TEAM CHEMISTRY WINNING FORMULA
With Sinclair on sideline, Tancredi steps up to defeat Germany
Such is the magnificent stuff of which the Canadian women’s soccer team is made that John Herdman didn’t even have to tell his veteran superstar Christine Sinclair that he wasn’t going to start her for the big game against Germany. “She just knows,” he said. “I haven’t even had a conversation with Christine,” he said after the Canadians beat the Germans 2-1, their first win over the traditional powerhouse in either international or friendly play.
“There’s a huge trust on this team, and a deep trust,” Herdman said. “She is never bigger than the team, and she knows that.”
In fact, so broad is the leadership on this squad that the mantle was seamlessly picked up by another veteran, 34-year-old Melissa Tancredi, who scored both goals herself, the second a glorious header she potted while holding off two Germans.
Tancredi wore the captain’s arm band, a decision that remains somewhat mysterious: Do the players pick the captain, in Sinclair’s infrequent absence on the field of play, or do Herdman and his staff?
He didn’t answer directly, but nakedly raved about the range of leadership across the team, then said of Tancredi, “She’s the only woman to lead this team today.”
He said she spoke to the team before the match, and talked to them about “making history” — winning their Olympic group but, most important, beating the Germans, which Herdman called “a little stone in the shoe.” “She was inspirational,” he said. Tancredi herself, asked to repeat some of what she said, grinned and said some of the language would have to be cleaned up.
Joining Sinclair on the sidelines, wearing the mint green vest of the substitute player, was scoring sensation and rising star Janine Beckie, only 21.
Given the tight turnaround of the Olympic schedule, the decision to rest some of the team’s biggest names was strategic on several levels: It gave weary legs a rest and offered a huge chance to hungry youngsters.
What it wasn’t, said Rhian Wilkinson, 34, another veteran, was a decision meant to ensure Canada would get an easier opponent in their quarter-final match Friday if they finished second and perhaps faced the second-place holder from a weaker group. As it turns out, they will play France, a 3-0 winner over New Zealand on Tuesday.
Unlike most of her teammates, Wilkinson isn’t affiliated with a professional club, a conscious decision she said she made knowing that her sharpness might suffer, but her injuries would have time to heal.
It gave her one tremendous advantage, she said: She got to work out with the youngsters on the club in what’s called the Excel program, a development program of the Canadian Soccer Association, and as a result, got to know kids half her age (Deanne Rose, 17, is actually half her age) “in a way that might not happen naturally, unless you’re rooming with someone.”
Rose, who this fall will start Grade 12 at St. Thomas Aquinas in her hometown of Alliston, Ont., had a superb game.
Herdman raved about her, too: “She’s one more of those younger players. Her and Mel (Tancredi) were really good together, and (Deanne) had a really great shift.”
She’s got, he said, “that diehard Canadian grit.”
“There’s a line they know they have to cross,” he said, in terms of effort and stubborn toughness. “Deanne stood up today.”
That kid and the other youngsters and the savvy old pros and the in-between-ers, as Herdman calls the ones in the middle, have come together in a way that is almost miraculous.
From the lanky raw skill of Ashley Lawrence ( just 21) to the plucky Diana Matheson (she’s 32, but at barely five-foot-one so tiny it’s hard to reconcile how ruggedly she plays), every one of them contributes.
As Tancredi said, “It is a dream team, with different types of leadership, different ages…” But if it looks magical, and it does, as Wilkinson said, it’s also a lot of work.
They love one another — that’s the thing. Before the game, when the anthems of the teams are played, the Canadians always wrap their arms around one another and on the sidelines, so do the coaches.
“Hearing the national anthem, with people you love,” Tancredi said, “it’s the best.”
There’s a huge trust on this team, and a deep trust. (Christine Sinclair) is never bigger than the team, and she knows that.