Emotions ran high as the Canadian women's soccer team lost 4-3 in extra time Monday to USA but it was the Twitter aftermath that really got passionate. See what some folks had to say about the semifinal match, the referee and the effort put out by Canada's team.
Christine Sinclair: "I feel robbed. You never see a goalkeeper get called for six second rule. She played a deciding role. However, we are a rsilient bunch, we don't want to go home empty hands, so we have to worl for the bronze medal match"
Cathal Kelly from Toronto Star: "What Melissa Tancredi said to Norwegian ref: "Put on your American jersey. That's who you played for tonight."#london2012
Christine Sinclair "I feel robbed. You never see a goalkeeper get called for six second rule." #CanWNT
Norwegian referee Christina Pedersen should get whichever medal Team USA receives in women's soccer. She earned it too. #London2012.
The Pele Award for BEASTIN' goes to Christine Sinclair @sincy12. Hat trick in the semi final vs the US. AMAZING effort. #London2012
Steve Nash: MAJOR respect to the Canadian woman's soccer team! Didn't deserve to lose. Played some beautiful stuff and fought like crazy. Heads up.
Julie Foudy, US soccer legend: "Wow. Speechless. Epic game. Canada so courageous. USA once again redefines RESILIENT. I LOVE SOCCER. Congrats USA!!! Thank u for that."
US Soccer Federation: Spare a thought for Canada and Christine Sinclair, who was brilliant for 120 minutes. What an effort by their entire team too. #USAvCAN
Canadian women's soccer team made Canada very proud today. It's never fair when it's 11 against 12 for that long.
The Canadian Party: BREAKING: London police are searching for the referee who stole an entire women's soccer game. #Olympics #soccer
MANCHESTER, ENGLAND—Melissa Tancredi wanted to get on the bus. She couldn’t trust herself to talk.
But after being robbed of a chance for a gold medal — in what was the equivalent of pilfering the chalices from one of the sport’s cathedrals — she couldn’t walk away.
She returned, face twitching, eyes red-rimmed and wet.
“I couldn’t believe what happened,” Tancredi said, jaw working side to side. “That was our game. That was our win. And it was just taken away. So …”
She let that “So” trail off.
Canada will be thinking about that “So” for a long time.
Monday’s Olympic semifinal at Old Trafford was probably the best game of women’s football ever played. Canada lost 4-3 after added extra time. The key player? Norwegian referee Christina Pedersen.
Canada took the lead three separate times through three Christine Sinclair goals of exponentially expanding skill. It was a triptych that ought to be hanging over a Flemish altar.
“We feel like we didn’t lose, we feel like it was taken from us,” Sinclair said. “It’s a shame in a game like that that was so important, the ref decided the result before it started.”
After last night, the committee that gathers to decide the Lou Marsh Award for Canada’s top athlete next year can start drinking at noon. It won’t be a very long meeting.
Sinclair is already the finest female team athlete this country has ever produced.
She was the very best she has ever been in the biggest game she has ever played. What other athlete can say that?
Whether Sinclair comes away from these Games with a medal or not, last night was the golden cupola crowning her career.
Her third came in the 73rd minute, pushing off two markers and heading the ball back across the face of goal and over a defender standing at the far post. It was a flat classic. Men. Women. Martians. Nobody scores that good a goal.
There was a long, long way to go until victory, which makes what happened next so crushing and also so bizarre.
Around the 78th minute, the ball found its way back to Canadian goalkeeper, Erin McLeod. The American forwards were pressing high up the pitch. McLeod was looking for a chance to outlet the ball to a fullback, rather than to launch it up the field. Eventually, she gave in and hoofed it forward. But Pedersen had blown her whistle.
She called a foul on McLeod for a six-second violation — time wasting in other words, though nobody’s foolish enough to begin eating the clock with 20 minutes to go.
No warning was given, according to McLeod. That’s the form — warning first. You want another theme? This has been the Army Olympics, the Empty Olympics and the Angry Olympics. Now it’s the Making Things Up As You Go The Hell Along Olympics.
Regardless of the warning, how often is that call made?
“I’ve never seen that before,” U.S. coach Pia Sundhage said afterward. Sundhage has worked in the game since they used mammoth tusks for goalposts.
She’s never seen it because that call is never made. Never.
And in a one-goal game in which a gold medal hangs in the balance, it should be made never to the power of infinity.
On the ensuing free kick inside the Canadian area, the ball cannoned into the protective arm of Marie-Eve Nault. That’s probably a penalty. That’s how Pedersen called it. The problem was that Pedersen and her crew had ignored an even more blatant handball in the area by American Megan Rapinoe 10 minutes before.
After Abby Wambach’s penalty tied it 3-3, it went to added extra time. Alex Morgan headed in the winning goal in the 123rd minute.
