It’s game on, Winnipeg

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This article was published 08/06/2015 (4094 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Although the clouds scowled overhead, the stadium never felt the bite of the hail that scraped north Winnipeg, and instead sat gripped by a different sort of storm.

This one was made not by rain, but by tangles of laptop cables and fast-food bags, by the clop-clop of reporters hustling down hallways on their urgent missions.

Find the headline, tell the story, capture the energy of the day: it’s time for the 2015 FIFA Women’s World Cup in Winnipeg, and the world is here to play.

So yes, that was the shape of the storm that descended here Sunday, as the city prepares to make its debut today as a World Cup host. Sweden and Nigeria will do the honours first, opening their tournament with a 3 p.m. game. After that, the Team USA juggernaut will square off against a feisty and young Australian side.

Where those teams go, media follows. That’s how it worked Sunday afternoon, as the four squads took turns training on the game-day turf. With them blew in a whirlwind of officials and reporters, hailing from all over, languages and accents mingling in the echo chambers of the stadium’s concrete guts.

Close your eyes, and you feel like you could be anywhere else on Earth — and yet, it was still Winnipeg. The vending machine doled out Old Dutch chips to Swedish reporters, the University of Manitoba Bisons’ crest lurked quietly on the walls of the spacious basement bunker which FIFA flipped into a press conference hall.

As languages mingled, so did stories. That’s how it always works — and even before the first win was recorded here, some of stories were already shedding sparks.

Hours before Team USA met the media Sunday, ESPN published troubling details of star goalkeeper Hope Solo’s 2014 arrest for an alleged domestic violence incident involving her nephew and half-sister. (The charges were later dropped on procedural grounds, ESPN reported, though Washington state prosecutors have filed an appeal.)

Sure, maybe USA midfielder Carli Lloyd, who shares a room with Solo, and head coach Jill Ellis might rather have talked about almost anything else — well, except what their starting lineup will be. But they carefully ducked a slew of questions on the topic, and didn’t give up much, except to hint that Solo will get the start.

No, Ellis said, she hadn’t read the story; she heard about it from the team’s media officer.

“Hope’s been fantastic,” Ellis said. “That was a long time ago. I’ll be honest, we’ve moved on. She’s been a fantastic player and teammate. None of that’s resonated with us, and I’m sure many of the players aren’t aware of it.”

For the most part, though, Sunday’s mood was bright with excitement, sort of light. During a press conference with Team Sweden, a cellphone inside one reporter’s purse burst into a lengthy song, just as local CBC Radio-Canada reporter Gabriel Gosselin was trying to ask Sweden midfielder Caroline Seger a question.

“I’m so sorry, I was just focusing on the music,” the Swedish co-captain giggled, and the whole room laughed along.

There are characters here, and with them moments of outrageous colour. A reporter from Nigeria asked Swedish head coach Pia Sundhage if her team was prepared for “physical African football.” In turn, a reporter from Sweden asked Nigerian head coach Edwin Okon for his thoughts about the Swedes.

“I know nothing,” Okon replied, and no matter how Aftonbladet reporter Kristoffer Bergstrom pried, Okon and Super Falcons captain Evelyn Nwabuoku insisted that “nothing” is all they know about the fifth-ranked Swedish side — and that’s part of the plan.

“Sweden has been successful in the past, but that’s got nothing to do with the present,” said Nwabuoku, a 39-cap leader who is making her World Cup debut. “With due respect to them, for all they have achieved, I think football is supposed to be played on the field. And that’s what we’ll do (today).”

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Maybe, that thinking is a glimpse of what they call the World Cup bubble. It’s a place Seger and iconic Swedish striker Lotta Schelin agreed they are now living in, a place Team USA’s Lloyd described vividly when asked how her squad handled what observers euphemistically term “distractions.”

“For me, even in my personal life, everything’s on hold,” said Lloyd, who told her family not to come up for this World Cup. “I’m going off the grid for a month. Everything can wait. My fiancé can wait. My friends can wait. To me, this is the only concern, and the only focus. We’re 24 hours out from the first game, we’re ready, we’re focused as a team, and nothing else matters.”

So, the win is all that matters, in the bubble — nothing before (except the work) and certainly nothing after. Still, some aspects of the past mean enough to slip inside. For Sundhage, for instance, this afternoon’s tilt against 33rd-ranked Nigeria isn’t just the first game of her squad’s battle for a title. It will also mark the first time the 55-year-old legend will coach under her own country’s flag at a Women’s World Cup.

“That is something special,” agreed Sundhage, who coached the USA squad before going home in 2012. “I’m really proud of the fact that I have two Swedish players next to me (at the pre-match press conference). Hopefully we can put the team together, and play some really great football.”

melissa.martin@freepress.mb.ca

Melissa Martin
Reporter-at-large

Melissa Martin reports and opines for the Winnipeg Free Press.

Every piece of reporting Melissa produces is reviewed by an editing team before it is posted online or published in print — part of the Free Press‘s tradition, since 1872, of producing reliable independent journalism. Read more about Free Press’s history and mandate, and learn how our newsroom operates.