“Look, three o’clock kickoff. Last time, it was a national holiday for them. And that time in Panama they had the fireworks show outside our hotel. It is always expected going down to those countries, and I think we now have the core group of guys who are used to that and it doesn’t play a factor anymore.”

No doubt there would have been questions about the exclusion of veteran Will Johnson, who has featured in a couple of Toronto FC matches since recovering from a broken leg — an injury suffered while scoring arguably the most dramatic goal in the history of the Voyageurs Cup.

The fact that such impressive performances were turned in by youngsters — from fullback Ashley Lawrence to midfielder Jessie Fleming to Beckie to Rose — bodes well for a program that, just four years before, was starved for young talent.

But some perspective — while watching the Canadian women’s team lose the Olympic semifinal sucks,this wasn’t nearly as bad as it was four years ago. There was no controversy around this 2-0 loss to Germany as there was in that infamous extra-time semifinal loss to the United States. There’s no referee to blame.

The news coming out of the Ottawa Fury camp isn't pretty; midfielder Julian de Guzman is expected to be out four to six weeks with a knee tendon issue. He was hurt in training last week.

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.