Snubbed by the U.S., Jesse Marsch marches Canada i...

playAlphonso Davies: Canada 'motivated' ahead of home World Cup (1:49) When Jesse Marsch, the coach of the Canadian men's soccer team, walked into a news conference on a February morning in 2025, almost nobody was expecting the news. It was just another pre-tournament conference designed to gin up publicity for an event. Coaches and officials representing the Concacaf Nations League semifinalists were gathered at Sofi Stadium in Inglewood, California. The chatter was all soccer and soccer-adjacent: the difficulties of attracting players from European clubs during the international window, and how the games in Southern California should give Mexico an advantage. But as the session was winding down, someone asked Marsch, an American, how he felt coaching Canada "with all this political stuff going on right now." Political stuff? That was a polite way of referring to Donald Trump's insistence that Canada should become part of the United States, one of the early obsessions in his second term. "I feel they have to become a state," Trump said. "They need our protection." Earlier, Trump had even referred to Mark Carney, the Canadian prime minister, as "Governor Carney." Marsch was ready when the question came. The only American coaching a team in this summer's World Cup, he had been waiting for it since he had arrived at Sofi that morning. He had also been waiting for the moment, or one like it, for much of his professional life. Marsch's coaching career has increasingly been driven by a quest for meaning, something more profound than player movements diagrammed on a whiteboard. That was one reason he turned down opportunities to manage clubs in top European leagues and chose Canada instead. said. "And the higher I went, the fewer things I did that I loved and the more things I did that I hated. My ambition right now is to find the right environment where I feel fulfilled." In another sense, though, the Canada job seemed like a consolation prize. When Marsch was fired in early 2023 by Leeds United after managing there for a year, the longest tenure of an American in the Premier League, he became a leading candidate to coach the U.S. men's national team. He was keen on the job, too; in the weeks that followed, he reneged on a commitment to another Premier League club because he felt confident U.S. Soccer would hire him. Instead, after Gregg Berhalter, the previous coach, was rehired, Marsch ended up with a lightly regarded team that has never won a World Cup match. Canada Soccer is better than ever ahead of this summer's World Cup on home soil, and Jesse Marsch has played no small role in getting the Reds to this point. ESPN"When they said that they were hiring Gregg, I asked them why they called me in April," he told me in February. "Should've let me be." "I'm never seen Jesse so upset," says Jim Curtin, the former Philadelphia Union coach who was Marsch's MLS teammate in Chicago and at Chivas USA. "He told me, 'Dude, I don't know what just happened. They just pulled this thing out from under me.' He thought the deal was done." True to form, Marsch went all-in on Canada. Shortly before that Media Day, he'd journeyed the length of the country, nine cities in 10 days, staging clinics, taking questions, and greeting citizens like he was campaigning for office. "I need to know what being Canadian means," he explained. In the process, he became, as one of his players quipped, "more Canadian than we are." Shortly before that media day, he journeyed the length of Canada -- nine cities in 10 days -- staging clinics, taking questions and greeting citizens like he was campaigning for office. "I need to know what being Canadian means," he said. In the process, he became, as one of his players quipped, "more Canadian than we are." That's why Trump's comments affected him twice over. He was insulted for the Canadians he'd met across the country, and he was mortified as an American. Before the news conference, he made certain that if a question about Trump didn't come organically, he would have someone in the audience ready to ask it. But there it was. Marsch took the microphone, his face set in a line and told the assembled media that he couldn't be prouder to represent Canada. "I've found a place that embodies for me the ideas and morals of what not just football and a team is, but what life is," he said. Then he looked into the camera and addressed Trump directly, speaking passion to power. "Lay off the ridiculous rhetoric about Canada being the 51st state," he said. "As an American, I'm ashamed." As of that morning, Marsch's name recognition in Canada, where the coach of the national team is hardly a high-profile position, was limited to the soccer community. But those comments led Canadian newscasts. "I didn't even know who he was," said sprinter Donovan Bailey, a double gold medalist at the 1996 Olympics in Atlanta and one of Canada's most celebrated athletes. "That was the first time I heard his name. And

Snubbed by the U.S., Jesse Marsch marches Canada i...

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