Meanwhile, even though Alex Morgan — who scored the U.S. winner in that Olympic semifinal — plays for Portland, the Timbers are clearly Canada’s team. Christine Sinclair didn’t score in the Timbers come-from-behind 3-2 extra-time semifinal win over FC Kansas City, but Canada’s all-time leading scorer netted eight times for Timbers this season.

“We get reminded about it every time we bump into people in airports. People won’t leave it alone – it’s unreal,” said national coach John Herdman after a spirited practice in front of a few hundred fans on Thursday night.

As part of the 100th-issue celebration, I was tasked to find current and former members of the Canadian men's national team, and to simply ask them to talk about their favourite moments in international football.

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

And while many within the soccer community will say the Sinclair choice should have been an obvious one, there was one major distinction between Canada’s greatest soccer player and the rest of the field.

But, in FIFA’s eyes — they are both controversial figures. And if there is one thing we have learned about FIFA, black sheep rarely get recognized.

When the result of voting for FIFA’s women’s player of the year is revealed Jan. 7, it will be a referendum of sorts.

It was suffragist Nellie McClung who uttered one of the most famous lines in Canadian history “Never retract, never explain, never apologize--get the thing done and let them howl.” That statement could apply to Sinclair.

And maybe this is the problem with sport today — we have become far too quick to judge athletes who are frustrated when they lose. As journalists, we are such hypocrites — we want our subjects and interviews to give us as much colour as they can, to be as honest and emotional as possible, then, after the stories run, we go off and say “(s)he shouldn’t have said that to the media.”

“We wanted, heading into this tournament, to leave the sport in a better place than what it was when we got into it,” Sinclair said. “I could never have imagined this would happen.”