EDMONTON

In the next three days there are going to be as many female soccer players in the air over Canada as stewardesses.

Friday is the first fly day of the FIFA Women’s World Cup.

Four separate planes chartered by FIFA will leave Edmonton for two different destinations and four more will depart from Ottawa to two others.

“It’s a difficult puzzle,” said Joe Guest, the chief of competition for the FIFA World Cup organizing committee.

“Over the duration of the competition there are 47 team moves that we have to make during the course of the competition.

“We’re doing that with a combination of charter and scheduled air travel and some team bus and train movement between Ottawa and Montreal.

“One major lesson we learned from playing host to the FIFA U-20 World Cup last year: Don’t put two teams on the same plane.

“You’d think with an aircraft with 150 seats on it, no problem. But it’s the equipment,” added Guest who joined the CSA from the Football Association in England in 2008 and is deputy to CSA secretary general Peter Montopoli when not in tournament mode.

“We’re trucking the equipment from Ottawa and Montreal to Moncton, from Vancouver to Edmonton and from Edmonton to Winnipeg. The equipment will go on the truck before midnight and our goal is to have their kit in the next venue in the next city within two hours after they arrive the next day.”

China and New Zealand are off from Edmonton to Winnipeg where they’ll meet in their final Group A game. Meanwhile, Canada and the Netherlands are both off to Montreal where they’ll meet.

Thailand and Germany fly from Ottawa to Winnipeg while Ivory Coast and Norway travel to Moncton.

The following day Switzerland and Cameroon fly from Vancouver to Edmonton with Australia and Sweden making the trip from Winnipeg to Edmonton for June 16 games in Commonwealth Stadium.

Ecuador and Japan charter out of Vancouver and to fly to Winnipeg and Nigeria and the U.S. depart from Winnipeg to fly to Vancouver.

Eight more teams catch charter flights on each of the following two days.

Up, up and away!

HOME GAME FOR THREE

A few weeks ago, during a Team Canada training camp break, Rhian Wilkinson was back home in Montreal and was part of a crowd in Olympic Stadium watching the Montreal Impact play Mexico’s Americana in the final of the CONCACAF Champions League in front of a club record 61,004 fans.

“It was something to imagine maybe being in front of a big crowd like that when we play in Olympic Stadium for our final game in group play,” she said.

Wilkinson, who calls Baie d’Urfe, Que. home, Josee Belanger of Coaticook and Marie-Eve Nault of Trois-Rivieres, are the three Team Canada players who will be made available, along with coach John Herdman and one or two others, at the pilots lounge at Innotech-Execaire Aviation in Dorval when the team arrives on a charter flight from Edmonton Friday afternoon.

And after the first game in Montreal, a midweek affair which drew an embarrassing 10,175 -- even fewer than Moncton in the rain the same day -- they’re probably wondering what the crowd might be.

It’s expected to be in the 15,000 to 20,000 range for Saturday’s Brazil-Spain, Costa Rica-South Korea doubleheader.

But tickets are going well for the Monday night Canada-Netherlands game. Tickets are now being sold in the upper deck and a crowd of more than 30,000 is expected.

STAR WARS CONTINUES

One of the subplots of the FIFA Women’s World Cup is the battle between Brazil’s Marta and Abby Wambach of the U.S. for the all-time scoring title.

Wambach plays against Sweden on Friday and Marta against Spain Saturday.

Marta scored on a penalty kick in Montreal Tuesday to become the highest scoring player in FIFA Women’s World Cup history. Marta, who made her international debut at the 2002 FIFA U-19 World Cup in Edmonton, went into the tournament tied with retired Birgit Prinz of Germany with 14 goals.

She made it No. 15 a dozen years after she scored her first, also on a penalty kick, also against Korea. American Abby Wambach didn’t score in the opener Winnipeg and remains at 13.

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