When FIFA deducted six points from Canada’s women’s soccer team, it left them with only a sliver of a chance to advance at the Paris 2024 Olympics.
Canada needed to be perfect in the group stage or they’d be going home.
Well, perfection it was for our Canadian women, who have beaten New Zealand, France, and Colombia, which is good enough to get them to the knockout round.
Players’ reactions after today’s 1-0 win over Colombia appeared to be more relief than jubilation. Defender Vanessa Gilles was the hero again, just as she was against France, scoring the lone goal in the victory.
🇨🇦🇨🇦🇨🇦 1-0 CANADA 🇨🇦🇨🇦🇨🇦
Vanessa Gilles gets the goal pic.twitter.com/7WjusNOCwg
— Rob Williams (@RobTheHockeyGuy) July 31, 2024
“It feels incredible,” Gilles said in the post-match interview with CBC. “It’s been a hard couple days, but right now I’m feeling an immense amount of pride for the players here, for the staff that are grinding it out, having to do three different jobs.”
The players fought through off-field distractions due to the drone scandal and are pushing through without their head coach and other support staff. They’ve had to deal with it all through no fault of their own.
“The world is against us,” Gilles said.
Despite that, she says support from back home never wavered. The 28-year-old from Ottawa says she’s received more messages in the past week than she did during Canada’s gold medal triumph in Tokyo three years ago.
“The world might be against us, but Canada’s sticking together, and hopefully, we go all the way.”
The path to gold will not be easy. In Saturday’s quarter-final, Canada will play No. 4 ranked Germany at 1 pm ET/10 am PT. The winner of that match will play the winner of USA-Japan.
“We’re still Canadian. We always felt the support,” Gilles said. “I’ve never gotten so many messages from Canadians who believed in us, who supported us. Canadians who have let us know how inspiring we were in the France game. How inspired they’ve been watching us play these past few games, which, at the end of the day, is why we do it.
“Those messages of support, I’ve gotten more messages just this group stage than I have even winning a gold medal. The world is against us, Canada sticks together. That’s the values we have in this group. When adversity and pressure comes, we really rely on each other.”
“When adversity and pressure comes, we really rely on each other” 🇨🇦
Vanessa Gilles scored her second goal of #Paris2024 in Canada’s 1-0 win over Colombia to help the defending Olympic champions advance to the quarterfinals in women’s soccer pic.twitter.com/IoAKyUu7BJ
— CBC Olympics (@CBCOlympics) July 31, 2024