Todd Mayenknecht: Canada’s national men’s soccer program is the biggest winner this week. Soccer is in the limelight, but the NBA and the NHL also enjoyed big weeks with engaging finals and champions.
Fans celebrate Canada's World Cup win against Qatar on June 18. Photo by NICK PROCAYLO /PNG
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Bulls of the week
The New York Knicks of the NBA and the Carolina Hurricanes of the NHL were both huge winners this week in the business of sport, winning the Larry O’Brien Trophy and the Stanley Cup, respectively, on consecutive nights.
The Knicks did so in the most-watched NBA Finals since 1998 — with Game 5 averaging 24.5 million viewers in the U.S. — while the Hurricanes prevailed before an average North American viewership of 7.7 million (5.9 million in the U.S. and 1.8 million in Canada).
Yet the biggest winners from a Canadian perspective are Canada’s national men’s soccer program; Canadian soccer; and Vancouver and Toronto, the two Canadian cities among the 16 that are hosting the World Cup in Canada, the U.S. and Mexico.
After earning its first-ever Cup point in Toronto last Friday in a 1-1 draw with Bosnia-Herzegovina, the national team made history Thursday by scoring its first Cup match victory, a dominant 6-0 rout of Qatar at B.C. Place. It was a ‘W’ that Canadian soccer fans have been waiting for since 1986 when the country first qualified for the Cup in Mexico.
Given what it sets up going forward, the win over Qatar is clearly the biggest men’s soccer moment in Canadian history. Some have already suggested the match is second to none among the biggest sports events in B.C. history.
To me, it might not be quite as important domestically as the Vancouver 2010 Winter Olympics and the golden goal in the men’s hockey final between Canada and the U.S. That gold-medal win drew an average Canadian audience of 16.6 million; an aggregate domestic viewership of 26.5 million and a global audience of about 75 million.
Yet make no mistake: Vancouver and Toronto have never been on a bigger global TV stage than they have been this opening week of the Cup. With a projected 175 million viewers tuning in globally for the match against Qatar, never before have so many eyes been on B.C. Place and Vancouver, thanks to a FIFA TV footprint that spans the globe.
Bears of the week
On the other hand, there was no more unfortunate incident in sport this week than the left-leg fracture (tibia and fibula) suffered Thursday by Canadian midfielder Ismael Kone of St.-Laurent, Que. It was — to put it bluntly — a buzzkill that hung over Canada’s first Cup match victory. It’s almost impossible to separate the high of the historic win with the low of the gruesome injury, one that stunningly ended Kone’s first Cup two days after he celebrated his 24th birthday with teammates training at the University of B.C. on Tuesday.
Now the question is: How big of an inspiration will it be for Canada’s men’s team to dedicate whatever comes next to Kone, who has risen quickly through the ranks from CF Montreal of the MLS in 2021 to Sassuolo of the Italian Serie A with stops in Watford of the English Championship tier and Marseille and Rennes of the French Ligue 1 along the way.
