GOLDEN DREAM OVER, BUT CANADIANS ARE NOT DONE
With the bronze medal still in reach, ‘now the job is to be on that podium’
Big dreams die hardest.
On the pitch, where the Canadian soccer women’s team had just lost the semifinal 2-0 to Germany and with it, the precious chance to fight for Olympic gold, players wept or fell to their knees in naked despair.
Finally, at the toughest time, the wheels fell off the magic ride — when every ball went their way, every scoring chance seemed to go in and the sun always shone on them — this team seemed to have been on.
They began the match undefeated, a perfect 4-0 record in the Olympic tournament, having dispatched three of the highest-rated teams in the world — Australia, France and yes, even Germany — as well as Zimbabwe. They talked openly about wanting to hear O Canada at these Games, about wanting that heavy gold medal around their necks.
And then it fell apart, and in the magnificent words of The Tragically Hip in Boots or Hearts, when it starts to fall apart, man it really falls apart: A German penalty kick for a 1-0 lead, missed Canadian chances and, as head coach John Herdman described it, just as the Canadians were really pushing it in the second half, “the old sucker punch … and they caught us,” and the Germans were up by two.
Give them this: They had the big parts until the bitter end, with Herdman moving up goalkeeper Stephanie Labbe as an extra attacker, the soccer equivalent of pulling the goalie.
“We try anything in that last 15 minutes,” Herdman said afterward. “You’ve got to try everything you can. Sometimes it pays off. It didn’t tonight.”
But even though their legendary captain Christine Sinclair told them in their post-game huddle of misery, as Herdman reported, to “Take two hours to let everything out. We’re not going home empty-handed,” they were already beginning to regroup.
“We’ll give ourselves tonight to be sad,” veteran Rhian Wilkinson said in the so-called mixed zone, where reporters talk to athletes. “We’ll talk to our families and cry.”
But, she said in the next breath, “Now the job is to be on that podium.”
The biggest disappointment, she said, was this: “When we as a team aren’t able to just die for one another … it’s not a matter of heart. It’s never an effort thing with this team.”
They don’t know, either, just what it was.
As fierce little midfielder Diana Matheson said with a bitter halfsmile, “If we had the answer to that, it wouldn’t happen.” But, she said, she thought the team could have played “with a bit more confidence, a little more of that swag.” The Germans were a team, she said, that Canada was capable of beating.
“We knew we could create chances and we did. The game was there for the taking, and it hurts that we let down ourselves … We just didn’t get the job done.”
Young scoring sensation Janine Beckie said this, pragmatic and honest: “With big games comes big pressure. They took advantage of their opportunities, but we didn’t.”
She said that when Sinclair talked to them in the immediate aftermath, she spoke of how the team had been in the same boat in London at the 2012 Games.
There, after a heartbreaking semifinal loss to the United States, Canada beat France 1-0 for the bronze.
Some of those key players are still with the club — including Sinclair, Matheson, Wilkinson, Melissa Tancredi, Sophie Schmidt and Desiree Scott — but for many on this youthful club, they were kids watching from afar, the game just an inspiration, the same way these players are probably galvanizing their successors.
As Herdman said, “Some of the really young players, this is the first time they’ve gone through this kind of disappointment … (they’ve learned) we do things the hard way. That’s how we do things.”
The veterans have their Olympic medals, Beckie said, but for those who don’t, “We can’t let this slip through our hands.”
One of the kids, 18-year-old Jessie Fleming, said: “It feels like crap right now. We wanted to win the gold medal. But we’re gonna win bronze.” Then, indulging in just a second more of sorrow: “It sucks.”
The Canadians now travel back to Sao Paulo, which earlier in the tournament was a substitute home field for them — until Brazil lost to Sweden on Tuesday in the other semifinal, which means they will fight Canada for the bronze on Friday.
The Canadians may want to look at a line from another Hip classic, At the Hundredth Meridian: “Hard, huge and haunted.” That would be a fine way to play.