With roster questions answered, Canada's men ready for historic match with Bosnia and Herzegovina on Friday

It’s still hard to imagine, even though we’re now only hours from kickoff rather than months or years away. Canada was awarded co-hosting duties for this summer’s World Cup in 2018. On Friday afternoon, the first game in Toronto will finally be played.

For the first time in their program’s hardscrabble history, Canada’s men will take on Bosnia and Herzegovina, and next the world, here at home.

The interminable wait for action has been occupied with thousands of questions. We now know the answers to many of them.

Iran will participate, even though it’s being bombed by the U.S., another co-host. A Somalian referee won’t, after FIFA president Gianni Infantino declined to intervene in his American visa dispute. Tickets will stay expensive. Local economic impacts won’t meet promises. A shadow shaped liked President Donald Trump will loom over everything.

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But now comes the soccer — the way it always does, as though in defiance, the antidote to every poison.

Now comes the gooseflesh and tears.

For the players, Friday afternoon will come as a relief, as a release. It’s as though they’ve been actors waiting backstage while their theatre is being built around them. (In Toronto, that’s literally true: BMO Field — renamed Toronto Stadium for the tournament — has gone from 28,000 seats to nearly 46,000 in amazingly short order, a cottage by the lake turned into a fortress.)

“I just want to get started,” midfielder Ismael Koné, who’s returned to training after he spiked a fever on Wednesday, said earlier this week. “We’ve been practicing and pushing and speaking about tactics, speaking about the opposite team, speaking about ourselves, speaking about