As 22,421 fans streamed into Commonwealth Stadium last night, Peter Montopoli was inspired to make the observation.

“We picked the right city,” said the General Secretary of the Canadian Soccer Association.

“This makes a statement. One hundred percent.

“This is why we were very confident and comfortable when we selected Edmonton to host the opening ceremonies and the first two Canada matches for the 2015 FIFA Women’s World Cup.

“It was the right city. Edmonton has proven it once again. It was the right choice,” he said of the decision to give more games to Edmonton (11) than any other host city including including quarter-final, semi-final and bronze medal games in the coast-to-coast event also involving Vancouver, Winnipeg, Ottawa, Montreal and Moncton.

“When I talked to our national team coach John Herdman just before game time, John asked me ‘What’s it going to look like in 2015?’

“I promised him. ‘Edmonton will fill this building in red for both those first two games. We have no doubt in 2015 it will be sold out.’

“John was shaking his head, very proud of what this city has done. We definitely picked the right city.”

As it was, Edmonton came close to filling the lower bowl at Commonwealth Stadium for the teenage girls as the 22,421 watched watch Canada expire 2-0 to two-time champion Germany, about as a good of a result, it says here, as any of those fans could have expected.

Last night’s crowd beat the previous largest gathering, 16,503 for the Canada-Finland game in Toronto. With Canada now out it will also no doubt stand as the largest crowd of this year’s tournament.

“Just as impressive, in a way, is that Edmonton set the record for hosting matches in group play in which the host country was not involved,” said Montopoli.

Edmonton, of course, has all the major attendance records in the seven editions from the inaugural edition of the event in 2002 in which the Canada-Brazil semi-final drew 37,194 and the Canada-USA final attracted 47,784. But to come that close to Canada-England crowd of 24,595 from the 2002 quarter-final is really rather remarkable.

“It’s phenomenal,” said Herdman of the crowd which showed up for a one-off game for a group of teenage girls they largely had never heard of four days earlier.

“That’s a massive statistic in the history of World Cups at this youth level,” said Herdman.

“We had five players tonight who have a chance to make the team for 2015 who had a taste in front of a strong Edmonton crowd to imagine what it might be like for that opening game in 2015,” he said.

“We really enjoyed playing here,” said German coach Maren Meinert. “It was great atmosphere. Obviously most of the fans were cheering for Canada but it was a very fair audience.

“We enjoyed playing in front of so many people and I expect there will be many more out to watch the games next year.”

While the people who work for the LRT were caught with their pants down, leaving fans on the platforms at various stops because of a failure to add cars and trains, they did get their act together by the end of the game seng out a tweet prior to their trips home: “Big crowd tonight cheering for Team #CAN. We are increasing cars & frequency of ETS services & LRT for fans with FIFA tix.”

That’s the purpose of holding this tournament a year in advance of the big event.

“We’ve found some things we want to tweak. Coming out of this competition we’re very excited to get to the real big one in 2015,” said Montopoli.

So now it’s forward to the future and the countdown to the really big show, the FIFA 2015 Women’s World Cup opening ceremonies and lid-lifting game featuring Canada June 6 in Commonwealth Stadium.

The countdown clock at City Hall this morning reads 292 days away.

Tickets go on sale Sept.10 for the big show and those who bought them for this tournament get front-of-the-line privileges.

Before that it’ll be Canada vs Japan here on Oct. 25th in the second annual Frigid Friendly to follow last year’s Oct. 30th visit of South Korea.

Five weeks later, on Dec. 6, the official draw will be held at the Canadian Museum of Nature in Ottawa.

Come to think of it, shouldn’t that be held here?