On July 14th, Canada lost to Uruguay on penalties in the CONCACAF Cup third and fourth place finals, missing out on the podium. However, for Canadian player Johnston, this game is still a valuable experience. After the match, he was interviewed and shared his feelings and outlook.
Johnston began by expressing his mixed emotions about the outcome of the game, "Even now, I feel tough. It's really tough to lose in a game where you feel like you played well. But I must also recognize that all of our players who were in the starting lineup showed what we've learned over the past six weeks and played very well." His words revealed recognition of the team's performance and resignation to the loss.
Johnston then learned a valuable lesson from the tournament, "I think the lesson I'm going to take away from this is that we can compete with these top teams. Looking back at the entire CONCACAF schedule, we realized that we played almost every team back and forth, except for World Cup and CONCACAF Champions like Argentina. This allows us to hold our heads up high as we prove the strength and potential of Canadian soccer."
Looking to the future, Johnston is confident in the growth of Canadian soccer: "We've made so much progress in such a short period of time, it's more than even the head coach and I could have imagined. Now, we're really looking forward to what the future holds. The next two years will be very important as we head towards the 2026 World Cup. I think we will go further than we thought, but it's important to keep taking the next step. Only then will we be really competitive on the World Cup stage."
