soccer

Drake threw his support behind Canada ahead of Tuesday night’s Copa America semifinal against Argentina. The upstart Canadian side made a surprise run through the tournament, and as a result, Drake decided to put $300,000 on his national team to defeat Lionel Messi and co. in regulation, which would have been a monumental upset.

Unfortunately for Drake and all of our neighbors to the north, that did not happen, as Argentina were able to pick up a 2-0 win at MetLife Stadium to earn a spot in the final. And because everything involving Drake right now ends up making its way back to his feud with Kendrick Lamar, the official Twitter account for Argentina’s national team took this as an opportunity to troll Drake in an extremely obvious way.

Messi is usually pretty good at setting people up for tap ins, so it’s good to see that he played a part in doing that for Argentina’s social media manager. As for the game, Canada fought valiantly against the best team in the world, but goals by Julian Alvarez and Messi were able to put Argentina ahead.

Now, the defending Copa America and World Cup winners will sit and wait to see if they’ll play Colombia or Uruguay in the final. It is unclear who Drake would bet on in that game, but regardless of who wins, it should be a good one.

A handful of North American teams got the opportunity to participate in Copa America this summer. The tournament, which is usually made up of teams in South America’s footballing federation CONMEBOL, is taking place in the United States this year, but despite that, the USMNT did not make it out of their group. Nor did the other usual powerhouse of North American football, Mexico.

In a surprising turn of events, Canada was able to get out of a group that included Argentina, Chile, and Peru. They came in second place in Group A, got to the knockouts, and won their quarterfinal game against Venezuela in penalties. Now, on Tuesday night, the Canadians will take on Lionel Messi and Argentina with a spot in the final on the line, and in a show of national pride, Drake posted to his Instagram Story that he’s put $300,000 on them pulling off the upset.

Now, I certainly won’t say that this is a guaranteed loss (and I think this one would not classify as the Drake Curse rearing its ugly head), but Canada faces one heck of an uphill climb here. Not only are Argentina the defending winners of this tournament, and not only are they the defending World Cup winners, but the two teams were actually in the same group as one another and played in the opening game of the tournament, which Argentina won, 2-0.

Canada is an incredible story, as they’ve gotten to this point under American manager Jesse Marsch, and the fun quirk of this tournament is that things go right to penalties after regulation, so they wouldn’t need to hold on for dear life through 30 minutes of extra time if things are level after 90 minutes. That means pulling the upset is ever so slightly easier … but that wouldn’t mean much for Drake’s bet, as his bet is for Canada to win in regulation.