SETTING THE STANDARD
B efore the game took Kadeisha Buchanan to France and England to stack trophies with some of the most dominant clubs in the world, before it took her to Brazil and Japan and hung Olympic medals around her neck, soccer took the Canadian centre back on a different kind of tour.
“I first fell in love with the game because my father used to play. He used to just play local football around the city in Malton, Brampton, Toronto, Scarborough,” Buchanan says. “He used to pack multiple jerseys, like five or six jerseys, on the weekend, and we’d just go from field to field to field. And as he was playing his game, I used to just have a soccer ball, playing with the other kids around me.
“And we used to be at the soccer fields until [dusk]. Like, the lights are off and we’re still kicking the ball. Those are my earliest memories, just watching my father play.”
It was at eight years old that Buchanan moved from the sidelines to the pitch herself, joining her first team, Brampton, Ont.’s Brams United. In the nearly two decades since, she’s spun youthful dreams that began on dimly lit fields into a career for the ages.
On Thursday, Buchanan will lead Canada into the 2023 Women’s World Cup as one of the most decorated athletes in this country’s history — a winner of eight domestic trophies with European powerhouse Olympique Lyonnais; five Champions League titles with the French side; a Super League title and FA Cup with Chelsea F.C. just this past season; and, of course, an international haul highlighted by Olympic gold in 2021.
And just like the young players across the country who will watch her performances on the world stage, who will mimic her game in their own side-field scrimmages, Buchanan still remembers the importance of her own early days back in Brampton, when she was just a kid with a ball and a dream, emulating her idols.
“I grew up watching Charmaine Hooper — she was one of the greats that was on TV,” Buchanan says. “And as I got older, Christine [Sinclair], Karina LeBlanc and Carmelina Moscato were all women I used to look up to while playing. I just felt like they had a great energy, and were players that I could just connect with.”
In 2010, when she was 14 years old, Buchanan was invited to a U15 camp for the national team’s youth program, and granted her first chance to don the same red-and-white kit as the women she’d looked up to. Three years later, at 17, she debuted for the senior team, lining up alongside a few of those idols. Success came quickly, the young defender earning a nod as Canada’s U20 player of the year in 2013, then again in 2014. And in the second of those two standout international campaigns, Buchanan found her first moment of glory wearing the Canadian crest.
“We were in Winnipeg,” she says of that day. “I remember there was a lot of vibes in the locker room, a lot of energy, a lot of excitement. I remember Karina LeBlanc, she had this red hair spray and she brought it into the locker room and I was spraying my hair red with her. And then I remember making my run.”
It was the type of goal any Canadian kid would draw up if they could script the first of their career: on home soil, against the Americans, with legends swarming her in celebration as the ball fluttered the net.
“It was a corner kick. I remember making a run, but I think it was too early. I think the ref stopped it, stopped the play, and then I was just standing in this position. The cross came in and I just headed it across,” Buchanan says. “It was unreal. Because it was against the USA, and it was my first goal, and at that point we’re up 1-0. I was like, ‘Wow, I just made my team take the lead.’ I was really, really, really excited. I will never, ever forget my first goal.”
There was no way for Buchanan to know, back then, just how many memorable moments she’d get in that red-and-white kit. The next year, the possibilities began to crystallize, as the defender got the call for her first Women’s World Cup. By the tournament’s end, Buchanan had established herself on the world stage, culminating in a trophy naming her Best Young Player of that World Cup.
Still, when she looks back on that 2015 tournament, what stands out most isn’t how it all ended, but rather how it began, and the mindset that got her to her first World Cup opportunity.
“I was just raw. I was young and I was excited to be a part of the team,” she remembers. “I’d never take that opportunity for granted when John [Herdman, then Canada’s head coach] used to call me up to each and every camp. I never ever said, ‘Okay, I’m off to the next camp’ — I’d always wait ‘til I got that email saying I’m off to the next camp. I feel like every month I was like, ‘Am I going to get called up? Am I going to get called up?’ — for years. I never, ever felt complacent with being called up.
