Soccer in Canada | Canada Hosting the 2026 World Cup

[elly63]

See, the only issue with us "amateurs" is that Herdman knew all about everything that was facing him in Edmonton and still chose and was prepared for that option. They didn't need a game there to prove anything to FIFA inspectors, getting a large crowd there at the same time was icing on the cake. Some people talk as if turf won't be installed there for the WC. They'll put it in and likely leave it for the year and the Elks will play on it. Then they'll revert back to an artificial surface.

Few stadiums are appropriate in extreme cold weather. Undersoil heating of a turf field can only do so much in freezing temperatures so it's not a helluva lot better. I don't think the surface was the biggest factor in our game. Fact is this team struggles early against taking it to teams we should beat, this teams prefers to be on the counter.

I don't think anyone can say that we are not at an advantage going into the Mexico game (just the way Herdman first said when the games were announced) If they win it's because they are still the better team and we didn't take advantage of the factors we had going for us. They will be desperate as well. If Mexico loses this one heads will likely roll.

You can't keep playing all the games in Toronto, they have to grow the game. If we didn't have one of the best players in the world I would hazard to say they would be even less known than they are. And ticket sales are important, until that last game Toronto IMO was a failure as a host city. They would have nearly 10k less people attending than a TFC game when TFC was doing well. Edmonton has had back to back 45k games which increases exposure and hype. Herdman has explained the whole reason he wanted the job was because he wanted to get the 2022 WC revenues (15 mil or so) because without it, we were going nowhere.