But the game was truly lost when Pedersen lost control of her senses and called what is the footballing equivalent of a high-risk takedown after a rolling stop.
After the call, Canadian players rushed Pedersen.
“I said, ‘I hope you can sleep tonight. Put on your American jersey. That’s who you played for today,’” Tancredi said, voice shaking. “I was honest.”
As captain, Sinclair asked Pedersen for an explanation.
“She actually giggled and said nothing,” Sinclair said. “Classy.”
Even coach John Herdman, a man so positively charged he may bleed protons, could not contain himself.
He started out diplomatic: “It is what it is.” Then the emotion began to get hold of him. At one point, he was forced to stop, near tears. By the end, anger was finally surfacing.
“It was taken from them,” Herdman said. “We’ll move on from this. I wonder if (Pedersen) will be able to.”
Afterward, like Tancredi, he couldn’t quite bring himself to leave. His eyes were glassy, his look dazed. He seemed unsteady on his feet. One wonders if disappointment can cause a concussion.
The point he wanted to keep banging on — “To watch them women just keep getting up was phenomenal. It felt like it was America and the referee against us. … And not to come away with something?”
But they did. There may still be a bronze in this for them, but they’ve already given us the Canadian Olympic team’s defining performance in these Games.
A performance like that cannot be forgotten only because it came in a loss.
We celebrate victories, but we also celebrate classics. If all those great Canadian triumphs we like to talk about — from ’72 onward — were celebrations, this team’s 4-3 loss at the Olympics was Lear on grass. It was Macbeth. It was a great tragedy. Emphasis on “great.”
Canada played the world’s No. 1-ranked team, the double defending gold medallists, a side they had not beaten in 11 years.
And they lost, unfair and unsquare. But they were magnificent.
If there is to be any justice after a largely unjust night, the rest of us will remember and celebrate what happened here.
MORE:
Adam van Koeverden in deep at these Olympics
Canadian show jumpers finish fifth after ‘insane’ disqualification
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Full London 2012 coverage
But after being robbed of a chance for a gold medal — in what was the equivalent of pilfering the chalices from one of the sport’s cathedrals — she couldn’t walk away.
She returned, face twitching, eyes red-rimmed and wet.
“I couldn’t believe what happened,” Tancredi said, jaw working side to side. “That was our game. That was our win. And it was just taken away. So …”
She let that “So” trail off.
Canada will be thinking about that “So” for a long time.
Monday’s Olympic semifinal at Old Trafford was probably the best game of women’s football ever played. Canada lost 4-3 after added extra time. The key player? Norwegian referee Christina Pedersen.
Canada took the lead three separate times through three Christine Sinclair goals of exponentially expanding skill. It was a triptych that ought to be hanging over a Flemish altar.
“We feel like we didn’t lose, we feel like it was taken from us,” Sinclair said. “It’s a shame in a game like that that was so important, the ref decided the result before it started.”
After last night, the committee that gathers to decide the Lou Marsh Award for Canada’s top athlete next year can start drinking at noon. It won’t be a very long meeting.
Sinclair is already the finest female team athlete this country has ever produced.
She was the very best she has ever been in the biggest game she has ever played. What other athlete can say that?
Whether Sinclair comes away from these Games with a medal or not, last night was the golden cupola crowning her career.
Her third came in the 73rd minute, pushing off two markers and heading the ball back across the face of goal and over a defender standing at the far post. It was a flat classic. Men. Women. Martians. Nobody scores that good a goal.
There was a long, long way to go until victory, which makes what happened next so crushing and also so bizarre.
Around the 78th minute, the ball found its way back to Canadian goalkeeper, Erin McLeod. The American forwards were pressing high up the pitch. McLeod was looking for a chance to outlet the ball to a fullback, rather than to launch it up the field. Eventually, she gave in and hoofed it forward. But Pedersen had blown her whistle.
She called a foul on McLeod for a six-second violation — time wasting in other words, though nobody’s foolish enough to begin eating the clock with 20 minutes to go.
No warning was given, according to McLeod. That’s the form — warning first. You want another theme? This has been the Army Olympics, the Empty Olympics and the Angry Olympics. Now it’s the Making Things Up As You Go The Hell Along Olympics.
Regardless of the warning, how often is that call made?
“I’ve never seen that before,” U.S. coach Pia Sundhage said afterward. Sundhage has worked in the game since they used mammoth tusks for goalposts.
She’s never seen it because that call is never made. Never.
And in a one-goal game in which a gold medal hangs in the balance, it should be made never to the power of infinity.
On the ensuing free kick inside the Canadian area, the ball cannoned into the protective arm of Marie-Eve Nault. That’s probably a penalty. That’s how Pedersen called it. The problem was that Pedersen and her crew had ignored an even more blatant handball in the area by American Megan Rapinoe 10 minutes before.
