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The Canadian women’s soccer team has never been more popular, more marketable, or more influential than these past 4½ years.

You see it in the stadiums and in TV ratings for major tournaments. You see it at community appearances and speaking engagements.

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At a sport leadership conference in Richmond before the holidays, Christine Sinclair, Diana Matheson, Rhian Wilkinson and the retired Karina LeBlanc — who formed the empowerment company iS4 — left a packed ballroom to a standing ovation.

If they had been selling something, everyone would have bought two and told their friends.

But the rise in the popularity and international status of the women’s program — fuelled by back-to-back Olympic bronze medals and a whole bunch of personality — has regrettably overlapped with the absence of a women’s soccer franchise in Vancouver.

The Whitecaps ceased operations of their long-running W-League team after the 2012 season, citing an evolving women’s soccer landscape.