It is a cruel joke that the woman around whom Canada’s soccer universe has revolved for 19 years is the one who doesn’t want the attention.
But Canada is out of the 2019 FIFA Women’s World Cup, having lost 1-0 to Sweden in the round of 16, and all everyone is talking about is Christine Sinclair, who’s just finished her fifth tournament, and the play she didn’t make.
It’s hard not to talk about Sinclair. Her incredible talent, historic success, with two Olympic bronze medals, and tantalizing nearness to the world international goalscoring record makes her a magnet for Canadians and women’s soccer fans of all stripes.
But predictions she’d break the record at this tournament didn’t mesh with the more supportive role she’s adopted in the team as a new generation of players developed. She’s not a player that has spent games this year camping out in the penalty area against inferior opponents trying to match Abby Wambach’s 184 goals — she has been the engine of a team that went ten games undefeated through defensive discipline. That risk-averse, locked-in shape gave Canada just a tense 1-0 win in the tournament opener against Cameroon. In the 2-0 victory against New Zealand, Sinclair’s own chances never landed but she assisted on Nichelle Prince’s goal. Her only marker of the tournament was an emphatic strike from the left-hand side, an equalizer before an eventual 2-1 loss to the Netherlands
So it’s not a surprise that as Canada seemed desperate for a lift, losing in a knockout round game against Sweden, when a penalty did come from a desperate Desiree Scott broadside, for Sinclair it was an obvious choice. In a shootout earlier this year in the Algarve Cup against the same keeper, Hedvig Lindahl, she was the only one who missed. Janine Beckie should take it.
“I don’t think I’ve ever seen Janine miss, and so I went up to her, and I’m like, it’s yours if you want it,” she said after the match. “I have all the trust in the world in her.”
This moment is pure Sinclair, as it illustrates the gap between how she sees her role and how she is viewed by Canadians, who instantly began to compare the moment to Wayne Gretzky being left on the bench for the men’s hockey team’s shootout loss in the semifinal of the 1998 Olympics. But unlike Nagano, this decision was hers. It never occurred to her to be a talisman; she analyzed the situation clinically and acted, what-ifs be damned. The shot, low and to the left, wasn’t anything to regret, she told the midfielder.
“I said after the game, did you shoot it where you wanted to?” she told interviewers. “Then you have to credit the keeper, she made a world class save, and you move on.”
The things we talk about when we talk about Sinclair — the possibility that this could be her final World Cup match, the record, how badly we wanted to see her dominate a game again — just weren’t front of mind to her. And at the end of the day, the penalty wasn’t why Canada lost.
“You get all the glory if it goes in and you take the blame, it feels like, if you miss, and that’ll stay with me for a long time,” Beckie said after the game. She doesn’t deserve that. The game slipped out of Canada’s fingers in a dozen other moments.
“Why is this their only good goalscoring opportunity, on a VAR-reviewed penalty? They couldn’t get a good goalscoring opportunity in the run of play,” former national-teamer Clare Rustad asked on TSN.
The saved penalty was one of only two attempts Canada had on-target, with nine more missing or blocked. Throughout the match, but especially in its agonizing, wrenching final seven minutes of added time, Canada had many great runs with no finish; either passes with no teammate to cover or wild shots that caromed wide of the goal. Adriana Leon and Jayde Riviere increased the tempo, but the resulting chances were desperate and wild. Crosses would fly into the box for Sinclair, but Sweden’s central defenders would rise to head clear each time.
“Their midfielders cannot strike from distance,” Rustad said. “It’s a glaring hole in the development of Canada Soccer right now, is that we’re not producing strikers who can strike the ball from distance, and who are consistently threatening against good teams.”
Up and down the park, Canada has disciplined and gifted players: Beckie, the American-born midfielder who plays for the love of her Canadian parents, Ashley Lawrence, playing in her club Paris Saint-Germain’s home ground Parc Des Princes, Stephanie Labbe, a hero of those Olympic runs who appeared in her first World Cup and kept her side in the game with key saves, and Riviere, who wowed against New Zealand and added freshness to the game on the right on her introduction in the 84th minute. To say nothing of Jordyn Huitema, the 18-year old who routinely substituted in for Sinclair in friendlies but didn’t see the field here. But they haven’t been able to seize control of games, and Sinclair doesn’t do that on her own any more.
She is ceding more space, more opportunities to the players who she will leave behind, when she chooses to; while it’s hard to imagine that moment coming before the 2020 Olympics in Tokyo, it’s hard to see her at the next edition of this tournament in four years. (Her eternal rival Marta, also having just completed her fifth World Cup for Brazil, gave an impassioned post-match interview Sunday that certainly sounded like a goodbye address.)
But we’re not ready for her to pass the torch just yet. We don’t want the pictures of Sinclair, eyes red with tears, to be our last memories of her on this stage. And they may not be — in that same interview, she talked about taking a brief break before returning to the NWSL’s Portland Thorns to win a championship. And there’s always those Olympics.
Until then, we are left with the heartbreak, and the sorrow that hangs around the goodbye to come.