Bosnian Canadians Solve Loyalty Crisis by Cheering Twice as Loud
BMO Field is bracing for the country's first men's World Cup match on home soil, and a contingent of Bosnian Canadians has announced they will cheer for both teams. This is, depending on your view, either the most Canadian thing ever recorded or a serious breach of fan protocol that will require a Heritage Minute to sort out.
The approach is elegant. When Canada attacks, cheer. When Bosnia and Herzegovina attacks, cheer. When the ball is in the middle, hum the national anthem of whichever country has the shorter one. Boo only the referee, who is presumably from a third country and can absorb it.
Meanwhile, the calm, cool Canadian squad is reportedly preparing for its tournament opener by doing what calm, cool Canadian teams always do: apologising in advance, then quietly hoping nobody notices they are quite good. A team source, who does not exist because we are not inventing quotes, would presumably describe the mood as focused.
Down the road, the United States is co-hosting with the polite enthusiasm of a man who agreed to throw a party at his house and then remembered he does not really like the guests. Mexico is hosting like it has done this before, because it has.
The true Canadian victory, regardless of the result, will be the postgame scrum, where someone will be asked whether soccer has finally arrived in this country, and will answer, for the forty-seventh consecutive World Cup cycle, that it is definitely arriving very soon.