While Canada was playing an important men’s soccer game in Honduras nearly 10 years ago, John Herdman was coming off a bronze-medal win with the Canadian women’s team at the London Olympics, Jonathan David was a 12-year-old attending school in Ottawa and Cyle Larin was a 17-year-old getting ready to make the jump to the NCAA ranks in Brampton, Ont.
The current Canadian men’s coach and two of his star players had absolutely nothing to do with the events of Oct. 16, 2012 at Estadio Olimpico Metropolitano in San Pedro Sula.
But you can be sure they’ve heard all about that unforgettable World Cup qualifier in the run-up to this year’s edition on Thursday – which will take place at the same venue where Canada suffered one of the worst defeats imaginable.
8-1.
Yes, Canada lost by a converted touchdown in front of 38,000 raucous fans at a stadium where supporters are separated from players by fences with barbed wire.
Canada needed just a draw that afternoon to advance to the final round of 2014 World Cup qualifying. But over 90 memorable minutes, a true nightmare unfolded for the Canadian side – leading to the resignation of coach Stephen Hart.
“I don’t want to blame players, it’s my responsibility,” Hart told Sportsnet’s Arash Madani while trying to be heard over the loud screaming and horns from fans immediately after the game. “All we can do is ask the fans’ forgiveness. We know they probably won’t forgive me, but forgive the players.”
Honduras rode the momentum from that game into a spot in the 2014 World Cup.
But with Canada first in the Concacaf final-round standings and Honduras last this time around in the battle to reach Qatar 2022, the current Canadians have a chance to flip the script – which would delight many of the men who wore red and white on the same field 10 years ago.
Sportsnet spoke with four members of the Canadian side from that game – starter Nikolas Ledgerwood, reserves Patrice Bernier and Terry Dunfield and video co-ordinator Victor Mendes – to relive that afternoon and to get their thoughts on watching another Canadian team go to Honduras.
Editor’s note: Comments have been edited for brevity and clarity. Ledgerwood currently plays for Calgary’s Cavalry FC of the Canadian Premier League, Bernier is an analyst for TVA Sports, Dunfield coaches with the Toronto FC Academy and is an analyst for One Soccer and Mendes coaches the Royal Military College men’s team in Kingston, Ont.
The 2012 Qualifying Story
While Canada was in good position heading into that game in Honduras, it could have been far better. In fact, it could have been a zero-pressure game for Canada.
VICTOR MENDES: The funny thing is (four) months before in Toronto, Honduras was in shambles, (Canada’s) Simeon (Jackson) misses the sitter to win 1-0 (in a game that ended 0-0). They would have fired their coach that day. We knew they were in serious trouble. We would have never had that issue (finale in Honduras had Canada won in Toronto). We tied that game (in Toronto) and then those guys go to the World Cup.
Still, Canada was in control of its destiny before play under the blazing sun in Honduras.
NIKOLAS LEDGERWOOD: From the get-go, when we landed in Honduras, everybody on the team was in a positive mindset. We had the outlook that we get one point down there and we’re in the Hex (final round). You look at some of those players we had down there – it was a good team. Lars Hirschfeld in net, (Kevin) McKenna as our captain in the back. And then you go through some of the midfield players – Will Johnson, Julian de Guzman, Atiba Hutchinson, those were all world-class players.
The Pre-game Scene
A local newspaper had a 12-page section on the game with a “front-page cartoon of an anxious looking Canadian being tossed in a frying pan in the shape of the stadium while a Honduran player looked on,” Neil Davidson of The Canadian Press reported.
The caption in La Prensa? “You’re toast.”
“The paper also promised on its front cover that 38,000 people in the stadium and eight million around the country will be urging their team on with the ‘sacred’ cheer of ‘Honduras, Honduras, Honduras,’” Davidson wrote.
PATRICE BERNIER: It’s one of those old stadiums that’s concrete. It probably holds 30 or 40 but they probably let in 50 or 60,000 people. It’s an atmosphere when you’re there, people are throwing stuff at you even if you’re just going out for warmups. It’s not like North America where people start trickling it when game time happens. Most of the people there are there before the warmup. When you go out there, just to take a look at the pitch, you hear the sound, you hear, ‘You’re not welcome here.’
