Kwasi Poku becomes the latest debutant for Jesse Marsch's ambitious Canadian men's soccer team

Ninety minutes before the Canadian men took the field for their friendly against Panama on Tuesday night in Toronto, they took the field alone, facing only the wind. It whipped in from the north, funnelling through BMO Field, before running fast under a knife-grey sky, out over the lake.

Bundled against the chill in red coats, the players stood in ones and twos, getting a feel for the grass beneath their feet, as though it might tell them something of the game to come. Even from a distance, the youngest of them stood out, given the way they bounced on their toes to shake out their nerves before they kicked an invisible ball, as though they were kids again, imagining they were heroes.

It was a dress rehearsal for a night when they might live out those dreams.

In Jesse Marsch's short tenure as head coach, he had already anointed a handful of lucky ones: He'd awarded first caps to men with unfamiliar names, at least for casual fans, now made a little more recognizable: Niko Sigur, Nathan Saliba, Tani Oluwaseyi, and Stephen Afrifa can now tell their grandchildren they played for Canada.

In the final minutes of Canada's 2-1 win over Panama — the wind still howling, the sky now black — Marsch invited another young man to take his place among them: Kwasi Poku, a tall, 21-year-old fullback-turned-striker.

Another <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/CanPL?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#CanPL</a> to <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/CanMNT?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#CanMNT</a> connection, forged!