Richie Laryea has risen from a young but unproven prospect to one of the best players in his position in MLS since joining Toronto FC in 2019.
Laryea's impressive success at the club level has resulted in speculated interest from European bidders, as well as a place with the Canadian men's national team, where he's earned eight senior caps and one goal since debuting in 2019.
Laryea appeared on the most recent episode of Extratime: Club and Country, where he explored, among other things, the future of the CanMNT and his personal career aspirations. In response to a query about his long-term goals, the 26-year-old said that he still hopes to play overseas and that maintaining his good form with TFC would help him achieve that.
"Yes, my goal is definitely to get to Europe," Laryea told hosts David Gass and Charlie Davies. "That's what I dreamed of as a kid playing with my brother in the backyard, you're screaming out Champions League Final goals, World Cup goals, so those are goals I had as a kid that I'm not giving up on. I want to play at the highest level possible and the best competition possible, so that's still not out of mind for me. I'm definitely set on trying to do something like that,"
"Will it happen? Time will tell. It also depends I think mostly on me and my performances and the other bit I'll leave to whoever else has to sort that out for me, or whatever that might be. But I'm just fully focused on the now and doing well and once you're doing well it opens up a lot of different things, so hopefully I can reach those goals I want to like Europe and whatever else it might be."
In terms of the CanMNT, Laryea said that there is a lot of enthusiasm internally, both about the crop of young talent charged with bringing the program to the next stage and about the 2026 World Cup, which Canada will co-host with the United States and Mexico.
"I think everyone in the group knows what's at stake and what's there waiting for us, which is exciting for our country and this group because I think we have a very good group," Laryea said. "We did say collectively I think that now is more important to us than thinking ahead to 2026. Yes, that's exciting, we have a very exciting young group of players that I think are going to contribute in a very big way and be very good for this country and I think take this country to places it's never been before,"
"So that part I'm very hopeful, optimistic and I think we have the group, the talent and the leadership as well to do it. But I think collectively I think we're not even thinking that far, there's a World Cup that's coming up before that [in 2022] that we need to qualify for and we need to show ourselves — and everyone else, but more importantly ourselves — that we're capable of doing something like this. So I think everyone is so focused on right now and what we need to do. We're thinking about June, and those games that we need to play, and get by those and then we look at what's next." he concluded.