Goodbye Canada (It’s Been Nice)

The better team won. Germany was clearly superior. (Classy young ladies too, one arguable dive, no dirty tricks, loads of skill.) Canada had its chances, failed to bury a couple good looks and sometimes wasn’t able to shoot from strong positions inside the eighteen, but Germany missed as many and buried two. Their first goal might have been offside, but even so it’s not the sort of goal you should ever concede, and their second was sheer set piece superiority.

I can suggest a couple excuses. Nichelle Prince, who went from supersub against Ghana to integral piece against North Korea, left the game injured after only fifteen minutes and was wearing a knee brace post-game. Kylie Davis, who I thought put on an underrated show as a ball-possessing, troublesome number six, was injured against the Norks and played no part Saturday. But these will ring hollow, every team gets injured in short-turnaround tournaments.

So am I despondent? Well, yes, in a sense; Canada goes out of a 2014 home tournament in the quarter-final and, while it’s not bad compared to our past results, it’s sooner than any of us were hoping for.

But, mostly, I feel nothing but pride. Canada played pretty well against one of the two best women’s youth setups in the world, a team that ran the United States off the park in the group stage, a team that’s everybody’s pick to make the final. We made the Germans work for it, were probably their biggest challenge, skillwise, in the tournament, and this after a group stage where our young ladies fought like lions. So Canada clearly isn’t among the four or five best U-20 women’s teams in the world; nobody with a lick of sense expected them to be. The world of women’s soccer has moved forward rapidly but, in this tournament at least, Canada has not only kept pace but gained a little ground. My expectations were met and exceeded.

Let’s look at one point in detail. Canada hung with Germany despite being at an athletic disadvantage. Especially out wide, the Germans could run the Canadians into the dirt. What happened to the old Canadian teams that outran everybody but generally struggled at the soccer part? When Canada got chances it was with the ball at their feet, beating players one-on-one, generally showing genuine skill rather than the old hoof-and-hope. Obviously it’s better to be fast than slow, and on a warm muggy day at Commonwealth Stadium it looked like some of the Germans had better endurance as well. But it’s a welcome statement about where our program has gone, if the best young women we can get in this age group turn out to be, as we all hoped pre-tournament, technicians rather than athletes.

The Ghana game, I felt at the time and still feel, was all Canada but with some bad luck. It happens. As for Finland, there’s no such thing as a non-inspiring comeback to win from 2-0 down. But such a comeback, over a nation that’s at best “up and coming”, is only meaningful if the ladies go on to make it a memorable tournament.

They sure did. A 1-0 win at Olympic Stadium over the mighty North Koreans was like a hammer from the gods, probably the upset of the tournament so far and 100% well-deserved. North Korea is an excellent team: they beat Finland easily, whipped Ghana, and Canada ran out deserving 1-0 winners in a storming counterpunching game that could have gone any direction until the referee blew a halt to some excruciatingly long stoppage time. It was a tremendous, tremendous match, absolutely essential after Ghana got a questionably-deserved and surprising win over Finland, and despite playing in Montreal’s concrete mausoleum with the smallest crowd for any Canadian game, the fans who did show were grabbed by the scruff of the neck by the talent and sheer balls of the Canadian ladies.

Then Edmonton. The largest crowd of the tournament, facing down the best team, the Canadians giving it their all… and losing. Realistically, as soon as the draw came out we were in deep trouble: an almost-guaranteed quarter-final against either Germany or the United States, and a very probable loss unless the Canadians got lucky or played the game of their lives. It was tough, and the Canadians couldn’t pull off another upset, but if you’re going to lose, lose like that. Lose in a way that gives us all something to hope for.

Take Janine Beckie, pictured in the upper left. Beckie made her Canadian debut in this tournament, coming over from the United States. One saw at once what the fuss was about. She scored two vital goals: the comeback-starter against Finland and the winner against North Korea. She assisted Prince’s Finland winner. She nearly tied the game against Ghana. She had the audacity to attack players on the dribble and the skill to pull it off. She played dangerous crosses and looked, if not quite terrifying, certainly like Canada’s most consistent attacking threat. (It was also a fillip for the travelling Saskatchewan Voyageurs to see one of their own running the show!) Her arrival in Canadian colours was a pretty stylish one; the Beckie family is on their way to being a new generation’s Hoopers.

A brief interlude. The U-20 Women’s World Cup is a FIFA-organized event, so the Canadian Soccer Association has little say in terms of ticketing, stadium organization, security, etc. That said, the CSA went above and beyond for their supporters in this tournament, particularly in Montreal and Edmonton where the supporters’ own organization was slap-dash and impromptu. My god, how far we have come in a few years, with CSA staffers busting their asses just to make sure a couple dozen of us can shout into the voids of Olympic Stadium or Commonwealth Stadium? If you are a Voyageur, buy your local CSA executive a beer.

Edmonton’s announced attendance of 22,421 compares decently to the 23,595 in the 2002 U-19 Women’s World Championship quarterfinal, and that was a more attractive opponent, a home team with Christine Sinclair and Kara Lang, and had many more tickets given away. The crowd last night was hurt by that old enemy, Edmonton transit, who didn’t lay on extra service for the match despite the fact that every ticket was a free transit pass. As a result, thousands of fans were waiting for the LRT to take them to the stadium even through half-time, and no doubt many simply bailed. It’s a frankly bizarre failure of foresight from the City of Edmonton.

But that’s why the host of the Women’s World Cup automatically gets the preceding U-20 Women’s World Cup: to shake out the bugs in the system. Finding and correcting these mistakes is what, from an organizational standpoint, 2014 was for.

Us fans weren’t too interested in such matters. We care about the women who, hopefully, will be representing Canada at the senior level within a few years. And I can’t remember the last time I saw more names I was excited about. Kadeisha Buchanan, who needs no introduction. Sura Yekka, who stumbled now and then playing on her off wing but saved her best performance for the Germans. Jessie Fleming, who didn’t rise to the occasion as we hoped but also didn’t look out of place at her age. Janine Beckie. Kylie Davis. Nichelle Prince. Rebecca Quinn. Emma Fletcher. Kailen Sheridan was at fault against Ghana but made amends against Germany. Captain Kinley McNicoll was consistently effective, and even regular substitute Amandine Pierre-Louis had some dangerous touches and good reviews. Obviously not all those players will work out, but that’s a long list. If we still don’t have that “next Christine Sinclair”, we still might have more young talent than ever.