No cryin' for Argentina
But Canada's play may be worth a few tears despite first-ever World Cup win
By TERRY JONES -- Edmonton Sun
COLUMBUS, Ohio -- Don't expect the true north strong and free to cry for thee, Argentina. Our northern girls' makeup is already running for Canada.
Finally, Canada gets a World Cup win.
But there are no bells ringing out. Those are sirens. And alarms.
Canada had never won a World Cup soccer game before - men or women - and finally the great day arrived and Canada left the scene looking a lot like their team bus had crashed.
And they won 3-0.
I don't know what happened to the Canadian club we've been watching for the past year, but so far they've put on a sorry show at the biggest show in their sport.
"We played well below our standard,'' said Kristine Kiss. "We should be happy because we won, but it was such a lacklustre performance, nobody is celebrating in our locker room.
"We really have to pick it up. If we played Japan (last night), there's no way we would have won.''
Canada took to the pitch here last night needing to match Japan's 6-0 win over Argentina and ended up almost setting a match to themselves.
In the end, Canada scored a couple of late goals to secure the win and move on to a winner-goes-through game against the Japanese Saturday afternoon in Boston.
But the Canadians didn't just need to beat Argentina. They needed to win big. And they needed to build some belief after laying an egg against Germany in the opener.
They didn't do either.
"We hoped to score more in the first half so we could relax and play more of our game,'' said Canadian coach Even Pellerud.
Argentina, first-timers at the World Cup, ranked No. 35 in the world, four spots back of Mexico, a team Canada had defeated 8-0 in Edmonton and 6-0 in Vancouver on the road to this World Cup, actually out-chanced the Canadians in the first half.
Canada was hesitant and looked to have no clue what it was actually trying to do.
"It was hard to watch,'' said Pellerud. "It's not the Canadian team we've been watching before. It was a very hard game to watch from the bench.''
Mariela Cronel hauled down Christine Latham in the box to provide Canada with a 1-0 lead on a penalty kick goal by Charmaine Hooper, but the Canadian play was otherwise painful for prolonged periods.
It took until the 79th minute for Canada to at least seize some security of actually winning the game. Lang crossed one to Latham in the box, which Argentine keeper Romina Ferroo saved but the Calgary striker managed to get a right foot on her rebound to make it 2-0.
Two minutes later and Latham had another one. But there wasn't time to run up the score.
With Japan losing 3-0 to Germany in the first game of the double-header, the Canadians knew the lay of the land going into their game. They knew exactly the number of goals they needed against Argentina if they were to win the point differential with Japan - six.
By failing to get to six, Japan goes through to the quarter-finals in the event of a tie with Canada.
A week ago, Canada was favoured to get through this group with a relative ease.
Not now.
There's every appearance that the wheels have fallen off Pellerud's team when it matters most.
Canada goes into the game with Japan having impressed nobody. Japan goes in as more of a curiosity.
