Burnaby’s Christine Sinclair, captain of the Canadian women’s national soccer team, is just 11 goals away from smashing the world record for most international goals. Sinclair scored the first goal at Sunday’s first home match of 2018 against Germany in Hamilton, Ont., her 173rd international goal.
Sinclair’s goal tied the game 1-1 in the 59th minute with a header over the keeper into an open net, and with a goal from teammate Jessie Fleming, Canada was up 2-1. But a minute later, Germany evened out the score to 2-2, and a final goal from the European team in the 84th minute meant a disappointing 3-2 loss for the Canadian women.
“The only thing we asked of these players was to leave everything on the pitch, and I think they did,” said Canadian women’s national team head coach Kenneth Heiner-Moller, calling his team “one incredibly resilient team.”
“We are obviously disappointed we lost and the way we started the game, but I think this is one of those games that we will be able to look back on and be proud of our performance and know we can build on it,” Sinclair said after the match. “We are in a good space as a team. If you look at the teams we have played this year, they’ve all been top teams in the world, and we have done pretty well. I think we are moving in the right direction and keep adding to our team, which is exciting. Tonight we took a new formation against one of the top teams in the world, and to walk away with the performance we did, it adds another dimension to our team and we will be heading into the upcoming qualifiers confident.”
The U.S.A.’s Abby Wombach holds the world record of 184 international goals.
