But, as Canada preps for the CONCACAF championships — this region’s qualifiers for the 2019 Women’s World Cup — maybe this scrappy 1-0 win was exactly the kind of game that was needed. The Brazilians hacked. They whacked.  The game had very little in terms of flow.

Canada's opening match of the Algarve Cup deserved a little more scrutiny than a non-televised national-team match would normally generate; that's because the error-filled 3-1 loss to Sweden Wednesday marked the beginning of the Kenneth Heiner-Moller era. 

If you didn't live through the 90 minutes, Canada Soccer has provided a fine highlights package that can help us all sleep well tonight. If you watch it, you'll see that Canada didn't lose 3-1 to the Americans Sunday night in San Jose; no, in fact we won, 1-0!

The number of players in NWSL who have their contracts subsidized by the Canadian Soccer Association continues to shrink.

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.

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.

Montreal is an event town. And that was shown to be true during the Women’s World Cup, where attendances were small for early games not involving the likes of Canada or the United States. But, when the games grew in importance, so did the crowds at Olympic Stadium