Defence standing on guard

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 22/06/2015 (4121 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

They don’t do things the easy way, this Canadian women’s soccer team. But they get them done. They get them done.

(Repetition, in times like these, provides just enough reassurance to keep the faith.)

Thanks to Josée Bélanger’s 52nd-minute goal — her first international tally in more than four years — Canada will contest a World Cup quarter-final Saturday against either Norway or England.

The attacker’s sliced, left-footed finish came after Rhian Wilkinson’s searching cross picked out captain Christine Sinclair, who provided the assist with a delicate poke of the ball.

It was the ideal start to the second half after a 45-minute period in which the host nation failed to create much of anything, and which opponents Switzerland will have felt they had the edge Sunday in Vancouver.

But the offence-laden Swiss had problems of their own at BC Place — namely Wilkinson, Kadeisha Buchanan, Allysha Chapman and Erin McLeod, who combined to shut out superstar strikers Ramona Bachmann and Lara Dickenmann, and who have forged this Canadian team’s identity from the goal out.

Goalkeeper McLeod, in particular, was exceptional on the night. While only two Switzerland shots were placed on target she repeatedly won the ball in the air on set-piece situations, making a vital 88th-minute punch and stoppage-time grab to preserve her clean sheet.

But Buchanan was imperious in front of her, and even Lauren Sesselmann, who has struggled at this tournament after coming back from an ACL injury, had moments to suggest she won’t have to be minded by her 19-year-old defensive partner going forward.

Not as much, anyway.

Chapman, meanwhile, put in the sort of display a gritty, take-no-prisoners hockey player would have been proud of. With 10 minutes remaining, her strong intervention on Bachmann preserved a certain shot from the Rosengard star.

Wilkinson, meanwhile, provided a consistently useful outlet from the right-hand side, and her deployment following her own return from injury allowed Bélanger to join Sinclair and Melissa Tancredi in attack.

The trio didn’t exactly threaten the Swiss goal with regularity, but they played by far their best game of the competition to date. They generated just what they needed to win — nothing more — and McLeod and her defence did the rest.

Canada has now won three matches by a 1-0 scoreline at this World Cup, and any further success will almost certainly be delivered by similar performances.

This team is so convinced of their purpose, so assured their destiny is yet to be fulfilled, that even a frustration with the manner of their results so far — or the anxiety of them — can perhaps be replaced by the same conviction they exude in their bearing.

Never mind that France, who has roared into form and dispatched South Korea 3-0 in one of the day’s early round of 16 encounters, finally looks the part of World Cup contenders, or that Germany appeared downright authoritative in Saturday’s 4-1 win over Sweden.

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Or that the United States, who will face Colombia today in Edmonton, has yet to play anywhere near to its capability.

Those tests will come, and only after Saturday’s quarter-final, and a prospective semifinal against one of Australia, the Netherlands and title holders Japan.

Right now Canada is standing guard in front of its goal — standing on guard for thee. (Say it again.)

Are they ever.

jerradpeters@gmail.com Twitter @JerradPeters