Maybe now, it’s time to believe in the work coach John Herdman and the women have put into this push for the podium. A gritty 1-0 quarter-final win over France wasn’t always pretty, there were some scares, but we know this — Canada can be called not just a medal threat, but a gold-medal threat.

Now, in the world of Canadian soccer fatalism, there will be those who treat this win like a loss; they’ll point to the tough draw. They’ll say Canada would have done better with a second- or third-place finish in the group. But that’s an anti-football mentality. It’s against everything we should hold dear about sport — you shouldn’t try to win by gaming the system, you should try to get to the top by beating all comers.

It’s an illustration of just how ridiculous the rules on yellow-card accumulation are. Two yellows over the space of several games in a tournament — really, it’s not worthy of a suspension.

Despite having defender Shelina Zadorsky sent off in the 18th minute, despite a penalty miss, the Canadian national women’s team opened the Olympic soccer tournament with a 2-0 win over the world No. 5-ranked Australians in Sao Paulo.

But, even though Canada didn’t look overmatched by the world’s No. 3-ranked women’s soccer nation, a series of key mistakes allowed the French to claim a 1-0 win.

When Erin McLeod went down with a career-threatening injury, Canada’s most-assured position — goalkeeper — became the biggest question mark heading into the 2016 Olympics. Who will emerge as Canada’s No. 1 choice heading into the Rio Games?

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“With Sabrina and the recovery on her injury, she’s in great hands,” said Herdman. “She’s got good medical care around her, she’s going to be working around the clock to fit the return-to-play plan, which has her arriving back on the pitch in around the July 20 mark. That’s an eight-week turnaround since (the injury), which is tight. She’s young, it’s not the hand that she’s fractured before, so there’s an anticipation she’ll turn around well as long as we manager her carefully..”

The Canadian women’s national team that faced Brazil on Saturday in Toronto was disjointed and deserved to lose. The Canadian women’s team that faced Brazil Tuesday in Ottawa was nothing like that.

This Canadian team deserved to lose by more. A lot more. And, without Erin McLeod in goal to bail the team out with a highlight reel worth of saves, you can’t help but feel that this team is scarily close to being on the wrong end of a pretty bad beating from one of the top-tier international opponents.