Canadian soccer legend unmasked
EDMONTON — The mask deserves a prominent place in the FIFA World Football Museum, due to open next year in Zurich.
It symbolizes Christine Sinclair.It represents Canadian women’s soccer. But, alas, the exhibit is not available to the FIFA curator.
“It’s in the garbage. I threw it out,” said Sinclair on the anniversary of acquiring the contraption Tuesday.
“I threw it away the second I was cleared to play without it,” she recalled, remembering back to four years ago and the occasion which created her “look” for the remainder of by far her most disappointing FIFA Women’s World Cup and at the same time combined with one of her greatest moments ever.
When your correspondent suggested the mask, created to protect a nose broken so badly that it was smeared all over her face, deserved to be in a Hall of Fame, Sinclair reacted in horror.
“Absolutely not!” she said. “I see it as a World Cup gone wrong.
“On the opening game of the World Cup, I broke my nose. It’s not how you planned one of the most important tournaments of your life.”
As Canada heads to Thursday’s second game in Group A play still celebrating Sinclair and her penalty kick goal off the left post to defeat China 1-0 before 53,058 in the opener, it’s timely to reflect back to what happened four years ago in Berlin before 73,680.
While Edmonton has been celebrating Sinclair as almost a native daughter since she was the 18-year-old teenager who won the Golden Ball and the Golden Boot at the FIFA U-19 World Cup here in 2002, the 2011 FIFA Women’s World Cup opener in Germany was the day that definitely defined her. Not just as a soccer player, as a Canadian.
She was like Ryan Smyth in the 2006 playoffs on the way to the Stanley Cup Final with the Edmonton Oilers when he lost some “Chiclets” on the ice and had a form of dental surgery behind the bench to get back into the game without missing more than a shift.
Sinclair had her nose smeared across her face by an elbow produced by German defender Babett Peter.
As a doctor tried to talk her into leaving the scene for more major medical attention, she clearly screamed “I want to play” back at him.
“When it happened, I knew I’d broken it. But it’s the World Cup. You need to have like a broken leg, especially me, to keep me out of World Cup games. It was a no brainer for me to get back on the field. I was just hoping I wouldn’t get hit in the face again,” she said Tuesday, three days before her 32nd birthday.
Sinclair went back on the field, a player possessed, and with eight minutes to full time, scored a brilliant goal on a 25-yard free kick with a much higher degree of difficulty than the penalty kick she produced Saturday.
It was Canada’s only goal in a 2-1 loss to the host team.
“Obviously, scoring the goal and losing 2-1 in the first game of the World Cup before 70,000some fans, we were pretty happy with that result. We thought ‘OK. We’re right there.’ But then France happened.”
It turned out she scored Canada’s last Women’s World Cup goal until she put the game away against China.
With Sinclair looking a bit like she was wearing Jacques Plante’s original goalie mask from a distance, Canada lost 4-0 to France in Bochum and 1-0 to Nigeria in Dresden and caught a plane home.
“I think you can ask anyone who ever played a sport with a mask on. It’s just not what you’re used to doing. You lose a lot of peripheral vision. For me, I was just so used to dribbling the ball without even looking at it. I remember just having to completely look down to see the ball. It just wasn’t how I planned the World Cup to go. You want to be at your absolute best and I know I wasn’t from that moment on.”
Everything feels so much different for Sinclair, not just in the area of her nose, than it did four years ago.
“I think going into that last World Cup we were hiding the truth. But, while we have some injuries, as a team, we are ready. We are physically, tactically, technically as ready as we can be.
“It’s just a great atmosphere. And it’s fun. Every day we wake up and we have fun in a very stressful environment, but it is so enjoyable. We’re in a great space, especially with the stress of that opening game gone. We’re in a great mode.”
Four years ago, on the anniversary of the day she acquired her mask, it was definitely not the way it was for Christine Sinclair. Pity she threw it away.