Canadians have ‘found our place’
Women’s team keeps getting deeper as it rises in the world rankings
The last time the Canadian women’s national team played in Hamilton was in May 2015, a friendly match against England that came days before Canada began hosting the Women’s World Cup.
Canada was ranked eighth in the world then, according to FIFA. England sat at No. 6. Midfielder Sophie Schmidt, who scored the game’s lone goal to give Canada the victory, remembers it as a “massive occasion.”
“There was a lot of hype around the World Cup, the team was on edge,” Schmidt said. “We were in a good space, flying high and had a lot of energy.”
But the next month, England knocked Canada out of the tournament’s quarterfinals with a 2-1 win in Vancouver. The No. 8 team met the expectations that came with their ranking.
Three years later, as Canada returns to Tim Hortons Field for a friendly against No. 3 Germany on Sunday, a lot has changed for Schmidt and the women’s national team.
Canada has a new coach in Dane Kenneth Heiner-Moller, who replaced John Herdman in January after the Englishman’s move to the men’s team. Only 11 of the players on the 23-woman World Cup roster were part of the camp before Sunday’s match, but the program is now ranked fourth in the world. And there is more talent up front, with multiple offensive threats complementing captain Christine Sinclair.
While the 2012 London Olympics, where Canada earned the first of back-to-back bronze medals, is generally considered the turning point for the women’s team, it has continued to improve since then.
“We’ve found our place in the soccer world now,” midfielder Desiree Scott said this week.
Getting to this point hasn’t always been easy, and Herdman’s recent departure came as a shock to the squad, but the Canadians remain confident as they work toward next year’s World Cup in France. HeinerMoller was Herdman’s assistant before his promotion and the familiarity has helped with the transition.
“The team has grown a lot, there were changes that have been both in and our of our control,” said defender Ashley Lawrence, the 22-year-old who, along with Kadeisha Buchanan, was an up-and-comer the last time the Canadians were in Hamilton.
Today, the two play professionally in France, Lawrence with Paris Saint Germain and Buchanan with Olympique Lyonnais. They’re regulars in Canada’s starting 11, leading a group of players in their early 20s — such as strikers Janine Beckie, 23, and Nichelle Prince, 23, and midfielders Rebecca Quinn, 22, and Jessie Fleming, 20 — who are part of the team’s core. They’ve learned their place among the likes of Sinclair, Schmidt, Scott, Diana Matheson and goalkeeper Erin McLeod, the players remaining from that storied bronze-medal run in 2012.
“I think it’s great how we’ve learned to play with each other,” Lawrence said. “You see it on the field, our personalities and creativity.” While Lawrence says the group will always posses the “natural Canadian grit” that this squad has long been known for, the team has developed a more technical attacking threat.
“We’re a lot more complex in our partnerships, our movement,” the 29-year-old Schmidt said. “We’ve always been solid defensively but we’ve added another component in attack.”
Scott believes that linking the threats with Canada’s backline makes the team more eloquent in the way it performs, and has given the group its identity.
“We’ve truly become a team (that has) developed the connection on and off the field.”