The Voyageurs

Tracing Canadian men’s soccer’s emergence from global obscurity to international powerhouse, featuring insight from star players like Alphonso Davies and Jonathan David and manager John Herdman.

The last time Canada qualified for a men’s World Cup was in 1986. For a generation afterwards, the Canadian national men’s soccer team struggled in obscurity, an afterthought in a country that was not yet soccer-mad. The twenty-first century brought a wave of soccer passion and expertise to this frozen country — and a crop of new superstar players who lifted the forgotten team into the international spotlight.

Alphonso Davies and Jonathan David are now internationally known names, and soccer a national obsession. Through interviews with players and coaches, Joshua Kloke tracks the rise of men’s soccer in Canada from darkness to the world stage in 2022. This is the inside story of how the best team in Canadian soccer history grew from disappointment to international fame.