After Abby Wambach’s penalty tied it 3-3, it went to added extra time. Alex Morgan headed in the winning goal in the 123rd minute.
But the game was truly lost when Pedersen lost control of her senses and called what is the footballing equivalent of a high-risk takedown after a rolling stop.
After the call, Canadian players rushed Pedersen.
“I said, ‘I hope you can sleep tonight. Put on your American jersey. That’s who you played for today,’” Tancredi said, voice shaking. “I was honest.”
As captain, Sinclair asked Pedersen for an explanation.
“She actually giggled and said nothing,” Sinclair said. “Classy.”
Even coach John Herdman, a man so positively charged he may bleed protons, could not contain himself.
He started out diplomatic: “It is what it is.” Then the emotion began to get hold of him. At one point, he was forced to stop, near tears. By the end, anger was finally surfacing.
“It was taken from them,” Herdman said. “We’ll move on from this. I wonder if (Pedersen) will be able to.”
Afterward, like Tancredi, he couldn’t quite bring himself to leave. His eyes were glassy, his look dazed. He seemed unsteady on his feet. One wonders if disappointment can cause a concussion.
The point he wanted to keep banging on — “To watch them women just keep getting up was phenomenal. It felt like it was America and the referee against us. … And not to come away with something?”
But they did. There may still be a bronze in this for them, but they’ve already given us the Canadian Olympic team’s defining performance in these Games.
A performance like that cannot be forgotten only because it came in a loss.
We celebrate victories, but we also celebrate classics. If all those great Canadian triumphs we like to talk about — from ’72 onward — were celebrations, this team’s 4-3 loss at the Olympics was Lear on grass. It was Macbeth. It was a great tragedy. Emphasis on “great.”
Canada played the world’s No. 1-ranked team, the double defending gold medallists, a side they had not beaten in 11 years.
And they lost, unfair and unsquare. But they were magnificent.
If there is to be any justice after a largely unjust night, the rest of us will remember and celebrate what happened here.
MORE:
Adam van Koeverden in deep at these Olympics
Canadian show jumpers finish fifth after ‘insane’ disqualification
DiManno: Despite early missteps Olympics organizers getting most things right
Full London 2012 coverage
Top Stories on the Web:
Canadian captain Christine Sinclair scored a hat trick and gave Canada the lead on three different occasions, only to see the U.S. reply each time. Norwegian referee Christina Pedersen was involved in a number of controversial calls, many of which went against Canada.
The Canadians will now take on France for bronze on Thursday, while the U.S. meets Japan for gold.
Here is a sample of what Canadian athletes and other personalities said during and after the match on Twitter:
• Canadian chef de mission Mark Tewksbury: “stuck in a car coming back from canoe-kayak awesome visit. Following game on twitter. KILLING ME!!!”
• Canadian kayaker Adam van Koeverden during extra time: “Let’s go #canwnt 3-3 in extratime. Go Canada!!”
• CBC host Jian Ghomeshi: “Ref in this game is doing things by the book. Assuming it’s a book that has nothing to do with soccer or this game. #canadavsusa #London2012.”
• Van Koeverden after the final whistle: “Congrats to #CANwnt soccer. Valiant effort, incredible talent, total class.”
• Canadian women’s hockey player Hayley Wickenheiser: “If I had to go to war, I’d go to war with our soccer gals anyday!! Proud to be cdn! Go get bronze!”
• Canadian sprint kayaker Hugues Fournel: “What a amazing game by team Canada in women’s soccer. you girls are truly inspiring.”
• Movie star Samuel L. Jackson, after congratulating the U.S. on the win added: “Lemme say though, those Canuck Ladies brought da noise! They came to WIN! Ehhh?!!”
• NBA star Steve Nash: “MAJOR respect to the Canadian woman’s soccer team! Didn’t deserve to lose. Played some beautiful stuff and fought like crazy. Heads up.”
• Former CFLer and current Canadian bobsledder Jesse Lumsden: “Real proud of our womens soccer team!! You are all mothercanukin beasts. Go get your bronze ladies. Make history.”
• Canadian paralympian Michelle Stillwell: “Canadian woman’s soccer team one of the best Olympic performances ever! You made the entire nation proud!! #london2012 #GOCANADAGO.”
• Former Canadian Olympic freestyle skier Jennifer Heil: “Amazing showcase of women’s sport. Thank you ladies! #bronzemedal #london2012.”
THE DAY REPLAYED – The Women's Olympic Football Tournament 2012 on Thursday 9 August at Wembley has the gold medal match fans the world over were hoping to see, a rerun of the FIFA Women's World Cup 2011™ final between Japan and USA. France and Canada will do battle for bronze in Coventry earlier in the day.
