Martina Franko playing for the Los Angelos Sol 2009

Before our game against Sweden it was announced that win or lose we will advance to the quarterfinals of the Olympics. There was a huge cheer of excitement in our locker room as we heard the news. With the good news in the back of our minds we entered the Workers Stadium field in Beijing to another packed stadium of enthusiastic fans. We seemed to have a Canadian contingency of fans this time other than our 20 family members. During the game, I looked up high into the stands and saw a Chinese man wearing a Canadian flag like a cloak and leading a whole Chinese section to chant “Go Canada”. Normally I don’t notice these things while playing but it was a really loud chant for Canada so I had to look where it was coming from.

The match against Sweden was a good battle throughout the entire game. Being a defender, I felt we were a bit slow to react to the speed of the Swedish forwards in the first half. Sweden scored their first goal in the 19th minute when we allowed one of their forwards Svenson to break through the defense. Lotta Schelin picked up the scraps of the breakaway and put the ball in the net. Just minutes later, I thought Diana Matheson “D” was going to score for us when she got a breakaway almost exactly as Sweden had against us. Unfortunately their keeper made a great save to stop the goal. In the 2nd half, Sweden’s Schelin scored her 2nd goal of the game off of a beautiful cross in the box. We continued to put the pressure on and Melissa Tancredi  ”Tanc” scored off of a pretty diving header. All in all, it was a rough game with a lot of goal chances on both sides. We never let up on the Swedes, but unfortunately came out with one goal down.

When the game finished, we discovered that we will be playing the US in Shanghai for the quarterfinals. We are so pumped for the rematch. We are ready and excited for the battle. We leave tomorrow, or more like today, in about 7 hours to fly to Shanghai.

 I am looking forward to being back in a hotel versus the Olympic Village.  What an unforgettable experience it is to be in the Olympic Village, but the last three days have been tiresome rather than relaxing preparing for our match against Sweden.  On a match day, we usually eat four times and the dining hall is about a 15 minute walk each way in 35 degree heat.  Repeat that four times and it’s a bit draining.  I was envious of athletes that have rented little cruiser bikes to get around the village.  We plan to find some bikes for our team when we return to the village on the 16th.

We tied China 1-1 last night in front of a startling crowd of 52,600 people at the Tianjin Olympic Stadium. During our Canadian anthem I almost forgot about the crowd as we were all signing. Then came the Chinese anthem and I have never heard anything so unified and powerful that it gave me the chills even in the 35 degree heat. I knew this was going to be one of the most memorable games of my life. And, I was right. The game started off very even with both teams getting goal chances. We picked up the pace and started running China into the ground. We could feel that that China was getting tired early on in the first half. Christine Sinclair scored on a perfectly timed ball behind the defense by Kara Lang and we were in the lead at 34 minutes into the game. Despite being so cautious not to let China retaliate, they managed to scored within 5 minutes after our goal. A minute later, Rhian almost scored, but hit the crossbar on a beautiful long shot. As we continued to dominate the second half with numerous chances on goal, we were denied a second goal. I think this game leaves us unsatisfied since we didn’t win and will make us hungry for goals in our next game against Sweden on the Aug. 12th. It was an amazing feeling to play a fantastic soccer match in front of such an enthusiastic crowd.

We won our first game of the Olympics tonight 2-1 over Argentina. It was hot (35degrees), muggy, and polluted evening in the Tianjin Olympic Stadium.  I looked as if I had taken a shower in my uniform before the game even started.  You could see the dim haze of pollution in the air that was magnified by the stadium lights.  We had a shaky and ugly start to the game as we couldn’t seem to link any good passes together and we allowed Argentina to play too much. We got our act together and started pressuring hard against Argentina. Chappy (Candace Chapman) scored our first goal (the first Olympic goal of Canadian women’s soccer history) off a rocket shot outside the goalie box.   We had a lot of other chances before Kara Lang scored in the second half on a beautiful near post header. We had one breakdown in the second half and Argentina hit an unstoppable shot that hit the upper corner of the goal. I had one goal chance in the last minute of the game and I hit the post. Frustrating.

The atmosphere in the Tianjin Olympic Stadium was amazing. The stadium is absolutely enormous and there were about 25,000 fans scattered throughout. The first half, the crowd was surprisingly silent. Normally you can’t hear the player next to you yelling with a crowd that big, but this time you could almost hear a pin drop. The second half was a different story. The game became more entertaining and the crowd really got into it. Also, by the end of the game there was more like 40,000 fans total that came in for the double header with China. Our next game is going to be exciting against China with all those fans.

We spent 3 days in the dream world of the Olympic Village. The words “Dream World” are even written on the sewer covers throughout the village. It’s a perfect analogy. It’s a world where everything is taken care of for you. There are so many Chinese volunteers eager to help you with anything. I haven’t lifted a piece of luggage since we’ve arrived. There’s someone waiting to throw your trash away for you at the cafeteria. After running on the treadmill at the gym I went looking for those disinfectant spray bottles and when I came back empty handed there was a volunteer wiping off my sweat from the treadmill. Not only is everything taken care of for us, everything in the village is free. Most excitingly, there is a café where you can get any coffee of your liking for free. There is also a McDonalds next door to the café, for free. It takes a lot of will power for some athletes to stay away from those cheese burgers. Previous Olympic athletes have warned me that you have to be careful of gaining weight during the month, and I didn’t believe it until I saw all the delicious food and treats that tempt you at the cafeteria. It’s a good thing that the salad bar is amazing and it’s makes a great meal in itself. We also have a coke key that we swipe at any vending machine and a drink of your choice comes out. My favorite gift we’ve received is probably the Samsung phone that is meant for “emergencies”.

Yesterday we bused from Beijing to our game site of Tianjin. I had heard that they were minimizing traffic in China by only allowing people to drive on odd or even days depending on their license plate. To our surprise, they actually closed the highway completely for us. The communication must be impeccable between the officials. As we merged onto the freeway there was a traffic jam of cars behind us. They must have been there for a while because there were people out of there cars wondering what the hold up was about. So, we merged onto the freeway with our police escort with not a car in front of us and we were on our way. The entire 2 hour trip to Tianjin we did not see another car. All the exits were closed. I was shocked and actually felt wrong for causing such a traffic jam. We horrified our Chinese escorts by forcing them to pull over for a bathroom break on the side of the highway.