As part of our Language of Soccer World Cup series, The Athletic is speaking to supporters of all 48 nations competing at the 2026 edition to capture their unique football culture, distilled into a single phrase. You can read the articles in one place here.

‘Allez les Rouges’ — Come on the Reds

Theo Gauthier felt stranded from civilization in Foxboro, Massachusetts and could not stop shaking his head.

It was July 2003, and Gauthier had woken up that bright summer morning anticipating happiness.

Two days before, he had watched excitedly as Canada beat Costa Rica 1-0 at nearby Gillette Stadium in their Concacaf Gold Cup opener. Canada, Gauthier would boast, had won the Gold Cup in 2000 (then, as champions, made the semifinals in 2002 before losing on penalties to a title-bound USMNT). All they needed in their second and last group match that Monday evening was a draw against Cuba to advance to the knockout round.

Life was supposed to be good, maybe even different, as a fan of Canada’s men’s team.

But as day turned to night, Gauthier realized he had committed the cardinal sin of Canadian soccer fandom at the time.

He had allowed himself to imagine.

Two Cuban goals ended Canada’s Gold Cup hopes. They left the competition without an appearance in the knockout phase and would begin nearly a generation spent in the soccer wilderness.

“You’ve put so much hope and money into this,” Gauthier said. “You believed. That was the worst part.”

It’s only been within the past 10 years that the men’s national team has ascended to the global level. Everything before then?

“False dawns,” Gauthier says.

All along, there was a small but mighty contingent of fans who would travel far and wide to watch their team play, at a time when the sport had little to no buy-in from mainstream Canadian culture. Fans who had to explain their passion with shame. Fans who erred on the side of negativity because the losses came more frequently than the wins.

“You’re always waiting for the other shoe to drop,” Gauthier says. “We have built up so many scars.”

Quietly, though, those supporters maintained belief in brighter days ahead. Many belonged to a group called The Voyageurs, the largest Canadian supporters’ group. Maybe one day, the negativity surrounding Canadian soccer would give way to a World Cup win.

Those who persevered will soon have a chance to see their dreams come to reality.

For years, if you wanted to get into international soccer in Canada, ironically, you would rarely start in Canada.

Generations of multiculturalism meant immigrants came to the country and brought allegiances to their place of birth with them. Owing to continued poor results and no inclusion in Canadian mainstream culture, the men’s national team were an afterthought in their own homeland. There were years when Canada Soccer had to actually pay domestic TV broadcasters to air national-team games.

Doug Kavanaugh’s experience of those times is a pretty universal one. He grew up near a Canadian Forces Base in the central province of Manitoba. As a teenager, he recalls exchanges between the Canadian and German military personnel at the time of an influx of Germans living nearby. They brought their cultural attachments, including to the hugely successful German men’s national team.

So Cavanaugh began following Germany.

“I love my country,” Cavanaugh says. “But Germany was the only one that you’d ever see in international tournaments. It was easy to follow a country that’s playing all the time versus (Canada), where we had years where we didn’t even have regular friendlies.”

Soccer is not ingrained in Canada’s national psyche the way (ice) hockey is.

Canada’s shock Gold Cup win in 2000 caused only a blip on the radar. Through that triumph, more people at least became aware the country had a competitive men’s national team.

If you were intrepid and interested enough in Canadian soccer around that time, you found an internet message board dedicated to it. The people you encountered there were The Voyageurs, their name owing to their pioneering spirit. They cared about the sport in a way few others in Canada did.

It was on message boards that the tight-knit community that defines Canadian soccer fans was born. “Finding your people,” Gauthier says of discovering these spaces.

“The best thing about The Voyageurs is that family element,” says Rob Notenboom, the group’s president. “It developed out of the fact it was so incredibly niche 20 years ago, and so many of us knew each other on a first-name basis. I travel to (Canada) games to meet friends and reconnect with friends.”

But while travelling to their national team’s games for people from European countries can mean a train ride or perhaps a short flight, doing so to see Canada play — home or away — is an expedition. The sheer size of the place (the world’s second-biggest country after Russia by total area) means fans have to get comfortable being away from home to see their team.

“A home game, to me, is not home,” says Cavanaugh, who hails from Winnipeg, Manitoba’s capital. He often travels multiple hours by plane to watch Canada matches, even when they are the host side.

