Opponents of the plan to play next year’s FIFA Women’s World Cup on artificial turf argue that the surface changes the way the game is played. Whether or not that’s true, the turf at BC Place didn’t prevent Canada and Japan from playing a thrilling match on Tuesday night.
Japan won 3-2 after both teams exchanged goals in stoppage time. Canada tied the match at two when Abbotsford native Sophie Schmidt drove home a rebound that Japanese defenders couldn’t clear off the goal line.
Japan answered less than a minute later, however, when Aya Sameshima collected the ball behind the Canadian defense and rolled it past a diving Stephanie Labbé and into the left corner of the goal.
After the match, Canada head coach John Herdman said he was pleased with the team’s performance, despite the result.
“We’re starting to see a different Canada now,” he said. “At times, we were able to take it to Japan.”
Herdman compared Tuesday’s performance to the team’s 2-1 loss to Japan in the 2012 Olympics, when Canada managed only three shots.
“Tonight we had 12 shots,” he said. “We had 24 ‘final acts’ -- crosses and shots. We actually out-crossed and out-shot the world champions, for the first time in our careers.”
Tuesday’s match was Canada’s second against Japan in the last four days. The teams met Saturday in Edmonton, where Japan won 3-0.
BC Place and Edmonton’s Commonwealth Stadium are two of the six venues for next year’s World Cup. BC Place is scheduled to host the final match in July.
In recent months, FIFA and the Canadian Soccer Association have been widely criticized for their decision to stage the 52-match tournament exclusively in stadiums with artificial turf playing fields.
Lawyers representing a group of “at least 60” female players from nine countries -- though notably not Canada -- filed a lawsuit with the Ontario Human Rights Tribunal earlier this month. They argue that holding the World Cup on turf is gender discrimination.
The heart of the players’ contention is that the powers that be in world soccer would never make male players play the World Cup on artificial turf, and they’re almost certainly right about that. No World Cup -- men’s or women’s -- has ever been played on grass, and stadium operators routinely lay out temporary grass fields for meaningless exhibition matches involving elite male players.
The lawsuit also claims that artificial turf causes more injuries and changes the way the game is played. In Canada, at least, there’s some debate about that.
After Tuesday’s match, Schmidt said she didn’t think the turf at BC Place had any effect on the game.
“To be honest, I don’t notice a difference,” she said. “We play on it so regularly that it’s just another game. For me, as a Canadian, growing up, it’s something I’ve experienced throughout the years.”
In addition to scoring Canada’s second goal, Schmidt created the first, which went down as an own-goal scored by Japan’s Mizuho Sakaguchi.
Schmidt took a corner kick in the 57th minute and passed it to Christine Sinclair just inside the Japanese penalty box. Sinclair returned the pass to Schmidt, who took a shot that looked like it was headed for the far post before it bounced off the head of Sakaguchi and into the net. On a different night, the play might have been scored as a goal for Schmidt.
“I celebrated like it was mine,” she said. “I didn’t know it was an own goal.”
That goal tied the match at one after Asano Nagasato had put Japan ahead in the 33rd minute with a 22-yard rocket of a shot that smacked the underside of the crossbar on its way into the net.
Yuki Ogimi restored Japan’s lead in the 77th minute when she volleyed a misplayed clearance over the Canadian goalkeeper Labbé.
Ogimi, who plays professionally in England and is one of the 60 players listed in the turf lawsuit, had a different take on the playing surface after the match.
“It’s so hard for the muscles,” she said. “Normally, we can play on the grass for 90 minutes and not be so tired, but on the turf, earlier we will be tired, so we have to manage the movement and everything.”
The story of the 2015 World Cup won’t be about what the field is made out of, but what teams do on top of it. If Canada can continue to improve on the way it played Tuesday night, Herdman believes that story will have a happy ending.
“The team looked like a true Canadian team that can go on and win the World cup,” he said. “We’ve got a decent chance.”