“It was just always an opportunity to me, to show myself to the world. And to be a part of the Canadian women’s national team … getting called up after these women had just won a bronze medal from the London Olympics, that was really exciting. I was super buzzing from that moment.”
Being there, 19 years old, in a World Cup alongside the women she’d watched on TV just a few years earlier, was transformative. She left the tournament a different player.
“I think that instilled a lot of belief in me,” Buchanan says. “Collecting that trophy, the young player award, in Vancouver on the last day of the tournament — I definitely gained a lot of confidence from that. That was the first time I actually felt that I could compete with the world’s best. And that was an eye-opening moment that, from that day, I had to do that every single game.
“I feel like I set a standard for myself after that tournament. And obviously the world [now] expects that every single time I step on a field, and that’s what I try to bring — just being myself, being fearless, being composed.
“I think that’s my X-factor, and I try to bring that each and every training session, and every game that I play.”
W hile Buchanan’s quick ascent on the international side continued — the defender earning her first Olympic experience in Rio, and the bronze medal that went with it — so, too, came a meteoric rise on the club side.
After a dominant run at West Virginia University that saw Buchanan become, among other distinctions, the only Canadian aside from Sinclair to claim the Hermann Trophy — awarded to the best college soccer player in the U.S. — doors began to open up for the defender across the sport. She aimed as high as possible in choosing her next spot, signing in 2017 with the powerhouse Olympique Lyonnaise, who were fresh off winning seemingly everything. From the outside, it might’ve seemed a daunting transition, but Buchanan was unfazed.
“Definitely on paper, going from West Virginia to the top dogs, Olympique Lyonnais, a lot [of people] would say that’s a massive jump. But for me it wasn’t, because I had been part of the national team, and had that experience for such a long time,” she says. “Being a part of the national team helped me establish what that level was. So that’s the level I took into France, and brought to Lyon: that Kadeisha Buchanan that plays with the national team, the strong centre back. That’s the criteria, and that’s what I brought.
“With that, obviously it was my first pro team, I was definitely a bit nervous. … There was a learning aspect to it, even just learning football terms I had to get used to. But I learned pretty quickly.”
While her five-year stint in Lyon brought five Division 1 Féminine titles, five Champions League titles, and three Coupe de France titles — a run the catapulted Buchanan’s name to the top of the sport — it was her growth as a player during those runs that’s stuck with her most.
“The reason why I went to Lyon and not the NWSL was because I felt like physically, I was at a high standard … but I think the next part of my game [that still needed work] was just that technical and tactical aspect of the game,” she says. “I think coming out of Lyon, that’s probably where I grew the most, just tactically and technically, being able to do longer diags with accuracy, and reading the game more.”
There was a much more fundamental learning process that came during those years in France, too.
“Just the daily, just being a pro player,” she says. “Obviously at West Virginia, I had school and I had soccer, but moving to France, I was just a pro player. You have to act professionally every day, and perform every day. And me going there at an early age, I think I just had to learn how to compete each and every day to earn that spot — to get into the starting 11 was crucial.”
Looking back on it all now, on all the championship moments, trophy celebrations, all those nights in all those hallowed European stadiums, there’s one that stands out among the rest.
“My biggest memory was obviously winning my first Champions League. That was against PSG, against Ashley,” she says.
That match, a June night under the lights at Wales’s Cardiff City Stadium, represented a once-unimaginable inflection point on the twin paths that Buchanan and lifelong friend Ashley Lawrence have taken in the game. It’s a journey that started back home, in matching Brams United kits, continued in college, in twin West Virginia Mountaineers jerseys, wound through the national team too, and then intertwined on their sport’s biggest stage — the two Canadians on either side of French football’s marquee women’s matchup, gunning for the grandest trophy in the game.
