Tajon Buchanan has emerged from darkness of leg injury to be a force with Canada's men's soccer team

Chris Jones · CBC Sports

· Posted: Oct 07, 2025 3:49 PM EDT | Last Updated: 1 minute ago

If Moise Bombito needs to look outside of himself for hope right now — for instruction, for inspiration — he doesn't have to look very far. Tajon Buchanan, his teammate on Canada's men's soccer team, is the light for him to follow.

Bombito, an expected starter at Friday's friendly against Australia in Montreal and next summer's home World Cup, fractured his tibia in club play with Nice last weekend. The injury will see him sidelined for four to five months.

Buchanan suffered a similar injury training with Canada at Copa America in July 2024. It took him until November of that year to rejoin the national side, and a little longer for him to find his feet.

The 26-year-old winger, who was arguably Canada's best player at the 2022 World Cup in Qatar, has returned to the full height of his powers. In August with Villarreal, he scored his first professional hat trick, a statement performance that, according to him, was made possible by his horrific injury — less an interruption than an accelerant.

"Not everything goes the way you want it to go," he said in an exclusive interview with CBC during last month's national team trip to Romania. "That moment got me to where I am today. I got stronger, I got my mind right, and I got back to my best level."

Buchanan has cemented his status with Villarreal of the Spanish league. (Getty Images)

For most soccer players, a broken leg is a nightmare scenario, fraught with pain and panicked future casting.

Buchanan almost marveled when he revisited those first desperate moments, as though a different man had laid stricken on the grass. "I remember looking down at my leg and thinking, How do you come back from something like this?"

The ambulance ride to the Texas hospital, and his surgery there, is less clear. "It was a blur to me — probably the lowest moment in my career."

His mind, normally resistant to negative thoughts, flashed to dark places.

A little more than a year after his star turn in Qatar, he had left Club Brugge for Inter Milan. He had struggled to earn his place with the Italian giants, and he knew that whatever small gains he had made were about to be erased.

"I remember thinking, my Inter career is done. In all honesty, that's what was in my head."

His fears were founded. In February 2025, after his uncertain return to action, Inter loaned him to La Liga's Villarreal.

The rejection was, in fact, a blessing. Serie A is a suffocating place to play, especially for attackers. Villarreal play a Spanish style more suited to Buchanan's game — more open, more fluid, more dynamic.

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In May, he scored his first goal against mighty Barcelona, a decisive marker in more ways than one. It proved the winner in a 3-2 result and secured Villarreal's place in this season's Champions League. It also helped convince Villarreal to make Buchanan's move permanent; the club has since added fellow Canadian Tani Oluwaseyi up front.

Most important, that goal signalled that Buchanan's long journey was complete, to the world and to himself. He had learned how you come back from something like that. "Once you calm down, it's about pushing to get back to your best," he said.

"That goal let him know, 'I got this,'" Canada's head coach Jesse Marsch said. "When you see the swagger, when you just watch him walk around a little bit, it's like, All right, Tajon's back."

August's hat trick cemented his newly found sense of himself. "I'm a quiet person, but I'm very proud of that," Buchanan said. "Throughout my whole life, people have counted me out. My mentality has always been to prove them wrong. I don't even know how to explain it. I've just always wanted to overcome other people's doubts about me."

Moise Bombito, still in the hard, early days of his own reckoning, probably has those same doubts about himself. "I will come back stronger," he wrote on Instagram, over a black-and-white picture of him grimacing on the grass.

It's good that Bombito believes he will. Tajon Buchanan knows it.