Christine Sinclair came back from suspension, and promptly scored a winning goal.

“We’ll see what it evolves into,” Abrams continued. “It’s also a process of learning about teams and the great players of the past. This phase of it is sort of a tribute to these players. They are important cultural figures for our time. There’s a beauty in their movements and in the colours that they wear and what it represents to us as we’re watching.”

Coach John Herdman has announced the national women’s team roster for the pre-camp ahead of the 2013 Cyprus Cup.

While the four members of the Canadian women’s national team who were in Edmonton Monday will all soon head Stateside to report to their NWSL teams, they still dream of playing pro soccer in their home and native land.

“We were in China (for the Yongchuan Cup), so we didn’t find out live,” said LeBlanc, who was on a media conference call Tuesday promoting her upcoming visit to Edmonton with national teammates Christine Sinclair, Rhian Wilkinson and Diana Matheson. “But we all looked at our e-mail to find out where we were going, and then the trash talking started right away.”

Christine Sinclair, Canada’s all-time leading goal scorer and perennial automatic for the national Women’s Player of the Year award, will be going to Portland Thorns FC.

Seven players who have yet to play a senior “A” match for the women’s national team have been named to what has to be called an experimental Canadian roster ahead of the Yongchuan Cup.

So we went under the website’s hood and looked at the analytics. And, we were able to rank our 11 most-read stories of the year. Now, we present them in order.

“The emblem of a competition is an important step on the road to the first game,” said FIFA President Sepp Blatter in a message that was recorded for the launch event.

Christine Sinclair has won the Lou Marsh Award as Canada’s top athlete of 2012.