In a thrilling clash oozing skill and quality, the Japanese edged out France in Monday’s first semi-final. The Nadeshiko thus become the second reigning world champions to reach the Olympic final in the year after triumphing at the FIFA Women's World Cup, a feat previously achieved by USA at the 2000 Games in Sydney.
The second last-four clash was an even more dramatic affair: in the all-North American showdown against Canada, defending Olympic champions USA scored in time added on at the end of extra time to seal the narrowest of victories and book a place in the final of the Women's Olympic Football Tournament for the fifth time in five editions of the tournament.
Goal of the dayFrance-Japan, Eugenie Le Sommer (75’)
Eugenie Le Sommer’s goal to halve the deficit against Japan ultimately proved not quite enough for France, as the score remained 2-1 through to the final whistle, but it was still the best strike on a day of memorable goals. Marie-Laure Delie released Elodie Thomis for a charge down the right and a cut-back into the box, where Le Sommer caught the ball perfectly on the half-volley and crashed home from eight yards.
Eugenie Le Sommer’s goal to halve the deficit against Japan ultimately proved not quite enough for France, as the score remained 2-1 through to the final whistle, but it was still the best strike on a day of memorable goals. Marie-Laure Delie released Elodie Thomis for a charge down the right and a cut-back into the box, where Le Sommer caught the ball perfectly on the half-volley and crashed home from eight yards.
Memorable momentsSasaki hails ‘goddess’ Fukumoto
“It’s impossible to defend the goal on your own," Miho Fukumoto exclusively told FIFA.com in our pre-match interview. However, faced with the powerful attacking threat of the French, the Japan keeper made a decent fist of proving her own statement wrong with a string of spectacular saves. The pick of the bunch came on 71 minutes when Louisa Necib had practically begun celebrating after blasting goalwards from close range, but Fukumoto hurled herself towards the bottom left corner and stopped the ball on the line with one hand. The breathtaking save crowned a superb individual display, prompting Japan coach Norio Sasaki to comment: “Miho Fukumoto is a very small goalkeeper, but she's like a goddess to me."
“It’s impossible to defend the goal on your own," Miho Fukumoto exclusively told FIFA.com in our pre-match interview. However, faced with the powerful attacking threat of the French, the Japan keeper made a decent fist of proving her own statement wrong with a string of spectacular saves. The pick of the bunch came on 71 minutes when Louisa Necib had practically begun celebrating after blasting goalwards from close range, but Fukumoto hurled herself towards the bottom left corner and stopped the ball on the line with one hand. The breathtaking save crowned a superb individual display, prompting Japan coach Norio Sasaki to comment: “Miho Fukumoto is a very small goalkeeper, but she's like a goddess to me."
One person’s joy is another’s sorrowThe line between joy and sorrow is a very narrow one indeed, and the scenes after the France-Japan clash visibly demonstrated that eternal truth. In their half of the Wembley field, the Japanese players accepted cheers from their fans and celebrated reaching the gold medal match, but on the other side of the halfway line the devastated French players lay distraught on the sacred turf, with coach Bruno Bini doing his best to console his team and begin the tough process of rebuilding them mentally ahead of the bronze medal match.
Here comes AlexEither the USA wanted to make life difficult for themselves, or they decided to stage a drama near unparalleled in the history of elite women's football. Abby Wambach and Co trailed Canada three times, but hauled their way back into the match on all three occasions. Then, with barely 30 seconds to go in stoppage time at the end of extra time and the Old Trafford crowd resigned to penalties, Heather O'Reilly swung over a cross from the right and Alex Morgan rose to nod home, sealing an extraordinary 4-3 victory for her team. The US girls broke out into euphoric celebration, but the courageous Canadians and hat-trick hero Christine Sinclair collapsed to the turf in despair.
Stat of the day
4 – Sinclair's three-goal haul was the fourth hat-trick in the history of the Women's Olympic Football Tournament. Birgit Prinz hit four for Germany against China PR in 2004, and Brazil's Cristiane took home the match ball twice, against Greece in 2004 and Nigeria in 2008.
4 – Sinclair's three-goal haul was the fourth hat-trick in the history of the Women's Olympic Football Tournament. Birgit Prinz hit four for Germany against China PR in 2004, and Brazil's Cristiane took home the match ball twice, against Greece in 2004 and Nigeria in 2008.
The words"Since 2008 we have had an objective to win a medal at the Olympics, and the attitude of the players to win this game was strong. Since we now know we have a medal I think the players can celebrate tonight. I would like to take them to a Japanese restaurant," Japan coach Norio Sasaki.
Next upThursday 9 August 2012 (all times are local)
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