TORONTO — Cyle Larin had been on the field for one hundred and twenty-one seconds when he ended forty years of Canadian World Cup futility. He came off the bench in the 76th minute, ran onto Promise David’s pass two minutes later, and finished it, and with that single touch Canada had something it had never possessed in its entire World Cup history: a point.
The 1-1 draw with Bosnia and Herzegovina on Friday will not make a highlight reel outside Canada. Inside it, the moment carried the weight of every match that came before. The co-hosts had played at two World Cups, in Mexico in 1986 and in Qatar four years ago, and lost all six games. Larin’s goal was only the second Canada has ever scored in the tournament, and the first that ever earned the country anything but an early flight home.
For an hour it looked like the same old story. Bosnia, organized and unbothered by the occasion, led from the 21st minute, when an injury fill-in named Jovo Lukic rose to head in a corner past a Canadian defense that had switched off for exactly one set piece. Jesse Marsch’s team pressed and probed without the final ball, and the Toronto crowd of 43,002 began to brace for the familiar.
The miss that should have changed it came in the 54th minute, and it was the kind that haunts. Captain Stephen Eustaquio slipped Richie Laryea in front of an open net, and the ball clipped off Sead Kolasinac’s foot and struck the crossbar, a goal turned into a near-disaster by inches. A team with Canada’s history could have let that moment define the night. Instead Marsch went to his bench, and the bench answered.
Larin was the answer because Larin is usually the answer. He is Canada’s all-time leading scorer, the player the program leans on when the game needs a goal rather than a build-up, and bringing him on with a quarter of an hour left was less a tactical adjustment than a plea. David did the work, holding the ball up and releasing it at the right instant, and Larin did what he has done for Canada more than anyone ever has, according to Sky Sports. The finish was simple. The relief was not.
The result keeps Canada alive in a group it cannot yet read, and it does so on home soil, in a tournament the country is co-hosting under its own complicated spotlight. The same Toronto venue that staged this draw will host Ghana’s opener next week without Thomas Partey, whom Canada refused entry, and the contrast between a nation celebrating its football and managing its borders is the texture of this whole World Cup. For one night, in this building, the football won the argument.
A point is not a story of arrival, and Canada knows it. The draw leaves the hard work in front of them, the goal a single thread to hang a tournament on, the defense still capable of the lapse that cost them the lead. What it removes is the oldest weight the program carried, the sense that a World Cup was a thing that happened to Canada rather than something Canada could affect. Larin’s 121 seconds did not win anything. They proved, at last, that this team can avoid losing, which for a country with six straight World Cup defeats behind it is its own kind of beginning.
