It was the first hint that things might be changing. A girls’ soccer tournament in Canada that had next to no hype or promotion started to grab the attention of Canadians. It helped that the home team was pretty good -- Canadians love their teenage sports heroes, after all -- but, still, no one expected it to be as big as it was.
By the time Canada took on the USA in the final of the 2002 FIFA u19 girls tournament, the momentum was so much that Sportsnet had its biggest audience in its history (almost 1,000,000 viewers) and more than 50,000 showed up at Edmonton's Commonwealth Stadium to watch.
To say that it raised some eyebrows is more than a little bit of an understatement.
At the time, many were dismissive of a greater meaning. But now, almost eight years later, we can see that it was what started it all. It was the first sign of an emerging soccer demographic. Soccer in Canada is primarily a Generation X and Y demographic (along with the ex-pat crowd, of course). They grew up playing the sport and watching it every four years on TV. The 2002 u19s were the first chance for many to flex their muscle for Canada. Many would have been surprised that there were others like them that cared about the game domestically.
Had Christine Sinclair just managed to get the ball down about four inches in the extra time the day would have been perfect. But, history is about a lot more than the scoreboard, so maybe it was perfect regardless.
1 comments:
Good to recognize that the foundation of today's Canadian Men and club soccer successes were built in large part because of the success of the women's team.
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