Canada’s part in the World Cup is ending where it started to feel real: Toronto has hosted the last game held there, and the country can now put its feet up. After Portugal’s win, Roberto Martinez praised the grass, the facilities and even the dressing room, a final flourish on a tournament that was complete, useful and — by the standards of this kind of project — enough.
That is why people are searching now for Is Canada still in the World Cup: the answer is no, not as a host, and Toronto has done its last turn in the rotation. The city did what it needed to do. For three weeks, a few kilometres from the field, you knew there was a World Cup on. Bosnia and Herzegovina fans made themselves heard and helped the place feel festive, which is about as much as any host city can ask for when the event is passing through rather than remaking the country around it.
Martinez was generous enough to sound like a man who had enjoyed the surface as much as the football. He said the training session the day before showed fantastic grass, beautiful facilities and a dressing room that reminded him of old-fashioned Premier League rooms, then he offered congratulations to everybody. It was the sort of praise a host wants at the end, because it comes from the side that just won the last game held in Toronto and had no reason to flatter anyone unless it meant it.
Still, the numbers sit beside the praise. Canada spent about a billion on the World Cup, and the return so far looks less like a national reinvention than a perfectly adequate tournament that ran on time and drew enough atmosphere to make the city feel alive. That is not nothing. It is also not the kind of legacy that changes how a country talks about itself the way South Africa did in 2010 or the way earlier World Cups in Argentina ’78 and France ’98 are still folded into memory. Germany in 2006, by contrast, could feel almost indifferent unless Germany was playing or you were in a designated rooting area.
The gap is plain enough: a heavy bill, a finished hosting run and a modest verdict. Toronto gave the tournament a home, not a transformation. That may be the fairest summary of Canada’s role now that the final whistle has gone on its side of the project.
