‘Let’s get kicking’

Winning Pitch: The Canadian Men’s Soccer Team at the World Cup and Beyond
by Murray Mollard

Madeira Park: Harbour Publishing, 2026
$26.95  /  9781998526598

Reviewed by Amy Tucker

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I grew up on soccer pitches in North-Western Ontario. Long before I understood anything about player development systems, coaching pipelines, or national federation governance, I understood the feeling of a cold Saturday morning with dew-soaked grass underfoot and the particular joy of a ball arriving exactly where you willed it. Soccer shaped how I think, how I compete, and honestly, how I read the world around me. So, when I say that Murray Mollard‘s Winning Pitch: The Canadian Men’s Soccer Team at the World Cup and Beyond felt like coming home, I mean that with everything I have, and I suspect many Canadian soccer lovers will feel exactly the same way.

Mollard grew up this way too, and he is generous enough to say so from the very first pages. He traces his own origins from a community park pitch in Kelowna at age five, through a family move to Calgary, and into a decision that will resonate with anyone who grew up in a working-class Canadian household: he chose soccer over hockey because, as he writes with disarming candour, hockey was simply beyond what a single mother could afford. That admission is one of the truest things written about sport in this country, where access has always quietly determined which dreams belong to which children. From that moment forward, I read every page as a fellow believer.

His first coach, the German-Canadian Ernie Biedermann, arrived at training with a 1974 World Cup Adidas Telstar match ball, a red-and-white training suit, and a Volkswagen camper van, and his enthusiasm for the sport, Mollard tells us, was infectious. By 1976, the team was loading onto a rickety yellow school bus for a five-hundred-kilometre tournament road trip to Merritt, British Columbia. I have been on that bus. Perhaps you have too. These are the origins of a national soccer culture, and Mollard understands that systems are made of people long before they are made of policies.

The opening scene of the book captures this instinct beautifully. Mollard watches a Burnaby FC under-13 training session where the boys have been invited to wear any jersey they choose. Real Madrid, Barcelona, Liverpool, Brazil: the pitch blazes with foreign allegiances. Only one child, Miles, arrives in Canada’s black 2022 World Cup strip with Alphonso Davies’s name on the back. Mollard describes a long and winding line connecting that Burnaby pitch to decades of following Canada’s men’s national team through its rare highs and far too many lows. That line, personal and institutional at once, is what the entire book traces, and it traces it with uncommon grace.

The historical chapters are where Winning Pitch truly ignites. Mollard’s account of Canada’s 1986 World Cup campaign in Mexico, a largely amateur squad that qualified against every expectation, lost all three group-stage matches, and earned the quiet admiration of a watching football world, is rendered with the specificity of someone who was paying close attention. The 2000 CONCACAF Gold Cup triumph, the subsequent qualifying collapse against Trinidad and Tobago, and the Qatar 2022 heartbreak build into a portrait of a soccer nation perpetually arriving at the threshold of something great. Mollard describes, after one devastating Nations League exit, sinking into his Canada-finds-a-way-to-lose-again funk, reserved for what he calls “these moments of exquisite failure.” Every Canadian soccer supporter alive will laugh and ache in equal measure at that phrase.

What elevates this book above conventional sports history is its structural courage. CONCACAF President and FIFA Vice President Victor Montagliani, who contributes the foreword, praises Mollard for connecting the dots between ideas and implementation. The chapters covering coaching culture, player development pathways, supporter communities, media, and infrastructure give the book a depth and staying power that rewards readers well beyond the final page. Mollard’s central argument is galvanising only sound, intentional, and achievable strategies on and off the pitch will produce the sustained progress that a home World Cup alone cannot guarantee. As someone who studies systems change academically and has spent years thinking about what it takes to build cultures of sustained achievement, I found this argument both urgent and persuasive.

A fair reader will observe that the book’s considerable breadth occasionally constrains its depth. The chapters on governance and player development open arguments that deserve fuller treatment than the page count allows, and readers seeking granular policy analysis of any single domain will find this a compelling beginning rather than a definitive account. The reporting was also substantially completed before September 2025, with updates through December 2025, a limitation Mollard acknowledges with admirable transparency. These are the honest constraints of writing about a living game at full sprint, and they reduce nothing of the book’s vision or its generosity of spirit.

The introduction closes with three words that have stayed with me since I turned the final page: “Let’s get kicking.” With the World Cup having arrived in Vancouver and Toronto, with Canada playing on home soil for the first time in its history, that line reads less like a closing sentiment and more like an opening whistle for something we have spent our whole sporting lives waiting to hear.

Winning Pitch is the most important Canadian soccer book written in a generation, and it arrives at exactly the right moment.

Who should read this book? This book belongs in the hands of every Canadian soccer supporter who has ever stood on a cold British Columbia pitch and believed the beautiful game was ours too. It is essential reading for coaches and administrators who want to understand the systemic work ahead, for educators and researchers interested in sport, access, and national identity, and for anyone who will be in the stands or watching from home when Canada kicks off this June. If you have ever loved this game, Winning Pitch will show you exactly why that love has always been worth it.

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Amy Tucker is an educator and researcher with more than two decades of experience in post-secondary education. Since 2001, she has worked as a University Instructor and Open Learning Faculty Member at Thompson Rivers University (TRU). Her primary areas of focus include education, training, recruitment, career development, and management. Her research emphasizes decolonizing education, promoting reconciliation, and advancing principles of equity, diversity, and inclusion (EDI) in both academic and community settings. In addition to her academic work, Amy enjoys outdoor activities such as running, swimming, cycling, hiking, and kayaking. Her adventurous spirit shines through in her participation in various athletic events and her passion for exploring the natural beauty of British Columbia. Amy shares her experiences as an athlete in her newspaper column, “The Accidental Athlete,” which appears in the Kamloops Chronicle. Kukwstsétsemc. [Editor’s Note: Amy Tucker has reviewed books by Steve Tersmette, Steve Tersmette, Janice Strong, Carol Anne Hilton, Melissa Hafting, and Theo Dombrowski for The British Columbia Review.]

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The British Columbia Review

Interim Editors, 2023-26: Trevor Marc Hughes (non-fiction), Brett Josef Grubisic (fiction)
Publisher: Richard Mackie

Formerly The Ormsby Review, The British Columbia Review is an on-line book review and journal service for BC writers and readers. The Advisory Board now consists of Jean Barman, Wade Davis, Robin Fisher, Barry Gough, Hugh Johnston, Kathy Mezei, Patricia Roy, and Graeme Wynn. Provincial Government Patron (since September 2018): Creative BC. Honorary Patron: Yosef Wosk. Scholarly Patron: SFU Graduate Liberal Studies. The British Columbia Review was founded in 2016 by Richard Mackie and Alan Twigg.

“Only connect.” – E.M. Forster