Still cause to rejoice in Canada July 1

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 29/06/2015 (3752 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Wednesday is Canada Day. And what a day it would have been had the country’s national women’s soccer team been marking the occasion with a World Cup semifinal.

They were agonizingly close to doing so, to providing an especially memorable July 1, and that they came up so tantalizingly short in Saturday’s 2-1 quarter-final loss to England only made what might have been, and what will never be, just that much more difficult to stomach.

“This one stings,” remarked Burnaby-born captain Christine Sinclair, whose glittering, international career would have added an element of legend with a Vancouver final Sunday.

It stung us all, Christine, because we wanted what you wanted. But if we’re honest with ourselves — and this will also sink in for the players when the sobering space of distance is put between the present and the defeat — we’ll acknowledge the vanity of the dream.

Canada came up short against England because they struggled in the final third and committed enough defensive errors to lose. As a scientific problem it was never going to solve itself in the host nation’s favour, even with a variable such as wildly partisan crowds worked into the equation.

Not when Meslissa Tancredi and Sophie Schmidt were missing the target from in close, or when sustained periods of build-up were failing to generate even modest opportunities. And certainly not when Lauren Sesselmann was gifting Jodie Taylor the opening goal after just 11 minutes.

No, this Canadian outfit was not going to win the World Cup; it was not even going to finish in the final. Had England not caught them out Japan would have surely done so; and if not them, then one of Germany and the United States.

There were, and are, some very good teams at this competition, and given the strength of the field we can be proud of our girls for progressing as far as they did. They didn’t contend as seriously as they, or we, might have wished, but they didn’t discredit themselves, either. Overall, they made an exemplary contribution to a month-long celebration of women’s soccer.

“This is a real women’s football country,” said manager John Herdman on Saturday. “Stick with us. We’ll be back fighting. We’ll be back strong. We’ll learn from this and those youngsters have done you proud.”

Indeed, there is reason to look forward with anticipation despite the current disappointment.

Midfielder Ashley Lawrence had a promising tournament for Canada, and both Adriana Leon and Jessie Fleming will also make serious cases for regular minutes between now and the 2016 Olympics in Rio de Janeiro. Schmidt and Desiree Scott, meanwhile, are entering the primes of their careers.

Then there is defender Kadeisha Buchanan who, at just 19, is already among the best defenders in the world. She was inconsolable on Saturday, but will only improve through the experience, after the tears.

There is hope beyond the dejection, a light that comes after the darkness. And there are also four more matches to be played before the event we’re hosting, and that our women’s soccer team helped burst into spectacle, comes to a close.

The World Cup isn’t over, and Wednesday is still Canada Day.

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