Ledgerwood has a Honduran teammate on Cavalry FC, Jose Escalante, who attended that game as a fan with his dad.
LEDGERWOOD: He said that was one of the biggest games for Honduras in history. They needed that to qualify for the Hex as well. He said what they did is they made those tickets literally $2 or $3 and on the back of it was a coupon to McDonald’s. He said everybody in that city wanted to go … I just remember showing up to the stadium.
Usually when you go out two hours before the game, it’s pretty empty. But the stadium was packed. You had rocks thrown at the bus, people banging the bus when you pull up. When you tell people, it was a hostile environment, they think the fans were probably booing at (visiting players). But you go to those countries, there’s no red-carpet service, there’s no being catered to. You don’t leave the hotel. I don’t know if it was the environment that got to us a little bit.
Estadio Olimpico Metropolitano is shown in San Pedro Sula, Honduras, Sunday, Oct.14, 2012. Canada plays Honduras here in a key World Cup soccer qualifier on Tuesday. (Neil Davidson/CP)
TERRY DUNFIELD: I would say it’s like a national holiday. All of Honduras stops when they play. It’s just an incredible party. The stadium was full three hours before the game. As soon as that kickoff starts, it’s all business. It becomes life or death. It’s incredible.
LEDGERWOOD: The bus pulls in in a little gap and right then already the away fans are on top of you. There’s water bottles being thrown at you, the boos are there. They’re already planting it in your head. You go down this little tunnel to the locker room where it’s right underneath the stands. You can hear the fans. The stadium has got a track around it. You’d think it wouldn’t carry the noise as much on the field. But that’s anything but the case.
We came out to warmup two hours before the game, guys usually check the grass a little bit. You had to stand two feet away from somebody to talk to them, it was that loud. The barbed wire all the way around, you have all the security guards or militants with their machine guns standing there as well. It just creates an atmosphere. It’s one of those where it’s like this is serious stuff.
The Game
Canada wasn’t at 100 per cent. 2011 MLS MVP Dwayne De Rosario was out with a knee injury and several players had what they believed to be food poisoning, Ledgerwood said.
Still, there was optimism.
Just over a minute in, Ledgerwood got into the box and passed across to Tosaint Ricketts for a great chance, but he couldn’t get full control and the game stayed scoreless.
BERNIER: Tos Ricketts had a golden opportunity. As the game opened up, they scored the first one (in the sixth minute). But we were still in it, I think we had another opportunity where we hit the post. After that, they score again. At 2-0, it’s not that bad. But at 3-0, you’re kind of like a boxer, you’re in the ring and you’re kind of wobbling. Then it’s four and it’s halftime. By then the game is over and you’re trying to limit the damage.
LEDGERWOOD: I didn’t watch the game for the longest time. It probably took me three or four years to go back and look at the game just because it left that much of a black spot within me. When I went back and watched, the goals they scored, those are goals that are scored on a training pitch after half the team has gone in and you’re just practising around and you’re whipping them in top corner. Some of the goals they scored were unbelievable.
We went in at halftime and we were down 4-0 and we were completely depleted. You could see it. Everybody’s face was ‘What the hell just happened?’ You had such high hopes and it was just like boom, one after another after another after another. It came to the point where you knew you couldn’t salvage it.
Jerry Bengston, then with the New England Revolution, led Honduras with a hat trick. He scored just four goals in 36 career games for the MLS side.
BERNIER: I remember a friend of mine playing for New England. (He said) ‘Man, he can’t score for us and you let him score three off you guys.’ A lot of these players, they’re OK in MLS, maybe they weren’t great. But when they play for their country, they go all out. They know it’s a chance to beat Canada, which is a G20 country. A chance to show a small nation (that) in soccer is better than you.
MENDES: In a stadium like Honduras, we all know it’s a third-world country. The atmosphere is like they’re right on top of you. You can feel them pushing their team and pushing and pushing. When the referee makes a bad call, it is eccentric whistling. It’s just a passion. You’ve got to be in there to really feel it. They will their players to play better.
When players put on national team jerseys, especially in Concacaf countries like that, there’s no bigger honour. They know that. They play like their life depends on it. That’s the difference. There’s a passion and a glory at the top.
DUNFIELD: I think that game left a scar on me for life.
