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Friday night on Vancouver Island, the most prolific player in Canadian soccer history begins the final leg of her farewell tour.
Christine Sinclair, the longtime captain of Canada’s Olympic-champion women’s national team and the all-time leading goal scorer in all of international soccer, will play in a pair of exhibition matches over five days near her hometown of Burnaby, B.C., and then retire from the Canadian team.
Sinclair’s last waltz starts Friday night against Australia in Langford, B.C., and finishes Tuesday night vs. the Aussies at Vancouver’s BC Place Stadium. The first match, at 6,000-seat Starlight Stadium, is sold out, while more than 40,000 tickets have reportedly been sold for Sinclair’s final curtain call at one of Canada’s largest venues, which will be temporarily renamed Christine Sinclair Place for the occasion.
Sinclair, 40, joined the senior national team in 2000, when she was just 16, and scored three goals in her first tournament. She went on to play in 329 matches for Canada and pile up 190 international goals — more than Cristiano Ronaldo, Lionel Messi, Pelé, Abby Wambach, Mia Hamm or any other soccer player in history. Sinclair has appeared in six of the nine Women’s World Cups held to date, helping Canada reach the semifinals in 2003 in the United States and the quarterfinals in 2015 in Canada.
Sinclair does not seek the spotlight, but her potent blend of talent, toughness and determination grabbed Canadians’ attention at the 2011 World Cup in Germany, where she scored on a brilliant free kick in front of more than 70,000 fans in Canada’s opener against the host team. Turned out, her nose had been broken earlier in the match by an elbow, and she played the rest of Canada’s matches with a scary-looking mask on her face.
Like her Canadian team, Sinclair’s greatest achievements came in the Olympics. She played in four of them and scored 12 times, leading Canada to back-to-back bronze medals in 2012 and ’16 before playing more of a complementary role in the thrilling gold-medal victory in 2021 in Tokyo.
WATCH | CanWNT players pay tribute to Christine Sinclair:
Featured VideoJessie Fleming, Cloé Lacasse, Vanessa Gilles, and Ashley Lawrence share stories about Christine Sinclair through the years.
The captain’s signature moment came at the 2012 Games in London, where, after scoring in a playoff win over host Great Britain, Sinclair led her team into a semifinal showdown with the mighty United States at storied Old Trafford. In one of the greatest women’s soccer games ever played, Sinclair scored a hat trick to put her team on the verge of a massive upset with about 20 minutes left. But a controversial call against Canadian goalkeeper Erin McLeod for wasting time led to the Americans tying the game and, ultimately, winning it 4-3 on Alex Morgan’s header in the dying moments of extra time.
Devastated by the loss and enraged by the ref’s call, the Canadians somehow pulled it together three days later to beat France in the bronze match for the country’s first-ever Olympic soccer medal.
Sinclair finished with a tournament-high six goals and a few months later became the first soccer player to win the Lou Marsh Trophy for Canadian athlete of the year.
Sinclair added three more goals at the 2016 Olympics, including what turned out to be the decisive goal in a 2-1 bronze-medal win over host Brazil. In Tokyo, she managed just one goal, in the group stage, and was the only Canadian to miss in the penalty shootout that decided the quarterfinal vs. Brazil. When she was not chosen for the gold-medal shootout against Sweden, it was clear that the end was getting near.
“After Tokyo, deep down inside, I knew I didn’t want to play [in 2024] in Paris,” Sinclair told The Canadian Press upon announcing her upcoming retirement from the national team (she plans to play one more season for the NWSL’s Portland Thorns). “The way the Tokyo Olympics ended, you can’t beat it.”
Indeed, Sinclair’s final year with the national team has not been a happy one. She and her teammates spent much of 2023 fighting with Canada Soccer for more equitable treatment and a new labour deal, which they still don’t have. The Women’s World Cup was a disaster for the Olympic champs, who got shut out in two of their three matches and failed to advance out of their group after a hollow 4-0 loss to host Australia in a do-or-die scenario. Unable to play more than a part-time role, Sinclair finished the tournament without a goal for the first time.
But there was still time to end on a high note, and Sinclair paved the way for a smoother passing of the torch by helping Canada qualify for next summer’s Olympics in Paris with a playoff victory over Jamaica in September. When she confirmed last month that she wouldn’t be sticking around to help Canada defend its gold, it touched off a wave of appreciative tributes from her teammates, Canadian soccer fans and even her international foes.
Now it’s time for Sinclair to say goodbye. And for Canada to give its final rounds of applause for one of the finest athletes it has ever seen.
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