Before it began, Sepp Blatter, the president of FIFA said he hoped the first-ever FIFA U-19 Women’s World Championship would become a milestone in the history of women’s soccer.

After he watched Canada-Brazil in the semi-final in Commonwealth Stadium, the man who once stated “the future of football is feminine” was over the moon about what he had witnessed.

That was the day the world championship graduated to the FIFA U-20 World Cup status it enjoys now coming in to the event which begins here Tuesday.

That was the day Canada became a lock as a future host for the FIFA Women’s World Cup.

In front of a mind-boggling crowd of 37,194 — the second largest crowd to watch a soccer game involving either gender in Canadian history — to total 114,423 for five doubleheaders here, Blatter was blown away.

“What they have realized here is extraordinary in the 27 years I’ve witness FIFA events. It goes under the skin. It gives goose pimples.

“This whole event has been ballistic.”

BLATTER'S BLESSING

Blatter, on the spot, blessed a Canadian bid for a future FIFA Woman’s World Cup

By the time the tournament reached the medal round, the nation was now watching and who would have ever dreamed that a teenage soccer player would score a goal that would have the kind of effect that it did.

And who wrote this script?

A hometown hero: Sasha Andrews of Edmonton.

Picked to take the final shot of the overtime shootout for Canada.

Goooooooaaaal!

It was an exquisite ending to an excruciating evening.

Erin McLeod made save after save during the game but fell and watched one get into the net to make a 1-0 lead disappear.

Christine Sinclair missed a penalty shot five minutes into golden-goal territory.

Playing a girl short for a good five minutes while they fixed a bloody nose to 15-year-old Kara Lang after a collision with Brazilian keeper Giselle, Canada was forced to substitute for Carmelina Moscato who was taken off in a stretcher and all the way to hospital with a right foot contusion in the 39th minute.

So it went to the two 15-minute halves format with the sudden-death golden-goal rule.

Six minutes in, Brazilia’s Daiane bodychecked Sinclair in the penalty box and referee Anri Hanninen awarded the Canadian captain with a penalty shot.

Unbelievably, the girl who had 10 goals in the tournament to that point softed a shot to the left corner and Giselle made it over to make the save.

Sinclair did score in the eventual shootout. McLeod stopped Marta. And it was there for Andrews to win in the end.

A memorable moment also occurred just prior to the final when Blatter made a special presentation.

“It’s the highest order we have,” he said.

“It’s never been presented to a Canadian before.

“I am happy and proud to bestow Jim Fleming the Order of Merit of FIFA,” Blatter said of the chairman of the organizing committee.

Pele. Esubio. Sir Bobby Charlton. Franz Beckenbauer. Sir Stanley Matthews. Bobby Moore. Gerd Muller. Joao Havelange. Nelson Mandela. Dr. Henry Kissinger. And now Jim Fleming.

Blatter said the honuor was voted to Fleming by the FIFA Congress but it was his idea not to present it to him in Seoul, Korea at the World Cup in June but to wait until this date.

“I decided it was a better stage here in Canada.”

HOUNORED

Fleming was beyond feeling honoured.

“To be the first Canadian to receive it ... in all modesty, I never had any notions like this in soccer.

“What has happened since the start of the tournament is a Ripley’s Believe It Or Not type of thing. It’s just been tremendous. From the bottom of my heart, I salute Edmontonians for making it such a success.

“And I particularly salute the people on the organizing committee. There has not been a better, more exciting time.

“Qualifying for the World Cup would be the closest thing to this.”

Canada’s one and only trip to the World Cup came while Fleming was president of the Canadian Soccer Association.

At Mexico in 1986, Fleming invited me to lunch. Meeting in the lobby of the FIFA hotel, he invited me to the massive and plush FIFA hospitality room and, with tears in his eyes, pointed to the flags of the competing nations hanging from the ceiling.

“Look,” he said. “Up there with the giants.”

Fleming later said it would be the woman’s event which would be his legacy.

“After this, they’ll bring the Women’s World Cup here,” he predicted. “They’d be crazy not to.”

What was about to transpire more than matched some Women’s World Cup Finals prior to the one which filled the Rose Bowl in 1999. The attendance at that point of 114,423, to see the teenagers topped the entire total of 112,213 to watch the big girls play at the FIFA Sweden 1995 Women’s World Cup.

In the lead-up to the Canada-USA final, Blatter was forced to announce a sellout.

“Not one single ticket available. No more tickets. Mama mia!”

Blatter said ticket sales had to be shut down because of local laws. Ticket packages in the hands of minor soccer players , whether they showed or not, had to be counted as tickets sold.

It was a final which set up easy. Little Sister vs Big Brother.

“To be the best, you have to beat the best,” said Sinclair of the No. 1 nation in the women’s soccer world.

“We’ll remember this for the rest of our lives,” said keeper Erin McLeod, a St. Albert native.

“It’ll be monumental,” said U.S. coach Tracy Leone. “It’ll be a once in a lifetime experience. The setting. The spectators. The stadium. For these great young players to get this at their age ... it’ll be an amazing day.

And it was.

Captain Sinclair and the 47,784 fans knew they didn’t really lose. Canada won. Won about as big as you can win without hoisting a trophy.

LOSS WAS A WIN

These Canadian teenage girls went toe-to-toe with the best in the world for 108-minutes and lost by a toe-nail.

“I think our team is the true winners in all this, at least Canadian soccer,” said Sinclair, showing maturity beyond her years after booting the game away with 10 seconds left in regulation time, the best chance in a game in which Canada out-chanced the U.S. scoring machine by a bunch.

“We’re the second best in the world. We came so close so many times to being the best in the world. And maybe we won the chance to play in a World Cup in Canada in a few years.”

Sinclair — who played the final on a sprained ankle — went up to the teary-eyed Lang and put her arm around her.

“I just told Kara to look around here. There were 50,000 fans standing up there screaming for us. I told her ‘Look at what we’ve done for the future of women’s soccer. When we started this journey we never dreamed we’d be playing in the final in front of 50,000 people. We’ll never forget this.”

No one should have been more gutted than Sinclair, the girl who won both the Golden Shoe as the tournament’s to goal scorer and the Golden Ball as MVP.

The Americans were leaving Edmonton with the gold medal and a gorgeous new FIFA trophy as a result of a 1-0 win on Lindsay Tarpley’s golden goal at 18:28 of extra time.

“The whole team was great,” said coach Ian Bridge. “The whole day was great. At the end, it’s just impossible to walk away and not say ‘What a great day.’

“It was entertaining, exciting soccer with chances at both ends. Offensively we may have outplayed them. We definitely had more chances. We had a lot of injuries. More than I could list. You can’t be upset after a day like that.”

The word the Canadian players had chosen to write on their wrists this day was ‘Triumph.’

They did. In the end 162,207 tipped the turnstiles in Edmonton and went away realizing the tournament’s snappy slogan was actually the total, undeniable truth.

Boy can they play.