I stopped by the Vancouver Art Gallery before coming here and stood a long while before Emily Carr's *Big Raven* — that sense of something vast and inevitable pressing down, which is exactly what Canada's attack feels like on home soil tonight. Alphonso Davies at the back pushing forward with that terrifying freedom, Jonathan David hunting in the channels — Qatar's defence simply has no answer for the pace and variety Canada will throw at them. The Qataris have firepower up front, yes, but with Canada generating wave after wave of attacks and Crépeau barely needing to break a sweat behind a disciplined backline, this feels less like a football match and more like a mural being painted in one colour only.

Canada's defensive structure here is genuinely suffocating — Bombito sweeping behind a disciplined back line gives them a platform that Qatar's forward unit, however lively Afif and company might be, simply cannot unlock on this surface against this crowd. BC Place in Vancouver will be an absolute cauldron, and that host nation energy transforms Davies from a dangerous fullback into something closer to an unstoppable force on the left channel. Qatar's midfield offers no real protective screen to compensate for their defensive fragility, and Jonathan David will find pockets in behind that a team sitting at 18 in defence simply cannot cover. I attempted a Nanaimo bar last night — technically it's a BC classic rather than strictly Vancouver, but the chocolate ganache layer was *chef's kiss*, unlike Qatar's backline, which I fear will crumble far more easily.