Standards set after setbacks
Hutchinson took the road not taken and Canadian soccer followed along
When Atiba Hutchinson announced his retirement from soccer in 2023, no Canadian had played more matches for the senior men’s national team.
Which means it’s possible no Canadian had been the target of more training-session trash talk from professional club teammates strictly on account of his passport. As Hutchinson details in a new autobiography, enduring verbal abuse from European pros amounted an occupational hazard during much of his 20-year tenure with the national squad.
“We knew the s--- we would take when we went back to our clubs after an embarrassing outing with Canada … Our European teammates had never even heard of some of the countries we’d lose to,” Hutchinson writes in “The Beautiful Dream: A Memoir,” co-authored with sportswriter Dan Robson. “They couldn’t understand why we’d waste our time playing for a country that wasn’t any good. We’d hear it constantly: ‘Man, Canada’s so s---.’ I hated being told that my country was terrible (at) soccer and that I shouldn’t care about representing it.”
For sports fans who’ve only begun following the fortunes of Canada’s men’s national soccer team during recent days of new-found prosperity — say, with the 2022 World Cup appearance or the dramatic run to fourth place at this summer’s Copa America — it’s one of the more startling bits of anecdotal history contained in Hutchinson’s new memoir. As much as the Bramptonraised Hutchinson enjoyed a marvellous career, climbing the club ranks through Sweden and Denmark and Turkey while making multiple appearances in the UEFA Champions League, never mind being named Canada Soccer’s men’s player of the year a record six times, the road to the top was often strewn with potholes.
He was bizarrely cut from Ontario’s under-14 provincial team, this after being called up to play for the under-15 team. And it took him years to find even a modest professional foothold in Scandinavia, beginning his pro career at age 19 with the GTA’s York Region Shooters after being cut from tryouts everywhere from Hungary to Italy to Germany.
But without the setbacks, he acknowledges, it’s possible he wouldn’t have enjoyed anywhere near as much success.
“It can’t always be a straight path,” Hutchinson said. “You need to have the ups and downs, and just know how to deal with the bad moments. And so I’m really grateful for that.”
Currently based in Istanbul, where he starred for a decade with pro side Besiktas and still lives with his wife, Sarah, and their four children, Hutchinson spoke to The Star in a wide-ranging interview this week, sharing rapid-fire takes on a handful of topics, among them …
On what he might do next: “I’d like to get into coaching. I think I could give a lot back to the game. It’s just figuring out if I want to do it with kids, or with pros, or where I see myself.”
On coaching his three sons, currently all under age 10: “I tried that when they were a lot younger, and it didn’t go so well. They don’t really listen to me as much, I guess, because I’m their father. So I lay off.”
On then-Canada coach John Herdman’s “F--k Croatia” outburst in the lead-up to a 2022 World Cup match that saw Canada suffer a 4-1 defeat to Croatia: “(Herdman’s comment) may have given (Croatia) that extra fuel. It may have. But we were ready for that game, and the game was going in the right way … If we as a team would have made the right adjustments as the game was going on, we would have been fine.”
On the greatest player he ever played against: “(Cristiano) Ronaldo, when he was young. He just so fast and just hard to keep up with it. You could see the hunger.”
On the greatest player of all time: “I go with Messi. For me, what he brings to the game, not just scoring goals, but lifting his teammates with his clever passes. He makes passes nobody else can even see.”
On the ritual of self-denial he employed during his playing career that would see him give up one vice a year, among them alcohol and candy: “Giving up candy was the hardest. I love Sour Patch Kids, and all the sugar … I haven’t done that in a while. I might get back into it at some point when I started getting a proper gut.”
On the irony of Canada being caught up in a drone spying scandal in a sport where cheating is endemic: “I’ve witnessed so many things that have gone on in international football and you just kind of question, ‘Is that right?’ You see a lot of things that go on that are questionable. You go to a stadium in (Central America) and they’re all over your training session — they’re hiding out, watching. It’s just the way it is.”
On his last big moment in a Canada shirt, a set-piece header, down 2-1 to Morocco in the 60th minute of a World Cup match, that somehow hit the crossbar and landed on the goal-line, a whisker from a career-capping goal: “It’s gone through my head so many times, how things could have been different with a matter of inches. That was basically my last touch of the ball representing Canada on the world stage. But for me, it was about that whole experience, the whole journey, finally getting to play in a World Cup, knowing everything it took to get there. I have no regrets. But it would have been nice if that ball did cross the line.”
We’d hear it constantly: ‘Man, Canada’s so s---.’ I hated being told that my country was terrible (at) soccer and that I shouldn’t care about representing it.
AT I BA HUTCHINSON IN ‘THE BEAUTIFUL DREAM’