A few steps away from the end of the tunnel, I closed my eyes and wondered whether I’d wake up. It was a scene I’d imagined so many times before that it was almost familiar, like something I’d rehearsed thousands of times. And yet it was entirely unfamiliar. The nerves hit two days earlier and were reaching a level I’d never experienced in two decades as a professional footballer.
A couple months shy of my fortieth birthday, I was a grandfather in a young man’s game. I’d played the game a decade longer than most. It was now the last season of my football life. Soon I would walk into the wide-open space that exists on the other side of any pro athlete’s career. Since I was a boy, soccer had been my identity. It was always who I was—the singular pursuit that gave me passion and purpose. But now I was nearing middle age, still playing the game I first fell in love with as a boy. I had a family—my wife, three young sons, and a baby girl on the way. I had everything I’d wanted, everything I could need in life. On the pitch, I’d achieved everything I was capable of and knew that I’d done everything possible in my career to make that happen.
Everything but this.
And now I stood a few steps away.
Just beyond the tunnel beneath the stands at Ahmad bin Ali Stadium in Qatar was a green pitch, bright lights, more than forty thousand fans, and television cameras that would send us around the globe.
Behind me stood a team who represented the most talented collectionof Canadian male soccer players the country had ever produced—a team with youth, raw ability, and passion. They represented a newgeneration of men’s football in Canada, one that had earned a level of respect the national team had never before received.
For years, this very scene had seemed impossible. A faraway hope that had diminished with time, disappointment after disappointment.
We’d been mocked and humiliated.
We’d been harassed.We’d been ignored.
We’d been robbed.
We’d failed.
We’d overcome—and then failed again and again.
We’d been, it seemed, the only people on the planet who believed that we belonged. And even
that belief had grown frail.
After so much frustration, I’d almost walked away. Almost. But I’d remained, because I knew that we were more than the world believed,and I had one last chance to help prove it.
The ninety-ninth time I’d run across a pitch for Canada.
We’d made it this far—farther than any Canadian men’s team in nearly four decades, and only the second to ever get here.
The World Cup.
The biggest stage in sport. On the other side of this tunnel, we’d meet the number two ranked team on the planet.
The whole world watching. All eyes on us.
I felt like a kid, naive enough to have enormous ambitions and believe that those dreams were possible. I remembered those long ago days, playing out those visions on a patchy field, feeling a joy that would grow into passion. Back then, I’d imagined this moment somany times, scoring goals and hoisting trophies in a fantasy land.
“Could this be real?” I wondered. My heart pounded. The roar beyond the tunnel called.
I opened my eyes near the end of a beautiful dream.
Copyright © 2024 by Atiba Hutchinson. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