“That was a surreal moment,” Buchanan says, “just playing against her [after] being with her at West Virginia, growing up with her since I was nine years old. That was an awe moment, both of us being in the Champions League final.”
After collecting four more Champions League titles with Lyon — and, amid that run, helping her national team author the greatest feat in Canadian soccer history by claiming gold at the Tokyo Olympics — Buchanan decided to move on from the French league. In 2022, she left Lyon and joined another powerhouse, the all-world defender linking up with the reigning Women’s Super League champs, Chelsea F.C.
The decision turned out to be a wise one, with success again coming quickly as Buchanan helped her new team defend both the Women’s Super League crown and the Women’s FA Cup in 2022-23. But beyond the chance to add even more hardware to her haul, there was something else that drew Buchanan to England last season. It was the fact that, for a club half a world away, there was so much about Chelsea, about the tradition of English football, that felt like home.
“I’m just really excited and happy that I’m playing in the English League. Growing up, watching soccer with my father, waking up at 7 a.m. on Saturday and Sunday to watch the games, [English soccer] has always been a part of my life,” she says. “Just to be on that side and get to experience playing for Chelsea, playing against Arsenal and West Ham, it’s like a dream.”
Earlier this month, those ties tethering Buchanan’s new club to memories of back home got even stronger still. On July 1, the club announced the signing of another Canadian international for the upcoming campaign: Ashley Lawrence.
N ow, the 2023 World Cup awaits. Over the coming weeks, Buchanan will write another chapter in her already historic story as Canada begins its march through Australia.
She heads into the tournament’s opening match already among the winningest Canadian athletes of all time, already a national team legend at 27 years old, having three times been named the top Canadian soccer player of the year; having already made her mark at two World Cups and two Olympics, helping Canada earn its golden moment in Japan; having dominated her position to such a degree her former manager once dubbed her “the Sinclair of defence.”
The most fundamental lesson learned over that span, she says, is the understanding that past success guarantees nothing moving forward. That even the weight of Canada’s Tokyo gold will mean only so much when her team takes the field in Melbourne.
“The other day I was sitting in my room and I just had to take a moment of reflecting on where I’ve come from and where I am now. And I’m just so grateful. But I also think about, what took me to this point sometimes won’t take me to the next point,” she says. “You have to find the next level and the next gear to push you from A to B to C — whatever got you from A to B won’t get you to C. So you have to find ways to improve.
“You can reflect, take your little gems, while also finding ways to get better. Never be satisfied with being complacent.”
For Buchanan, that continued pursuit of greatness has meant navigating her different roles with club and country, finding a way to blend the myriad details that come with thriving in each environment.
“I think they definitely go hand-in-hand,” she says. “I take what I’m learning, gathering from my national team, bringing it to my pro team, and vice versa. … I get two good sides, and I’m learning from both sides each and every day. Obviously, the national team and my pro team play two different ways, and it’s just managing [that]. A lot of things are very similar, so all the similar things I’m making sure I’m doing well. And maybe I tweak my play when I play for Lyon or Chelsea or Canada. It’s obviously a little bit different. I’m just making sure I’m getting the best out of myself and my team.”
For Canada, Buchanan’s experience on the game’s biggest stages, her composure when the stakes are highest, remains one of the squad’s greatest assets. Few in the sport have had as many chances to battle-test their theories on how to perform when it matters most. Few have waded into as many championship matches, with everything on the line, and come out covered in confetti, with a trophy held aloft.
And as the next test awaits, Buchanan says, all her focus is on preparing to meet that moment again, and remembering who she’s playing for.
“What I take from playing in the Champions League is being confident and being calm, and you can only do that by preparation,” she says. “For me, preparing well enough is about leaving no stones unturned. I think the more you’re prepared, the more you’re confident, in anything you do. So with me, and my experience, I know that I need to work hard day in and day out just for these moments, this World Cup — first game, second game, third game, the final.
“I think my whole career has been worked up for these moments. To make a big difference. Not only for me, but for my family, for my country.”