Okay, this was going to be the week I started tallying up the bill for Maple Leaf Sports and Entertainment, vis a vis their role in the historically bad six-year start for Toronto FC.
But in the wake of the Canada-France game, there’s really only one story needs telling today: the incredible tale of a bronze medal that – at different times – seemed hugely unlikely … from both directions.
Before the games, coming off a literally pointless Women’s World Cup, the Canadian gals seemed outside long shots for any kind of medal at all. Then, on Monday, eighty minutes in and a goal up against the hated Americans, it looked largely likely Our Gals would be battling for gold or silver, and that bronze was no longer either a possibility or a concern.
Yeah. Well. Anyway.
[PRBREAK][/PRBREAK]
So the ref @$%@#$% and the rulebook @#$@#%@ and three extra @#$@#% minutes of extra @#$%#$% time in $%#@$% stoppage time, and we were left with shattering heartbreak and a bronze-medal match no one really wanted.
And suddenly, voices from everywhere were calling it possibly the greatest women’s soccer match ever. Canadians were saying it. Americans were saying it!
Then we find out 33.6 million Americans watched the match on NBC. And it wasn’t even a holiday Monday down there.
And of course, after the controversial calls, Canada’s two danger-gals, hat-trick heroine Christine Sinclair and nail-tough scrapper Melissa Tancredi told the truth about how they felt, and FIFA quickly stepped in with an “investigation.”
Mercifully, the investigation was put off until after the games, because suddenly it turned out we all wanted Our Gals to go for the bronze medal after all.
And they played France today, and had a bunch of chances to lose to France today. But good old, low-scoring soccer, and here’s the thing:
No matter how much the other guys dominate, if they don’t score, and we somehow do, we win.
Second minute of stoppage time, ball falls dead at the feet of the tiny, masterful Diane Matheson, and the net’s wide open and the goalie’s gone and the bronze is waiting and kaboom.
How to count the blessings after this?
Canada’s first team Olympic medal since Berlin in 1936.
NOT, however, Canada’s first Olympic soccer medal. The Galt Soccer Club, from what is now Cambridge, Ontario, actually won gold at the 1904 Olympics in St. Louis. No one alive remembers that, however – few people even knew about it at the time, or since! – so today will have to do.
Monday was such a great match, and the cruel and controversial way Canada didn’t win won over and galvanized a huge audience all over everywhere. The suspension threat built the tension hugely, and the fact that they overcame all that relentless French pressure and actually pulled the medals out at the end – well, there’s no publicity campaign you could ever orchestrate that would get you anywhere near this kind of bump.
The Canadian soccer women, disgraced and embarrassed just one short year ago under their alleged superstar coach Carolina Morace, have rebounded under the far-more-human John Herdman to become the bronzed heroes of yet another eager generation of young Canadian players.
Oh, and the rivalry with the Americans got cranked to infinity all over again, and it’s never bad for soccer here when that happens.
The last time it happened was the epic final of the girls’ U-19 in Edmonton in 2002. The U.S. won a brilliant match on a golden goal, and the overwhelming success of that tournament led directly to the construction of BMO Field, the birth of Toronto FC, MLS in Canada and any and everything that has happened since.
The aftermath of this one? Who knows?
The huge challenge now is to keep this team playing meaningful games. The next huge tournament is three years off, when Canada hosts the women’s World Cup of 2015. Our Gals won’t have to qualify for that one, so there’s a long and imminent shortage of gut-check games to come.
Any rich soccer fans out there feel like starting a new tournament? Paying well to bring the best women’s teams to Canada for a new and important competition of some sort? Cyprus does it! How hard can it be?
The Canadian soccer landscape had already been altered tremendously this past decade. This lovely little bronze bauble – well, it’s confirmation of a lot of things, mostly involving how bad things used to be, and how much better they are becoming.
That … happened! And untold millions of people saw it. And we all know it should have been at least a silver, and it could actually have been a gold.
This is a high-water mark for Canadian soccer – even if it will always feel like less than what these brave and brilliant gals deserved.
Onward!