Canada's men's soccer team makes history with 6-0 World Cup win
A record 40,943 fans attended the FIFA Fan Festival in Vancouver Thursday as Canada defeated Qatar, marking the nation's first men's World Cup match victory.
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Canada's national men's soccer team scored its first-ever men's World Cup match victory Thursday, June 18, defeating Qatar 6-0 at BC Place Stadium—a historic moment for Canadian soccer 40 years after the country's first World Cup qualification in 1986.
The win electrified Vancouver, where a record 40,943 people attended the FIFA Fan Festival at the PNE fairgrounds in Hastings Park to watch the match. The attendance marked the festival's highest single-day turnout since opening on Thursday, June 11, nearly 9,500 more than the second-highest attendance of 31,481 on Saturday, June 13.
The victory capped an extraordinary week for the Canadian game. After earning Canada's first-ever World Cup point in a 1-1 draw with Bosnia-Herzegovina in Toronto last Friday, June 12, the team's dominant performance against Qatar positioned them to compete for the group title in their next match.
From a global perspective, the match drew a projected 175 million viewers worldwide, placing Vancouver and BC Place on an unprecedented international sports stage. Domestically, Metro Vancouver transit ridership hit its highest level since early 2020 on match day, with more than 1.36 million boardings across the system—an 18 per cent increase from a typical Thursday.