ANALYSIS | Canada Soccer CEO Kevin Blue’s methodical approach paying early dividends ahead of 2026 men’s World Cup | CBC Sports

On Tuesday, Kevin Blue, Canada Soccer’s CEO and general secretary, called the players on the men’s and women’s national teams “our biggest resource.” How to make the most of them sits at the top of his unenviable to-do list.

Blue sat down for an exclusive interview with CBC Sports a little more than six months into his tenure and less than two years before the 2026 FIFA men’s World Cup kicks off in Toronto. It’s a time of incredible opportunity for soccer in Canada. Blue knows it’s also a time of great risk.

He is the head of an organization that, even by the most generous measures, has suffered through years of mismanagement and disarray. He won the job only after Canada Soccer’s first choice, Alyson Walker, declined to take the position the day she was supposed to start.

In her sudden absence, Blue stepped in, and his methodical, analytical approach has paid early dividends.

“There’s three-dimensionality to the challenges involved here,” he said. “I feel like we’re addressing them effectively.”

First among his accomplishments: “We hired a pretty darn good men’s coach, I would say.”

In May, Blue convinced Canada’s Major League Soccer teams to help finance the heralded arrival of Jesse Marsch. While Blue chatted in a relatively quiet corner of the lobby of the Delta Hotel in Toronto, Marsch was upstairs, preparing his team for a friendly against Panama on Tuesday night. Staff in black warmup suits hurried about, taking care of last-minute logistics, loading trucks with equipment for the short drive to BMO Field.

An expanded version of the same stadium will host Canada’s World Cup opener on June 12, 2026, leading to frenzied scenes behind closed doors, too.

Asked to cast forward to that potentially magical night, Blue remained pragmatic.

“I hope Canadian soccer, as a collective, has come together to be best positioned to take advantage of what is going to be the world’s largest-ever sporting event in human history,” he said. “At the same time, there’s an extraordinary amount of building that has to be done between now and then.”

Blue’s main challenge is a contract inherited from the previous Canada Soccer regime, binding well beyond 2026, with a private company named Canadian Soccer Business. In exchange for a guaranteed annual return, Canada Soccer signed away its media and licensing rights to CSB.

Canadian Soccer Business has used some of their profits to fund the still-nascent Canadian Premier League, a FIFA requirement of a domestic league in order for Canada to co-host the men’s World Cup with the United States and Mexico.

But the increasingly lopsided-looking deal — the recent successes of the men’s and women’s national teams have outpaced the contract’s financial terms — has led to acrimony with the players, left Canada Soccer operating at a deficit, and relegated most matches to OneSoccer, CSB’s own ratings-challenged subscription service. 

On Monday, Marsch expressed frustration with the current Canadian soccer landscape before his young side — ascendant after last summer’s surprise fourth-place finish at Copa America and its first win over the U.S. on American soil since 1957 — faced Panama.

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“It’s not my job, but Kevin’s trying to figure out ways so that from a TV perspective, from a marketing perspective, we can show how amazing these guys are,” Marsch said, adding that he wants his players to be “heroes and household names” by 2026.

Blue agrees with that assessment.

“The commercial environment for this sport in Canada has to dramatically improve,” Blue said Tuesday. “The stakes of the situation are extremely high.” 

He has secured overdue collective bargaining agreements with the men’s and women’s teams, reflecting their value as the sport’s leading lights, but said they’re impossible to implement without a significant rewriting of the CSB contract. There has been dialogue between the sides but no agreement on how the contract’s terms might change.

Blue faces another serious dilemma with the women’s team, with head coach Bev Priestman and two staffers serving one-year suspensions from FIFA for the use of drones to spy on opponents during the Paris Olympics.

On the field, the women’s team overcame a six-point penalty in group-stage play to qualify for the knockout rounds.

“Frankly, in my career it was one of the most admirable things I’ve seen in sports, the way they handled themselves,” Blue said. “Extraordinary.”

Off the field, Blue has commissioned an independent external investigation into the drone scandal. When he receives that report, likely before year’s end, he will need to decide whether Priestman will return to her role after her suspension or be fired and replaced.

Later this week, Canada Soccer is expected to name a committee of interim coaches to lead the women into their friendly against Spain later this month. They have already been given strict instructions on the use of drones.  

“That type of behaviour is not something that will be part of the new Canada Soccer,” Blue said. “Everybody’s objective is to turn the page.”

What remains for him to write is the page after that.