Richie Laryea

Has it taken off recently?

It has, it has.

You know, I think whenever you're out and you see the kids, it seems like everyone's gravitating towards soccer.

And I know it's Canada and it's big on hockey and rightfully so, you know, we're very good at hockey.

But now I think soccer is very close behind.

So I think...

Yeah, these last two years, I think especially, like you mentioned with Copa America, I think it really got people to believe.

And I think even more so now with the friendlies we had, like I mentioned, Netherlands, France, Colombia, Wales, we played such big teams and they now look at us like, oh, these are serious competitors.

This is going to be...

a walk in the park.

So I think that's the greatest honor, especially the little camp we had over in Europe where we beat Romania and Wales.

You could see after both games, both teams were like, wow, that was a really tough game.

That's a really good team.

So I think...

every camp we've had we start earning more and more respect and i think for me personally even this last one playing iceland and tunisia you see how they view and look at you as a team and the way they speak about the team in the press it's now it's like i don't use the word scary but they're respecting us they're not just coming in and being like oh it's canada we're gonna walk all over them that

i think that messaging is left a long time ago now which is good awesome to hear do you guys allow yourself to say like a goal for this tournament or is it like championship or bus like where are we at getting out of the group stage what is kind of the messaging been as we get closer to kickoff yeah i think just within the group there's a lot of confidence so we've sat together numerous times and it's if you're in a tournament you never come to a tournament say you just want to compete or

You want to win your first game.

You want to make it out of the group.

We're in a tournament to win, so that's the message.

Yeah, I've been heard all too much.