For Mexico and Canada, injuries are striking just as World Cup hosting duty looms | US sports

WWhen Marcel Ruiz collapsed on the grass at San Diego FC’s Snapdragon Stadium late in the first half of Toluca’s Concacaf Champions Cup match last Wednesday, he already seemed to know it. He covered his mouth with his left hand and grabbed his right knee – first the back, then the front – with his other hand. He turned his head this way and that, hoping maybe he could scan something or someone that would tell him that wasn’t the case. That his home World Cup didn’t last more than three months before it even started. Mexico’s injury crisis hadn’t just gotten worse.

Ruiz is only 17 matches into his international career. El TriYet the central midfielder has firmly established himself as an important cog in the Mexican lineup thanks to his crisp passing and defensive coverage. More pertinently, the 25-year-old was part of a young core that was finally asserting itself within a team that had long felt stuck between generations and had suffered a lackluster autumn, winning none of its six friendlies against teams en route to the World Cup.

With Ruiz ruled out due to a torn anterior cruciate ligament, Mexico now finds itself without the services of six players who featured in last summer’s Gold Cup final victory over the United States, including their entire starting midfielder. Captain and presenter Edson Álvarez has finally had surgery on his long-ill ankle and is in a race to recover for the big tournament; Sensation Gilberto Mora, 17, has been out for two months due to a sports hernia.

Also absent are attackers Alexis Vega and Santi Giménez (injured knee and ankle respectively). The latter is the only one of this half-dozen not to start in this final, and the Milanese may well need to be in the Mexican squad for the World Cup, given that his rival as an attacker, Raúl Jiménez, will then be 35 years old and battered by the long Premier League season. Midfielder Luis Chávez has started all three of Mexico’s matches at the 2022 World Cup, but that is a question mark as he completes his rehabilitation from a torn ACL. Just like Rodrigo Huescas, a contender for the right-back position.

Then there is Luis Angel Malagón, the presumed starting goalkeeper. He tore his Achilles tendon during Club America’s Champions Cup match in Philadelphia and was mobbed by so many journalists on his return to the Mexico City airport that he had to scold several of them to stop bumping into his freshly operated foot.

Such has been the growing panic around this series of injuries. Because above all this looms Mexican coach Javier Aguirre’s proclamation that only players in top form will be eligible for his team.

With the U.S. men’s national team suddenly finding itself with a glut of fit and healthy players — and probably wouldn’t mind at all if the summer’s tournament was moved up about three months — the third World Cup co-host, Canada, is dealing with injury worries of its own.

Canadians captain, superstar and left flank center Alphonso Davies has not played for his country in almost a year, after tearing his ACL against the United States in the Concacaf Nations League in March 2025 (an incident that sparked a furious row between Canada and his club, Bayern Munich). His injury problems have been such that he has logged just 528 minutes for Bayern this season. Last week, he injured his hamstring after just 26 minutes on the pitch in a UEFA Champions League match against Atalanta, ruling him out for Canada once again.

While Davies and his continued absence may be manager Jesse Marsch’s biggest headache, the rest of the backline may concern him just as much. After all, defensive stalwarts Moïse Bombito and Alistair Johnston were named to the March camp ahead of friendlies against Iceland and Tunisia as ‘training players’. Alfie Jones is completely absent, while Derek Cornelius and Luc de Fougerolles have been named on the squad list but are also injured. Bombito and Cornelius are expected to be Canada’s starting center backs at the World Cup. Johnston, the only non-South American player in the 2024 Copa América tournament squad, will likely play on the right.

Further up the pitch, midfielder Stephen Eustaquio is out with a knee injury; Promise David, the 24-year-old striker for Belgian champions and UEFA Champions League participants Union Saint-Gilloise, had hip surgery in February and may not recover in time for the World Cup either.

There’s usually something random about doing well at a World Cup. A certain confluence of good timing, bounce, luck and preparation transforms into required goals at opportune times. It’s been almost eight years since the 23rd World Cup was awarded to North America. Its participants have been planning it ever since. But there is no protection against the inevitability of injury. And for Mexico and Canada, the timing could prove incredibly unfortunate.

In 2010, South Africa became the first World Cup host nation not to survive the group stage. Qatar became the second in 2022. This time, with a 48-team format that will allow 32 teams to advance to the round of 16, the chances for the three host teams are as good as they have been in a long time.

But right now it seems awfully possible that 2026 will be the first World Cup where two the hosts do not survive the first round.

• Leander Schaerlaeckens’ book about the United States men’s national soccer team, The Long Game, is released May 12. You can pre-order it here. He teaches at Marist University.