BERNIER: I’ve never lost 8-1 in my soccer life, even as a kid. To do it at the point where we needed only one point to go to the Hex, it was a humiliating defeat and it went worldwide … Definitely the darkest day of my career.
After The Game
MENDES: We get absolutely killed and you know what they’re doing after the game? They’re throwing bags of piss on us … in little bags and they would splurt all over us. After the game, it wasn’t like ‘Oh my god, (Canada) beat them 1-nil, let’s get out of the country before they kill us.’ It was after they had laid the biggest beating ever. That was their aggression. They’re like ‘Go home’ and they’re rocking the bus. I thought, ‘Man, imagine if we had won.’ No one said a word. They’re chasing the bus, they’re throwing the bags at us, it’s insane.
DUNFIELD: You’re almost in a daze. You can’t believe what’s just happened. For many of us, this was our last opportunity to get to a World Cup. All of a sudden it’s over, but it hasn’t sunk in just yet.
LEDGERWOOD: It was pure silence (in the locker room). We went straight from there to the airport. If we won or got a point, we were going straight from the stadium to the airport, we didn’t have to stay a night, we were out of there. (From) after the game until we walked in the airport or even when we walked on the plane, (players didn’t talk). Then guys were (saying) ‘What happened?’ We started to talk about it. It was a weird silence until then. Everybody was like ‘That’s it, that’s our World Cup qualifying hopes gone.’
We were that close, and to have it not just taken away from you but to have it taken away from you where it was embarrassing for us and to the country — we knew this would be talked about for a long time. It’s still getting brought up now.
BERNIER: In the locker room, you feel small. You just want to get on to that plane. And me who hadn’t played, my first thing was can I get back to my club and start training? You kind of want to forget you were there, forget that moment. But it’s written in history.
Ten Years Later
With six games left, Canada leads the final-round standings. The top three in the eight-team table directly qualify for Qatar.
It’s quite a change for a Canadian team that has qualified for the World Cup just once – in 1986. Herdman is the sixth man to coach Canada since Hart resigned.
Honduras, meanwhile, is on its second coach this qualifying cycle and is all but out of it. Gustavo Roca, a Honduran sports journalist, told Sportsnet in an email he does not expect the stadium to be full.
Three players for Canada in 2012 – current captain Hutchinson, goalkeeper Milan Borjan and forward Lucas Cavallini – remain in the current lineup.
MENDES: To see Atiba Hutchinson is going to possibly go to a World Cup is unbelievable. You wouldn’t have bet anything in the world that was going to happen (10 years ago).
BERNIER: (He can say) ‘I’m Canadian I’m proud, I want to show that I’m good, I want to show that my nation is good.’ He’s at that final stage of his career where he can maybe finish off saying ‘You know what I’ve spent all this time, the sacrifices, the travel, the games.’ We’re not going to lie, there’s more bad because there’s (been) no qualifying. He has a chance to put that game aside … Now he’s at that point with the national team where it’s excellence.
It’s not just being part of the tournament. It’s excelling … Maybe for him not taking away that nightmare. It’s still going to be there because you were a part of it. But now he has a chance to go to the World Cup. And he’ll remember his national team time as reaching the World Cup. It’s not the foregone conclusions of the past where it was always not enough.
DUNFIELD: He’s had so much success in his career that I think going back there is bigger than just one game for him. I’d imagine the mindset is one game at a time for the team, but for Atiba, it’s about Qatar, it’s not about exorcising the demons.
MENDES: The key is this — they are not scared of anybody anymore. We used to be scared. We used to go in and say we’re going to sit in, we’re going to counter. That’s the one thing I will give John Herdman credit for. They have the belief they can conquer anybody – Mexico, U.S., Honduras, doesn’t matter. We are going and they have the engines to do it.
The mentality is we’re not going to sit back, we’re going to go, we’re going to press high, we’re going to beat you on the ball, we’re going to take the ball from you and we’re going to score.
BERNIER: It’s a great moment to be Canadian, especially for Canadian soccer. We all know to establish that, you need to have that stamp of the World Cup or else you’ll be deemed just like my generation that didn’t make it, or the generation before. Now, they need this opportunity to stamp Canadian soccer and say we are on the rise, we are here.
Memories of historic loss in Honduras still haunt Canadians — even a decade later
Source: Pinas Ko Mahal
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