The US women's soccer team doesn't instill 'the same level of fear' in opponents as it once did, Canada's Christine Sinclair says
- Soccer superstar Christine Sinclair has spent over two decades with Canada's women's national team.
- In that span, she has only beaten Canada's rival — the US women's national team — three times.
The US Women's National Team spent decades as the most-feared juggernaut in women's soccer.
But the tides may finally be turning on The Stars and Stripes, according to Canada women's soccer legend Christine Sinclair.
"Obviously, they won the last World Cup, but they don't have the same level of fear that they used to have," she told Insider last November. "I remember first joining the national team, and it was like, 'Oh my God, we're gonna lose 8-0.' But now teams are going and playing them expecting to win."
Sinclair — the world's all-time leading international goal scorer regardless of gender — has long been Canada's captain and has competed on the senior women's team for over 20 years. In that span, she and her compatriots have only beaten their neighbors to the South on three occasions.
So when she and her Canada teammates beat the United States 1-0 in the semifinals of the Tokyo Olympics, they considered it a massive accomplishment. In her memoir, "Playing the Long Game," Sinclair wrote that it "almost felt like we'd won a gold medal right there because we had knocked the Americans out."
And while she added that she has "so much respect for them," she noted that "the Americans always win. They're always number one." That became rather irksome for Canada and the many other nations forced to play a perpetual game of chase.
But, at long last, the rest of the world is closing that once-considerable gap. Though the USWNT still sits at the very top of FIFA's women's national team rankings, Sinclair cited the Americans' trio of losses late last year — to England, Spain, and Germany — as evidence that "they're beatable."
The 2023 World Cup in Australia and New Zealand has further underscored her point. The Americans narrowly survived the group stage, though they came within inches of suffering their earliest-ever defeat at a world championship tournament. And now, a nightmarish matchup against Sweden in their first match of the knockout stage appears all but certain.
But that's not necessarily a condemnation of the state of women's soccer in the US or the current players on head coach Vlatko Andonovski's roster. Instead, the Canadian legend suggests, it's a testament to the rest of the world's women's national teams finally catching up.
"It's at the point now within the women's game where the top six, the top eight [teams], everyone's beatable on any given day," Sinclair told Insider. "That's what makes the sport even more exciting now, is that heading into the World Cup, who knows who will win, right?"
"And whether you're a player, whether you're a fan, that's exciting," she added.
Even with a new women's soccer landscape that classifies the USWNT as a contender instead of the frontrunner — and with a shiny gold medal from the Tokyo Olympics under her belt — the sensational striker says she'll always cherish beating her North American rivals.
"My hunger to beat the US team I don't think will ever change," Sinclair said. "Especially being from Canada, we're always seen as like the little kid sister in everything."
"And if you wanna be the best," she added, "you gotta beat the best."
Canada fell in the group stage of this summer's World Cup — likely the last of Sinclair's illustrious career. The USWNT will play its first match of the knockout round on Sunday at 5 a.m. ET (7 p.m. local time) in Melbourne. Fans stateside can tune in to watch the action unfold on FOX.