While I’m thinking about soccer, a headline from the Vancouver Courier irritated me this week. They had a lengthy and decent piece about Canada’s national women’s soccer team and their participation in the World Cup. The pull quote on the article read:
Women’s national soccer players like Christine Sinclair used to struggle for recognition-now they’re outperforming the senior men’s team and have their eyes on the Women’s World Cup.
This is a bit like saying your local softball team is outperforming the Mariners because your squad made the playoffs. The international women’s game is still in its infancy. Consider these facts:
- FIFA ranks 204 nations that have international men’s teams. They rank maybe 80 women’s teams.
- There have only been 3 women’s World Cups, the first one having occurred in 1991. The first men’s tournament occurred in 1930.
- Few women’s programs existed before 1985.
So, it’s like apples and oranges. The quotation is not only inaccurate and a little provocative, but it also does a disservice to our men’s team, who have toiled in obscurity for years.
Most of the rest of the world (and I mean the whole world here) has been producing soccer players for longer than Canada has been a country. While the English and the Germans were experimenting with a 4-2-4 setup, we were trapping beavers and building sod houses.
Don’t get the wrong idea here…I’ve actually watched the women’s teams’ games (so many plurals!). I’ve been a little disappointed with their effort, but hopefully they’re saying it for the next round (assuming they get past Japan tomorrow). For the reasons I’ve outlined above, the soccer isn’t as good as the men’s World Cup, but it’s still entertaining.
In truth, I actually love watching my nation compete in any sport. While living in Ireland, I got quite excited watching Canada compete (and, remarkably, win a game) in the World Cup of Cricket.
DarrenBarefoot.com 
Journalism like that irritates me as well. One that got my attention recently was a big thing on the cover of the National Post comparing the x million votes for the winner of Canadian Idol with the 132,000 votes for delegates that are “for” Paul Martin.
The headline completely ignores the fact that a) Anyone could vote for Canadian Idol while only card-carrying Liberal party members could vote for a delegate, and b) People could vote as many times as they wanted to for Canadian Idol whereas the Liberal members could only vote once. Irritating.
the women’s game is slow, it’s like div 2 in England but it gets hyped a lot when the women’s World Cup comes, partially due to our southern neighbours’ dominance in the sport.
The men’s team is slowly getting better, we did win the Gold Cup in 2000 which is the CONCACAF version of the European Cup…it’s a big thing in the footy world. We would do better if our players would play for our country instead of using their heritage to play for others (Hargreaves of Calgary and England) and if the coach was a better man-manager. Plus, the USA has all that Nike money and the World Cup hosting in 1994 got them some serious funding whereas the Canadian Soccer Association (CSA) is skint. Mind, aren’t all Canadian sports under funded?