(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. 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.”
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.”
Classy move Canada, blame the refs for your failures. Did you see us bitching and moaning when we lost in OT of the men’s hockey Gold Medal game? No. We accepted it and moved on because we know that we are, always have been, and always will be better than you. Period. Sure, you might have one sport, in men’s hockey, that once every 4 years your nation can rally around in hopes that you (should) bring home the gold. Here’s a fun fact: You’ve only managed to win Gold at the Olympics TWICE in the past 56 years. That’s the EXACT SAME number of times the USA has also won gold in the same amount of time. Let’s take a second to let that sink in……….. good. Just face it Canada, you will always be an after thought to us. Want me to list some the countries that have more Gold medals than Canada right now? Ethipoia, Croatia, Belarus, fucking IRAN. You get the picture? Stick to what you’re good at Canada; sending your Canadian-born hockey players to win Stanley Cups for our American cities.
No way in hell do we lose to those Japs again. They might as well not even show up. But in the end, it’s still women’s soccer.
- Kinger
Maple syrup goes well with sour grapes.