Away fixtures are also a test of endurance. Canada frequently play in Central American countries that are difficult to get to, such as Suriname, where they went for the first leg of a Concacaf Nations League quarterfinal in November 2024.

Cavanaugh was one of four Canadians who arrived in that country on the northern shoulder of South America, but only barely. His trip included a stopover in neighboring Guyana. There, he recalls customs officials questioning him at length over why anyone would travel from Canada to Suriname via Guyana, almost causing him to miss his connecting flight.

What mattered to Cavanaugh, and other Voyageurs? It was that if times were going to be difficult for fans, they were going to be difficult together. Because these supporters had little reason to cheer.

After qualifying for the 1986 World Cup finals in Mexico (played: three, lost: three, goals scored: zero), Canada missed out on the next eight editions, not returning to that global stage until 2022.

Canada fans celebrate their team’s win against the United States in 2022 (Steve Russell/Toronto Star via Getty Images)

“Those early days were all about hope,” Gauthier says. “We felt so close to getting to that next level so often.”

But Canada lacked world-class talent.

“Looking back, it feels ridiculous to look at those rosters,” Gauthier says. “You go, ‘What were we thinking, believing these guys could get it done?’. Often, you had one or two international-level players, where the rest were often unattached (to a club).”

“Unattached FC” became a running joke among Canadian men’s team fans. Drop the reference now and some of the old heads will nod and smile knowingly, before staring into some far-off place as awful memories of what once was play in their minds.

“Outside of The Voyageurs, no one cared or no one was even aware,” Gauthier says. “You often felt like a preacher to friends and family. I was trying to get them on board, saying, ‘This is the biggest sport in the world, guys. This is so much fun and if we could just get (to the World Cup) and we’ve got a couple of players that play in Europe, it can happen, and…”

His voice trails off.

“Then I would often wallow in disappointment.”

So much changed in 2016.

That’s when Alphonso Davies made his Vancouver Whitecaps debut.

Whispers had been shared about this enthralling, lightning-fast midfielder who had arrived in Edmonton as a five-year-old refugee from Liberia, West Africa.

When Gauthier saw, in the flesh, Davies blaze up and down the left side of the pitch in that debut during a Canadian Championship game against USL side Ottawa Fury, he pushed the negativity aside for good. “I thought, ‘This is really a new dawn. This will be special,” Gauthier says.

There had never been a Canadian player with Davies’ potential. That much was clear when he was transferred to German giants Bayern Munich while still a teenager.

Others soon joined Davies: Jonathan David and Tajon Buchanan would graduate quickly from clubs in North America to some of the best teams in the European game. (David now plays for Juventus, Buchanan had a spell at Inter, and is now with Villarreal.)

A generation’s worth of youth development came to fruition. Players such as Davies broke into the mainstream in Canada.

“There were so many people who had never paid attention (to Canada’s men’s national team) coming up to me and saying, ‘Hey, did you hear about that guy?’,” Gauthier says. “That’s when I started to believe.”

Davies, though still only 16, made his senior national-team debut in 2017, a time when Canada’s men had sunk to 120th in FIFA’s world rankings.

With their electric group of young talent, Canada led their fans to believe, once and for all.

Starting four years later, a young core pulled off an unimaginable feat: they topped the third and final phase of Concacaf qualifying, ahead of Mexico and the United States, to return to the World Cup after 36 years.

Canada fans cheer for their team as they finally qualify for a World Cup after a 36-year absence (Steve Russell/Toronto Star via Getty Images)

For years, the stadium where they secured that qualification, Toronto’s BMO Field, would feature as many supporters of the away team as the home one during Canada games. But as Jamaica were beaten 4-0 there that cold March day, the stadium was red all over, packed with the fans who had waited for years to see Canada’s men reach the World Cup.

Red was the colour The Voyageurs had always wanted to believe in, even when there was little reason to.

Now in Canada, red gives fans reason for hope. The Voyageurs’ ranks are into their thousands and ‘Allez les Rouges’ is the proud chant you will hear at their matches this summer.

“A lot of club football stuff is angry. Antagonistic. It’s against the other fans, and it’s against the other team,” Notenboom says. “And ours trends towards the togetherness, supporting our team, enjoying it, recognizing that it’s a privilege, being appreciative of each other. It’s more of a good feeling.”

The Language of Soccer series is sponsored by Google.

The Athletic maintains full editorial independence. Sponsors have no control over or input into the reporting or editing process and do not review stories before publication.