Jonathan Osorio and Richie Layea may be the only Toronto FC players in Canada’s CONCACAF Gold Cup squad, but they’re certainly not the only ones with roots in the GTA.
Vancouver Whitecaps man Ali Ahmed is from Toronto. Sam Adekugbe’s replacement call-up Zorhan Bassong was born in the city before his family moved to Montréal when he was a baby. Goalkeeper Dayne St. Clair heralds from Pickering. Cyle Larin, Tajon Buchanan, Promise David, and ex-TFC winger Jayden Nelson are all from the soccer hotbed of Brampton. Kamal Miller and Derek Cornelius are from Scarborough and Ajax, respectively.
This is a CanMNT team full of Toronto-area talent.
While Tani Oluwaseyi was born in the Nigerian capital of Abuja, he moved to Mississauga at age 10 and honed his early game in the local youth leagues for clubs such as Erin Mills SC.
Oluwaseyi was the very first dual-national recruit Jesse Marsch made as head coach of Canada, kickstarting the American coach’s drive to get players who were either born elsewhere or otherwise eligible for other national teams to commit to Les Rouges.
At the time of the call-up, in early June 2024, Oluwaseyi was what you would fairly call a novice MLS striker, with just 17 games in the league to his name. But even at that time, he had scored seven times in 15 appearances for Minnesota United in the first half of the 2024 season.
Marsch took notice.
“I saw a goalscorer,” Marsch told media including Waking The Red last week. “So, as a striker, that’s a really important thing. But I also saw a guy with a willingness to run, with a willingness to defend for his team, to run back, to run forward, to compete. And some raw tools.
“We didn’t bring him in right away. But then when we were looking at him, he scored on the weekend again again, you know, and it was his [seventh] goal at the time. I was like, ‘we’ve got to bring this kid in.’ So we brought him in.”
That was for the pre-Copa América camp, a stage in this team’s development that already feels like a lifetime ago. Marsch gave Tani his debut in the coach’s second game in charge, as a late substitute in the 0-0 draw with France.
The coach remembers Oluwaseyi being a little green and starry-eyed in his first experience of Canada camp, but recalls how captain Alphonso Davies made the striker feel right at home.
“It was his first time, you could see he was a little nervous,” Marsch said. “But the guys were all like, ‘hey, nice to meet you.’ And I remember Tani was kind of standing by himself, and Alphonso just went by and tapped him on the shoulder. And I told Alphonso, [Oluwaseyi] kind of stuck his chest out a little bit more. He was like, you know, ‘this is the Canadian national team.’
“We bring those guys in, we really integrate them into the mindset of the group, and then we challenge them to understand the kind of football we want to play. And typically, we see them gather confidence and flourish and and grow and develop.”
That has undoubtedly been the case with Oluwaseyi, who has gone on to establish himself as a key rotational piece for Canada and a consistentkly reliable contributor in attack for Minnesota.
Since CanMNT got their first experience of Tani time, the striker has gone on to amass 12 caps. He featured in all but one game at Copa América, and has retained his place on the roster amid the increased competition brought about by fellow dual-nationals Promise David and Daniel Jebbison declaring for Canada.
In MLS, he has eight goals in 16 games, a rate of a goal every other game, and has also contributed five primary assists and the kind of hardworking build-up play that is a coach’s dream.
In March, he scored his first and so far only goal for Canada against the U.S. in the CONCACAF Nations League third-place playoff. and he got half an hour from the bench in the 0-0 draw with Ivory Coast at BMO Field, the stadium close to where he used to bang in goals at youth level.
Nobody is under any illusions that Oluwaseyi will head to the Gold Cup as a clear first-choice striker. But he will undoubtedly get minutes, and you wouldn’t bet against him at least doubling his CanMNT tally at the tournament.
Just one more Greater Toronto Area talent doing his thing.
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