The Canadian men’s national team has been here before.

Of course, not Las Vegas, and certainly not the newly-created Concacaf Nations League Finals at which this is Canada’s first appearance. Rather, they’ve previously found themselves looking to build on a major moment for the program and turn it into sustained success. It is something that the team has historically struggled to achieve. 

After winning the Concacaf Gold Cup in 2000, for example, they failed to score at the 2001 Confederations Cup. Canada then didn’t even reach the final round of Concacaf World Cup qualifying for 2002, and haven’t reached a continental final since. 

The closest the program has ever really come to sustained success was in the mid-80s when the national team qualified for the 1984 Olympics before its first-ever World Cup appearance in 1986. But after going goalless in Mexico, it would be 36 long years before they returned to the world stage. 

That makes this next week a massive opportunity for the Canadian men’s national team to back up the statement they made in World Cup qualifying. It’s a chance for the so-called ‘Kings of Concacaf’ to back up that title, to lift a trophy for the first time in 23 years and in doing so prove that this team isn’t like the flashes in the pan of the Canadians past. 

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That starts with a very important semifinal match for Canada on Thursday, both in terms of the fact that winning it would qualify them for the Nations League final, but also the mentality with which the match is approached. With all the talk of the need to test themselves against ‘Tier One’ nations, Canada still have to prove they can consistently beat their regional rivals first — something this country has also never been able to do in the past.

To go back to those aforementioned examples, in the following cycle after qualifying for the 1986 World Cup, Canada fell to Guatemala in the second qualifying round on away goals during 1990 qualifiers. Then after lifting the Gold Cup in 2000, they won just once in six matches against Panama, Trinidad & Tobago and Mexico later that year to fail to even reach the final round of 2002 World Cup qualifying.

Panama remains a very good side, one that beat Canada the last time the two countries played — albeit in a match where Canada had already qualified for Qatar. Teams like them, Costa Rica and Honduras, all of which it should be noted also beat Canada in 2022, won’t be so quick to just allow Canada to leapfrog them in the Concacaf hierarchy.

If Canada can keep consistently taking care of business against other Concacaf opponents, however, it will open the door for more ‘Tier One’ opportunities — not just reaching a Nations League final should they beat Panama, but reaching the 2024 Copa América should they beat whoever they end up facing in November during the 2023-24 Nations League quarter-finals.

With all of this in the lead-up to a home World Cup in 2026, there have never been more opportunities to keep the program’s momentum going. But they still have to earn those chances; miss out on a Nations League final, struggle at the Gold Cup or even more critically miss the 2024 Copa América and all of a sudden doubt starts to creep back into a team that has looked fearless for the better part of three years.

To be fair to this team, since the start of this past World Cup qualifying they have almost exclusively won these types of matches. But it takes more than just one qualifying cycle of doing so to keep the team on an upward trajectory.

Despite the raised expectations around the team, these matches cannot be taken for granted. Atiba Hutchinson, after all, who is expected to play his final matches during this Nations League campaign, has played 103 matches over 20 years with the Canadian men’s national team. None of them has been a final.

Lifting a Nations League trophy on Sunday would be a really positive indication that the next 20 years are going to be significantly different for this national team. It would be an incredibly important step towards this group finally making the Canadian men’s national team sustainably successful.