John Herdman recently offered Canadian soccer fans a ray of sunshine during these dark times brought on by the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic.

The Canadian team’s January training camp presented by Allstate that ended in Florida last weekend didn’t feature big-name players such as Alphonso Davies (Bayern Munich), Jonathan David (Lille), Junior Hoilett (Cardiff City) and Scott Arfield (Glasgow Rangers) – the camp took place outside of a FIFA international window, which meant in-season players based in Europe were not released by their clubs.

But Herdman did manage to expand the Canadian national team player pool by inviting a number of first-timers to Florida: Tajon Buchanan, Cristián Gutiérrez, Belal Halbouni, Alistair Johnston, Jahkeele Marshall-Rutty, Ralph Priso, Dayne St. Clair, Frank Sturing and former Cavalry FC defender Joel Waterman. Also, a pair of 21-year-olds in Toronto FC midfielder Jacob Shaffelburg (one cap to his credit) and Vancouver Whitecaps forward Theo Bair (two caps) earned their second national team call-ups.

In total, the 16-day camp featured 28 players, including Pacific FC’s Marco Bustos (whose previous appearance for Canada came in March 2017), and FC Edmonton defender Amer Didic (who made his debut for the Reds a year ago).

The timing of this get-together couldn’t have come at a better time for Canada, as 2021 promises to be a very busy year on several fronts. Herdman’s team will face Aruba, Bermuda, Cayman Islands and Suriname in March and June in the first round of Concacaf qualifying for the 2022 FIFA World Cup in Qatar. Also in March, the under-23 team will compete in the Concacaf Olympic Qualifying tournament in Mexico. In July, the senior team will play in the Concacaf Gold Cup.

The majority of the players who attended the senior team camp were born in 1997 or later, which means they are also eligible for Canada’s Olympic squad. Herdman previously stated that the priority for the senior team this year will be the World Cup qualifiers, which could mean he will call up a largely second-string roster for the Gold Cup this summer. With the Olympic qualifiers and Gold Cup looming, Herdman’s decision to call up close to 30 players for this camp proved to be a wise move.

“This is a massive year for football in Canada; it’s probably the biggest year in our history in a long time with the Gold Cup, World Cup qualification, and Olympic Games,” Herdman told reporters. “This January camp was about setting the foundation, setting the tone, showing how serious we are, about taking the risk and going into a COVID environment to understand and learn about the realities to get ourselves ready for March.”

It’s a sentiment echoed by veteran midfielder Samuel Piette.

“This camp sets the tone for the year and it set the tone as well for the fans to show how serious we are and how serious our team is taking this year,” Piette offered.

While the experienced, European-based players are expected to fill the majority of the roster slots for the World Cup qualifiers, Herdman said that the youngsters who came to Florida will be given a chance to prove themselves in 2021.

“The opportunities that are in front of us are like nothing we’ve ever seen before. Starting with this camp in January, moving into March into Olympic qualifications where our young U-23, which might be on the cusp of the men’s national team, those young players can show themselves in a really meaningful competition, but also qualify the country for the Olympics,” Herdman explained.

Herdman’s top priority, of course, it to qualify for Qatar, and then build on that momentum for the 2026 World Cup that Canada will co-host. This is arguably the most talented Canadian team in history, so optimism is running high, especially with Davies and others playing at a high club level in Europe.

But if history is any indication, Canada can’t take anything for granted. The men’s team last qualified for the Olympics in 1984 in LA, while its lone World Cup appearance came two years later in Mexico. Canada hasn’t been able to match its success at the 2000 Gold Cup when it won the tournament, bowing out in the group stage five of the last 10 times.

Since Herdman took over in January 2018, Canada has mostly played minnows. It lost to Mexico and Haiti at the 2019 Gold Cup and in a friendly to Iceland last year, and its lone win against a higher-ranked nation came via a 2-0 decision over the United States in October 2019. The following month, the U.S. exacted revenge with an emphatic 4-1 win to beat out Canada for first place in its Concacaf Nations League A group.

For all of its newfound quality and depth, the jury still remains out on this Canadian team. Veteran midfielder Jonathan Osorio quite wisely cautioned against labelling this Canadian side a “Golden Generation,” insisting that such a moniker has to be earned with consistent results on the field

“You call it a ‘Golden Generation’ based on results and based on what they accomplish. Yes, we have a lot of talent but it’s only a ‘Golden Generation’ if we qualify for Olympics, if we do well in an Olympics, if we qualify for the World Cup, if we do well in the World Cup, if we do well in the Gold Cup, fight to win the Gold Cup. I think then at that point you can call it a ‘Golden Generation.’ We’re still trying to make an imprint in world football. In Concacaf and in the world, we’re still developing as a team. We have now the talent there, so of course, we can’t waste it,” Osorio stated.

He later added: “These thing are possible now, these things are not out of reach and they’re expectations. That’s what we’re trying to grow Canada to become: to become a country in football that is expected to be at the World Cup every four years, a country that’s expected to fight for the Gold Cup every time, a country that’s going to go to the Olympics every time. That’s the expectations we want this country to have, but it comes with actually accomplishing those things. This year is huge for that.”