Jonathan David, Canada’s Record Scorer Who Keeps Getting Doubted Until He Scores

Photo: Bryan Berlin / CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Born	December 7, 1985 Cincinnati
Occupation	Professional Wrestler
Awards	Ligue 1 · Trophée des Champions · CONCACAF Gold Cup Golden Boot · CONCACAF Men’s Player of the Year · Canada Soccer Men’s Player of the Year · Belgian Pro League top scorer (shared)

Jonathan David tends to be judged in the minutes when he is nowhere near the ball. A forward who drifts between centre-backs and celebrates without theatre can look absent for an hour, and that hour is usually when the verdict gets written. At Juventus it was written for most of a season. At his own country’s World Cup it was written after one game, when he was taken off early in the opener, and a television panel was still writing it after he had scored a hat-trick. Then the ball arrives at the right moment and the argument turns over. Canada’s all-time leading men’s scorer is now at Atlético Madrid, on loan from Juventus with a purchase option attached, and Diego Simeone’s dressing room is where the two readings of him finally meet.

Some of that self-containment comes from the shape of his early life. He was born in Brooklyn to Haitian parents in the first weeks of the new millennium, and the family moved back to Port-au-Prince when he was three months old. At six he landed in Ottawa, where he grew up inside the francophone community of the city’s east end and attended École secondaire publique Louis-Riel, a French-language school he credits with keeping a ball permanently at his feet. Organised soccer started at ten with Gloucester Dragons, followed by Ottawa Gloucester’s Hornets and then Ottawa Internationals.

Unlike most Canadian prospects of his generation, he never pictured himself in Major League Soccer. He aimed straight at Europe, and Europe was slow to agree: trials at Red Bull Salzburg and VfB Stuttgart ended in rejection. When the United States under-20 side called him up in 2018 he said no, partly to concentrate on his club career and partly because the shirt he wanted was Canada’s. KAA Gent had already signed him that January.

Belgium is where the finishing became a reputation. His first professional match for Gent, in August 2018, ended with his stoppage-time equaliser against Zulte Waregem and five goals in his first five games earned a hurried contract extension. By 2019-20 he was sharing the Belgian top-flight scoring title with Dieumerci Mbokani and collecting the Jean-Claude Bouvy Trophy as Gent’s player of the season.

Lille paid a reported €30 million in August 2020, a club record and the highest fee ever paid for a Canadian, and he became the first Canadian to play in Ligue 1. Two league goals before the new year, then a run: the winner against Paris Saint-Germain at the Parc des Princes, and the goal at Angers that sealed the 2020-21 title. He scored 24 league goals in 2022-23, behind only Kylian Mbappé and Alexandre Lacazette, and 19 the following season. In October 2024 his penalty beat Real Madrid in the Champions League. When his contract ran out in 2025 he left as a free agent with 109 goals in 232 games, the club’s third-highest scorer ever and its leading scorer in European competition.

For Canada the numbers came even faster. He scored twice on his debut, in an 8-0 win over the US Virgin Islands in September 2018, and won the Golden Boot at the 2019 Gold Cup with six goals, three of them against Cuba. At the 2022 World Cup in Qatar he stood aside while Alphonso Davies took an early penalty against Belgium that Thibaut Courtois saved, even though David was widely regarded as the team’s best taker. At the 2024 Copa América he scored Canada’s first goal in the competition, the winner against Peru. In November 2024 his 31st international goal, against Suriname, took him past Cyle Larin as the country’s sole record scorer.

Juventus is where the doubts stopped being whispered. He signed on a free transfer in July 2025, on a contract running to 2030, and scored on his Serie A debut against Parma. Then the goals thinned out. A Panenka penalty in a home draw with Lecce, scuffed straight into the trailing leg of goalkeeper Wladimiro Falcone, cost two points and became the picture of the season; eight goals in 46 games in all competitions was a poor return for a forward who had never scored fewer than 13 league goals in a season in France. David said Juventus brings more scrutiny than any other club in Italy. The structural defence is real: he is a second striker who lives off service and movement, and a side that struggled to create gave him little of either. The structural defence is also the problem. At 26, he had not yet shown he could drag a goal out of a bad game on his own.

The home World Cup compressed the whole argument into a fortnight. He went into the tournament with two goals in his previous nine internationals, both from the penalty spot, and was substituted just after the hour in the opener against Bosnia and Herzegovina. In the next match, in Vancouver, he scored three times in a 6-0 win over Qatar, Canada’s first ever victory at a World Cup, and became the first player to score a World Cup hat-trick on home soil since Geoff Hurst for England in 1966. Canada went on to reach the knockout rounds for the first time, beat South Africa 1-0 and went out 3-0 to Morocco in the round of 16. Qatar was the only game he scored in, and TSN’s World Cup panel judged his tournament a disappointment.

Juventus loaned him to Atlético on transfer deadline day, 1 September 2026, for the season, with an option to buy for €25 million. He scored against Real Sociedad, against Osasuna and then the winner in a 2-1 derby win over Real Madrid on 20 September, the first Canadian to score in the Madrid derby. Jesse Marsch, Canada’s coach, says he recommended him to Simeone. His own explanation is modest to the point of being revealing: “Maybe it’s a breath of fresh air,” he said, adding that his new team-mates “make it pretty simple for me, to be honest. All I have to do is finish.” During the international break he scored the only goal of a 1-0 friendly win over Chile in Toronto on 26 September, his 43rd for Canada.

That last sentence is the case for him and the case against him at once. A striker who needs only to finish is a striker who needs others to create, and Atlético has Julián Álvarez and Alexander Sørloth competing for the same minutes. The months between now and the end of the season will decide whether Atlético trigger the €25 million option, and whether the David of Lille and Madrid is the real one or a player who needs the right team around him to look like himself.

Tags: sports, athletes, 2026 FIFA World Cup, footballers, Atlético Madrid, Diego Simeone, Juventus, Jonathan David