Canada World Cup Qualification One Of Major League Soccer’s Greatest Achievements

First things first: No one deserves more credit for Canada qualifying for the FIFA World Cup for the first time in 36 years than the players and coaches.

Manager John Herdman has been masterful in command and deployment of his squad. Within his roster, stars like Jonathan David, Cyle Larin and Alphonso Davies, to role players like Samuel Adekugbe and Alistair Johnston, have performed exceptionally.

But beyond the team and the Canadian Soccer Association, Major League Soccer also deserves an enormous amount of credit for Canada’s long-awaited international success, which came to a head when a 4-0 home win over Jamaica on Sunday sealed a spot in Qatar later this year.

No nation — not even the United States — has relied on more MLS players over this cycle than Canada. Some 16 of Herdman’s call-ups over their marathon qualifying campaign are currently based on MLS squads. That includes 10 summoned for the final window — which matches the 10 called in by Gregg Berhalter for the U.S. And it doesn’t include those like Tajon Buchanan and Richie Laryea, who moved to Europe this winter, nor Davies and Larin, who spent their earlier days developing at MLS clubs.

And as important as MLS has been to the development of the American game since 1996, it’s almost certainly been even more so for Canada since Toronto FC became the league’s first Canada-based club in 2007.

Prior to MLS and its investment in youth development, the United States at least had Division I college soccer as a source of talent, however imperfect.

Canada had no obvious similar prior pathway, with its best players forced to almost exclusively look abroad, to college programs in the United States or youth academies in Europe and elsewhere.

That didn’t prevent the absolute cream of Canadian-born players to find success, like the now-retired Julian de Guzman and Dwayne de Rosario, or current elder statesman Atiba Hutchinson.

But previous Canadian sides that fell short of the final round of CONCACAF qualifying never had the kind of depth now provided in plurality from MLS rosters.

Just look at their five most recent games. In previous cycles, it was unfathomable that Canada could overcome the extended absence of Davies due to myocarditis. But if this Canada squad may have actually improved down the stretch.

That’s no shot at the Bayern Munich left back. But it’s a major endorsement of those like Johnston, Jonathan Osorio, Mark Anthony-Kaye and other MLSers who steady the Canada ranks.

To be clear, this Canada side is not the first outside the U.S. to qualify for the World Cup with a large segment of their roster playing in MLS. Costa Rica and Panama combined to take 11 MLS-based players to the 2018 tournament in Russia, per worldfootball.net. In the 2014 tournament, Honduras and Costa Rica comined to take seven MLS-based players to Brazil.

And while MLS continues to struggle for respect and visibility relative to some of its regional and global peers, its commitment to players throughout the CONCACAF is deserving of praise. It’s also an area where its nearest colleague — Liga MX — is lagging.

Some of this is by necessity, with MLS expanding to 28 teams and with many of its domestic youth academies still in its nascent stages. So what? It’s still worth celebrating.

And Canada’s success goes a step beyond those other stories of regional international triumph driven by MLS players. This time around, MLS is also responsible for many of these players youth development as well as their first-team competition.

When MLS first launched, it was an enormous resource for an American national team program finding its footing. But at that point, the U.S. team wasn’t starting from scratch. The Americans had already qualified for Italia ‘90, and they advanced from their group while hosting the 1994 tournament.

The ground Canada Soccer has covered in the last 15 years since MLS first became a dual-national league with Toronto FC’s launch is far greater. And at a time when it’s en vogue for some American fans to question the value of their domestic league, it may be worth remembering how their own side driven by young European stars performed against the team in the region that now relies on MLS talent than any other.