COVENTRY, ENGLAND—They wouldn’t apologize. Not really. Nor should they.

Shortly after looking down the most powerful sporting body in the world, Canada’s women’s soccer team refused to stick to the crummy political script given to them and pretend that everything that happened on Monday was fine.

“It was an emotional time. A few of us said some things. We have to move on,” said Christine Sinclair, the most likely player to have faced a lengthy ban after accusing Norwegian referee Christina Pedersen of fixing Monday’s epic match against the U.S.

She was offered a second chance to say, “Sorry.”

Here we’ll point out that what Sinclair said was foolish. It was also wrong. Nobody fixed anything. The pressure got to Pedersen and she burst.

But unlike so many athletes who at this point choose the path that leads into low comedy — “I was confused” … “I was ambushed” … “I don’t actually speak English” — Sinclair refused to dissemble.

Do you regret anything you said?

“No,” Sinclair said, eyes rising challengingly off the ground. “We just lost the semifinal of the Olympics …” — and here a significant pause — “… in one way or another. We felt a little robbed, so we said those things. I don’t think any of us regret anything.”

Melissa Tancredi, who’d been in a towering rage after the game, was just a little more circumspect. She also had good reason to fear a ban.

Were you, as coach John Herdman put it, “on tenterhooks” as FIFA deliberated?

“You know, in the back of my mind, I was like, ‘That would be an incredibly bad move’. At this stage, you can’t hold players back from a bronze medal match because of passionate comments.”

Yes, they really can. And no, they surprisingly didn’t.

Several players on the Canadian team began unpinning verbal grenades directly after they lost to the U.S.

The money quote belonged to Sinclair, suggesting that Pedersen “decided the game before it started.”

That roused FIFA from its slumbers, whereupon it commenced a low growling. They launched an investigation on Tuesday. It reached a stuttering halt on Wednesday afternoon.

“In view of the elements currently at its disposal, the FIFA Disciplinary Committee considers that further investigation will be needed regarding incidents that occurred after the conclusion of the match between Canada and the U.S.A.,” FIFA said in a release. “The FIFA Disciplinary Committee is therefore not in a position to take any decision at present.”

The translation from Swiss bureaucratese: “Uncle.”

This is a Nunavut-level snow job. What further “elements” could FIFA possibly need? Sinclair’s comment was included in the post-game quote sheets released by LOCOG itself.

Faced with uncommon defiance, FIFA buckled. Suspending Sinclair or Tancredi or anyone else would have drawn global attention to Pedersen’s momentary meltdown and heaped scorn on the women’s game. Like all bad managers, FIFA wants problems to disappear, rather than deal with the structure that created them.

FIFA will have its small revenge on Sinclair later, when it no longer matters.

Now there is that small matter of Canada’s first team sport medal in a Summer Olympic Games since 1936. The last hurdle is France, a team that humiliated this side 4-0 at last summer’s Women’s World Cup.

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“(They) should fear the way we play,” French forward Eugenie le Sommer said Tuesday. That she’s right doesn’t make saying it any less … French.

After that 2011 match, Canada was forced to march through the mixed zone while France celebrated on the bus behind them. There were some tears, though nothing compared to three days ago in Manchester. That team of a year ago was a demoralized group.

On Wednesday, the vibe was completely different after a far more devastating loss. Working out in a bucolic stretch of the countryside here, they looked loose. Happy, even. And — here Herdman’s favourite word — focused.

“We took a day to mourn,” Sinclair said. “And then we woke up this morning to start again.”

“While the game’s life and death, not everything else is,” Herdman shrugged and grinned. There is no one at these Olympics having more fun than this man. He still sounds delightfully unhinged.

“When you get to the end of tournaments, you get different sorts of fevers. There’s geared fever. The last three days, people are like the old convicts. They start to do crazy things in the last three days when they know they’re going to get out and some of them end up getting locked up for longer.”

“Performance cages?” Check. A “grow” room and a “mind” room? Check. Birdman of Alcatraz analogies? Check.

John Herdman is the greatest coach in the country (from my selfish professional perspective).

Again, whatever it is, it’s working. Take hockey out of the mix, and this team is now Canada’s most compelling cast of sports characters. Thanks to these competitors, women’s soccer is having a real moment.

But still — France. France could ruin this story. They’ve done it before.

“We promised ourselves we’d never feel that way again,” Tancredi said, recalling that bad day. “We have to give (France) respect. That’s what we lacked in that game. We didn’t really respect them. We didn’t know much about them. We respect them now. They’re amazing.”

Respect. Canada will give it to their opponents.

They won’t pretend to have it for arbitrary and incompetent authority. That’s a form of self-respect.

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