The pressure of gr8ness
The CanWNT has a lot on its plate in Australia. Let's not add to it?
It’s been a difficult year for the Canadian Women’s National Team. Locked in a dispute with the CSA, the team has only played four official games in the lead up to the World Cup.
That’s hardly ideal. It’s especially not ideal when you consider that they’ve only won one of those games.
A 2-0 win over Brazil is the only bright spot in a year that has seen them lose 2-0 to the USA, 3-0 to Japan and 2-1 to France. This is not the way that they wanted to enter a World Cup that sees them as the defending Olympic champions. There was a 0-0 this week in an unofficial, closed door game against England, but it’s hard to gauge much from a contest no one saw.
Well, the 0 on the goals scored there does check out, but again, no one saw it. So, who knows?
It’s difficult not to think that the run of bad results is directly tied to the aforementioned battle with the CSA. To say that the women are upset with the CSA is an understatement. They are furious with the organization. It seems to be consuming them, actually.
No one is here to judge them for feeling as they do. They have every right to be aggrieved. However, if you are to handicap them for this tournament, you would be foolish to not consider that the distraction is harming their chances.
Unlike the USWNT four years ago who used their pay dispute with the USSF to drive them to the highest heights, Canada seems to be weighed down by this.
Hopefully they can prove me wrong here, but it would be a surprise if they did. They have a lot to overcome.
So they don’t need any more pressure put on them — pressure like having to go on a run so that Diana Matheson can sell soccer franchises for Project 8. I’m not sure that won’t happen, however.
Matheson was quoted to that effect in the Toronto Star this week. In talking to columnist Dave Feschuk (paywall), Matheson said “The longer Canada stays in the tournament, the more folks are talking about women’s soccer, it’s good for (Project 8).”
She’s not wrong, of course. However, she also wouldn’t need to make statements like that if the league was actually as close to reality as she bravely claims every time she does one of these interviews.
This particular interview is behind a paywall, but even if you don’t pay for The Star, you’ve read it before. Matheson covers all of the hits in the piece, talking about how big tv numbers at the Olympics show that people will watch women’s soccer, that there’s only so much time left to get in to the league on the ground floor and highlighting how much corporate support she already has.
Feschuk doesn’t challenge her — it’s an opinion piece, so he doesn’t really have to — and no one else is quoted in the article so we’ll have to take her word when she says the league is progressing well and that a fourth team will be announced soon.
As I’ve written before, I will believe that Project 8 is real when I hear from the people who have the money. Or, even, just anyone other than Matheson, really. It all still seems more like a dream than a business plan.
Regardless, I suspect this won’t be the only time we hear about Project 8 during Canada’s run in this tournament. In fact, it will likely be a major talking point throughout the next four weeks.
Hopefully, that talk will mostly stay away from the players in Australia. Removing as many distractions as possible might be the only way that we are able to see the type of momentum Matheson and Project 8 are hoping for.
We will start to see if the women can finally find that Olympic magic in a World Cup starting in about 24-hours from the time of writing. Look for daily writing on the tournament, while Canada is active.
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