‘Feels just amazing’: Canada’s goalkeeper ‘coming home’ to Hamilton
It's been 17 years since he last played a soccer game in the city he refers to as his hometown.
Milan Borjan was a teenage goalkeeper for Mount Hamilton - I think it must have been 2005" - and it was a time of dreams. Some cynics, at the time, might have called them pipe dreams: that Hamilton would get a new stadium and sustainable pro soccer; that Canada would evolve into a force in the men's international game; that a Hamilton kid who had left a Croatian war zone with his family and eventually immigrated to Canada could play his way into the highest tiers of world professional soccer.
All that wishful thinking, now reality, comes together this weekend at Tim Hortons Field, which has become a magnet for big soccer matches, none bigger than Sunday afternoon's Canada-U. S. World Cup qualifying game.
Heading into an international window" in which each team plays three games in seven days, Canada has improved its world rankings by 32 spots in just over a year to No. 40 in and sits in first place, undefeated, in the continental regional playdowns to November's men's World Cup in Qatar. And Borjan, now 34 and celebrated for his play with Serbia's prominent Belgrade Red Star, is Canada's long-established starting goalkeeper.
It feels just amazing to be coming home," Borjan told The Spectator this week from Florida where the national team finally got together before leaving for Thursday's game in Honduras. I was so excited when I heard Hamilton was an option. I can't wait to play there in front of the home crowd, for my family, and friends to be there. It's going to be a special game for us."
With six games to play, Canada leads the eight-team qualifying region for all of North America with four wins and four draws for 16 points, one up on the U.S. and two beyond Mexico and Panama. The top three advance directly to Qatar, while the fourth-place team must play a country from the Pacific region to book its ticket. Canada plays in Honduras Thursday night, Hamilton Sunday afternoon and El Salvador next Wednesday.
Provincial pandemic restrictions limit Sunday's crowd here to 12,000 half the normal capacity.
This window means everything. If we can get nine points, we're probably in and we're writing history. It's been 36 years since Canada was in the World Cup and the players all know what this means; that we're starting something new for Canada, and we're all excited about it," Borjan says.
We're one big team that was built from the first day (head coach) John Herdman came in. We're just like one big family, and we play for each other."
Borjan was born in Knin in what was then Yugoslavia, but his family - father Boko, mother Mirjana, and siblings Nikolija and Nikola - left for Belgrade during the Croatian War of Independence, and then immigrated to Winnipeg when Borjan was 13. A few months later, they moved to Hamilton. Boko coached goalkeepers with the Hamilton Thunder of the old Canadian Professional Soccer League and also was president of a Branford team and the family still lives here.
After playing for East Hamilton and Mount Hamilton, Borjan hit the long, long road and played in Uruguay, Argentina, Serbia, Turkey, Romania, Bulgaria and Poland before signing with his favourite team, the legendary Belgrade Red Star in Serbia's top league, five years ago.
He's been Canada's No. 1 keeper for a decade and made a crucial contribution to one of the most significant wins in the men's team history, when his lunging goal-line save deep in extra time preserved a 2-1 Canadian victory over Mexico in mid-November in Edmonton. .
It was one of the most important saves in my career," Borjan says. I'm very happy about it. You have to stay right in the game the whole game because you never know when the chance is going to come that you have to save the whole team."
Conditions in Hamilton could be similar to what they were in Edmonton and it'll be a climatological shock to the Canadians, sandwiching the frozen turf at Tim Hortons Field between matches in much warmer Honduras and El Salvador.
The winter weather is crazy for the goalkeepers, it's very difficult," Borjan says. The players run a lot and they don't get quite as cold. Goalkeepers, are standing, waiting, maybe there are four or five chances in a game, but still you have to concentrate. It's very tough, but I've got a lot of experience through the years."
This is the first winter game on Tim Hortons Field's new surface, which has the highest international soccer approval rating for artificial turf.
The turf in Edmonton was totally different than the one in Hamilton will be," says Borjan, who hasn't played often on non-grass surfaces. I'll see how it plays when we get there. Is it harder? Is it going to be slippery? How does the ball bounce on it?"
Although Canada will be without all-world back Alphonso Davies because of post-COVID myocarditis, Borjan says the team is very confident facing the world No. 11 Americans, whom they tied on the road earlier.
We're next-level," he says. We had good players before, but the players we have now ... man!"
And they've suddenly captivated a nation. It was Borjan who made the public plea to Canadian soccer fans to come to games dressed in national colours after a 0-0 draw in Toronto, when Honduras had more supporters than the home team did. The response was a full house for the final game in Toronto, seas of red and nearly 100,000 tickets sold for the two Edmonton games.
People didn't have that trust in us and now people have started believing," he says. The crowd is our 12th man, giving us more power to come out and give our best fight ... and that will change soccer in this country. It's not just for us. If Canada gets into the World Cup it'll give Hamilton kids, all Canadian kids, something to fight for and dream about.
My dream was to play in the World Cup and hopefully this will be the year."
Steve Milton is a Hamilton-based sports columnist at The Spectator. Reach him via email: smilton@thespec.com