admissions coming from both the men’s team and the federation: something is rotten in the state of Denmark, er, Ontario.
“(2023) probably brought a lot more headlines to our team about that kind of stuff rather than what’s going on on the pitch,” said Johnston. “And then to top it off, I don’t think our on-pitch results were good enough.”
Both sides acknowledge that after two years of arguments, change is necessary.
“There’s a lot of balls in the air and there’s a lot of balls that need to be juggled at the same time, skillfully and positively,” new Canada Soccer general secretary Kevin Blue told The Athletic in an interview immediately after his appointment. “And there’s several matters that we need to address in a productive fashion.”
But with Blue’s appointment comes another first: a willingness from all parties to try and get a long-overdue contract between the men’s team and Canada Soccer done, and a newfound focus from the men’s team on holding up their end of the bargain with results.
“It’s really a message to Mauro (Biello, Canada’s interim coach) and the boys: Do your job,” CONCACAF president and former Canada Soccer president Victor Montagliani told The Athletic in February. “Your job is not to run the federation. Your job is not about what the sponsors do or don’t do. Your job is to coach, and your job is to play. Because if you do your job, you will make Canadians happy. And at the end, that’s what really matters.
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“Sure, there’s issues that Canada Soccer have to solve. But we’ve got a hell of a team. Just go do your business. Just f***ing go.”
To do so, all parties will have to learn from a disastrous 2023.
Toward the end of last year, the sense of apathy around the men’s national team was very real. After the departures of Bontis, Chochrane and Herdman, de Vos left his post as interim Canada Soccer general secretary to work alongside Herdman at TFC.
Through the search for permanent leadership, there was a lack of any genuine dialogue between the men’s team and Canada Soccer. Though the two camps were bargaining in good faith early in 2023, come late fall, the small progress that had been made with de Vos, a legend as a player in Canada, fell by the wayside. A gap remained, and there was little direction Canada Soccer could offer without a unified leadership voice.
At the forefront was player compensation for games, how to best assign compensation for the 2022 World Cup (and future tournament prize money), and player name and image rights when playing for Canada.
“It’s been a bit sticky over the past couple of months,” Johnston said. “We’ve realized that maybe we took things a little too close to international windows and potentially that puts some questions over some players’ heads. And it just made everything a little murky going into the big matches. We’ve really decided we’re going to get this done as far away from international windows as possible.”
According to multiple sources with insight into negotiations, some of the team’s higher-profile players took a backseat in negotiations.
“For some of our guys who football is their life, this isn’t the priority for them,” Johnston said. “And I completely understand that.”
In the fall, the men’s team organized a vote for a new bargaining committee. The goal was a mix of new and old faces. Johnston, Jonathan Osorio, Junior Hoilett and Dayne St. Clair were elected, with St. Clair, 26, being chosen to voice concerns from the team’s younger players.
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“We need new faces and we need guys who want to do it because it is time-consuming,” Johnston said. “And we also understand that just because you’re one of our top players doesn’t mean that you need to be on the front line of doing this negotiation.”
There is a separate group of player representatives that keep the men’s team updated on other matters, which includes Samuel Piette and Mark-Anthony Kaye. The changes are seen as a positive, but they are only a first step.
The lack of momentum off the pitch has been compounded by an equally stagnant look on it, as Biello has named similar rosters and lineups that failed to get results late in 2022 and early in 2023. By relying too heavily on veterans who had lost their pace — such as Milan Borjan, Steven Vitoria and Kaye — Canada looked far from the team full of speed and attacking prowess of 2021.
But the loss against Jamaica meant the proverbial sword was being charged as close to the heart of the men’s team as possible.
Come 2024, when Biello named his first roster, he took a bold step to reflect the need for change. He said his players’ hunger to represent Canada had “slipped” after the World Cup. Longtime mainstays such as Borjan, Vitoria, Kaye, Hoilett and others are not on the roster to face Trinidad and Tobago. When Jonathan Osorio pulled out of the squad due to injury, it meant that the team will not have a single player on it over the age of 30.
“There’s been ‘political distractions,’ if that’s what you want to call them: a coaching change, lots of things happening in the organization,” Biello said. “When these distractions start to multiply, things start to slip a little bit, now it’s about reframing to what’s ahead of us.”
With all that recent terrible background, Canada’s men’s national team is now facing one of their biggest calendar years to date.
Qualification for Copa America and guaranteed games against Argentina, Peru and Chile would be the among only tournament matches against top-tier opponents available to the team before the 2026 World Cup on home soil.
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“No matter what the negotiations come to, we have to be playing in these big tournaments for it to be beneficial to Canada Soccer and just the country and the sport in the country in general,” Johnston said. “If we’re not playing in these big tournaments, it doesn’t matter what the negotiations are. So we can have our full focus on that.”
That’s the message being echoed by Blue.
“The main thing in the short term is ensuring we have a distraction-free environment,” Blue said.
Does that mean getting a deal done?
“It’s a priority for everybody involved,” Blue said, indicating that as a “new voice” he may have some traction with players that didn’t exist previously.
It won’t be easy. The CSB deal remains the focal point of negotiations and Canada Soccer is bound to a 10-year contract.
“(The CSB deal) is the first domino that probably needs to fall. It is probably the biggest domino as well,” Johnston said. “But I think once that one falls, everything else will be smooth sailing by comparison. Do I think that’s going to be an easy domino to fall? No, I do not.”
The skepticism is warranted. If CSB ripped up its deal with Canada Soccer, that would likely mean swift demise of the Canadian Premier League and the loss of thousands of jobs in the Canadian soccer economy from players to referees to support staff to media.
CSB also invests in the pathway to professional success in Canada. It owns and has managed League 1 Ontario since 2018 and has launched League1 Canada, which runs in partnership with regional organizers BC Soccer, Soccer Québec and Ontario Soccer. Crucially, many of Canada’s men’s national team players developed in League 1.
CSB has also made steps to support the men’s and women’s national teams. Multiple sources with knowledge of the agreement indicate that CSB paid approximately $100,000 (CAD) to cover the rights and production costs that came with ensuring Christine Sinclair’s final matches for the women’s national team were broadcast on TSN, not solely on OneSoccer, who had the original rights.
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The CSB is on record as saying it is open to amending the agreement with Canada Soccer, in which it pays the federation a few million dollars per year in exchange for the right to sell all commercial partnerships for Canada Soccer. The arrangement has had the side effect of limiting the amount of revenue Canada Soccer is able to take in itself, with the bulk of commercial revenue going directly to CSB.
“CSB is proactively working to amend the deal with a focus on driving revenue for programming,” CSB CEO and CPL Commissioner Mark Noonan told The Athletic in March 2023.
But now, the CSB must take a seat at the table alongside Canada Soccer and the men’s team’s representatives and get to work. Admissions of past faults and a newfound openness to making concessions and changes are necessary.
“We need to try and help Canada Soccer in any way possible,” Johnston said. “And that’s something that we’ve made very clear. So hopefully now with Kevin (Blue), we’re going to try and help each other here to get creative and find a way to get through this.”
Canada Soccer is making progress, having announced long overdue friendlies against the Netherlands on June 6 and Mexico on Sept. 10. There is also the prospect of a second friendly in Europe in June against another team competing at Euro 2024.
There is a sense of urgency being felt by all sides to earn results on and off the pitch and make genuine headway towards 2026 in a way that has never been felt before.
Saturday’s play-in represents the boiling point: will Canada deliver the results they need to on the pitch and move forward with newfound momentum towards positive change? Or will they be unable to escape the heat that followed them through 2023?
(Top photo: Vaughn Ridley/Getty Images)
