Canadian Soccer circus. After Iran the Panama match is also canceled.

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Canada Soccer’s interim general secretary Earl Cochrane looked down upon a sparsely populated ballroom in the foundations of Vancouver’s BC Place Stadium and tried to sum up the past two weeks for the national association.

“What I think it says to the international community,” he observed, “is that we have an unbelievable ability to punch above our weight in everything that we do.”

Everything? Not if everything includes successfully organizing a single friendly. It was 5.15pm, a time at which Canada should have been into the second half of their World Cup warm-up date with Panama, itself a hastily arranged encounter after the association had originally booked Iran and kicked off a firestorm. But the towering BC Place was deathly silent.

John Herdman’s side, who bridged a 36-year gap to qualify for the Qatar World Cup and light a wildfire of interest in the team, had taken a protest against their own governing body to its most drastic point. Having initially refused to train on both Friday and Saturday, on Sunday they refused to play the match itself. Canada Soccer had managed to lose not one but two friendlies in less than a week and a whole lot more besides. Millions of dollars in ticket revenue, oceans of goodwill, and positivity that Alphonso Davies and co had brought to the sport here. All of it.

Considering Canada is a co-host for the next FIFA World Cup, it speaks volumes of a disjointed, politically polluted, and unpredictable football federation in a country where Soccer is not even the first or most popular sport !

Take that.