Ottawa has embraced Vanessa Gilles, with the gold medalist recently appearing at a Redblacks game and then performing the ceremonial puck drop before a Senators game.LISI NIESNER/Reuters
With the Ottawa Redblacks languishing in last place in the CFL’s East Division and the Ottawa Senators a little off the early NHL pace after a contract holdout with star forward Brady Tkachuk, it’s fair to say that sports in the Canadian capital could use a little boost.
A touch of gold, if you will.
That’s exactly what area native Vanessa Gilles and her Canadian women’s soccer teammates are hoping to do when they reunite at Ottawa’s TD Place on Saturday for a friendly match against New Zealand. The game kicks off a celebration tour for the Tokyo Olympic gold medalists, who will be playing their first game since their dramatic shootout win over Sweden in August.
For the players, the match will be a continuation of a week-long celebration, which has featured reunion dinners as well as being handed the key to the city by Ottawa Mayor Jim Watson on Wednesday.
But it’s possible no one has been celebrated more than Gilles, who was born in the Montreal suburb of Châteauguay and lived in Shanghai, where her father Denis worked in the hotel business, before her family relocated to Ottawa when she was 12.
It wasn’t long after that she got her first live taste of the Canadian national team – and some of her future teammates – as part of the crowd at the Lansdowne Park stadium.
“For me, it’s kind of a full-circle moment,” Gilles told a media videoconference earlier this week. “I remember Canada playing against Brazil … I was sitting in the stands at TD Place, thinking ‘I want to be there.’”
The central defender has certainly been there – and done it – since that day. A late starter in soccer, Gilles was a promising tennis player until she decided that the extensive weekly travel between Ottawa and Toronto for tournaments, as well as the rigours of an individual sport, weren’t for her.
But she quickly found a second sporting love in soccer, and found her feet playing for Ottawa’s FC Capital United before moving on to play in Europe, first in Cyprus with Apollon Limassol, and now with Bordeaux, where she has played the past three seasons. Her abilities and parentage – her father was born in Paris – attracted the attention of the French national team program, but after playing one game with the French under-23 team, Canada called, and she jumped at the chance.
Shortly after making her national team debut in late 2019 though, COVID-19 hit, so she went to Tokyo with just six national-team appearances to her name. But after forcing her way into the starting lineup for the final group-stage match against Britain, she played every minute from that point on as Canada ultimately captured a breakthrough gold.
Hot on the heels of that Yokohama final, the 25-year-old is now ready for another breakthrough moment in her career – playing a national team game on Canadian soil.
The team hasn’t played in Canada since beating Mexico 3-0 at BMO Field in Toronto in May 18, 2019, six months before Gilles made her debut. The 29 matches Canada has played since have all been played away from home.
“It’s kind of weird to have my first home game [as a Canadian team member] in Ottawa, in my actual home,” she said.
Ottawa has embraced its native daughter, with the gold medalist appearing at a Redblacks game last month and then performing the ceremonial puck drop before the Senators’ game against the Sharks on Thursday night. Predictably, the cheers for Gilles easily outstripped any for one of Ottawa’s prodigal sons, with Erik Karlsson taking the faceoff for San Jose. To top it all, Sept. 14, 2021, was officially declared Vanessa Gilles Day.
“I think what we’re very quickly learning, Vanessa is an absolute legend in Ottawa,” head coach Bev Priestman said on Friday.
Much like her celebrated defender, the Canadian head coach will also be making her debut on home soil on Saturday. Priestman said that the team has felt the love all week from the city of Ottawa, from the hotel lobby to chance encounters on the streets.
But while Priestman says she will do her best to feature as many of the 22 athletes who travelled to Tokyo to help Canada win gold, she has also drawn something of a line under that moment in time. So both Saturday’s game in Ottawa, followed by another game against New Zealand on Tuesday in Montreal, will help Priestman plan for the future.
“I said that to the players in the opening meeting. As much as they want to take in that gold-medal moment – and I do too – my job is to keep this team moving forward,” she said.
Canada coach Bev Priestman will be using the rest of this celebration tour to prepare for next summer’s CONCACAF W Championship.EDGAR SU/Reuters
Consequently, Priestman has called four players who weren’t part of the Olympic success into the squad, with Marie Levasseur, Victoria Pickett, Jade Rose and Nikayla Small. One person who won’t be part of the squad is Ashley Lawrence, who started every match at the Olympics, but had to withdraw because of injury.
One part of Canada’s evolution is an emphasis on more offence. Although Canada’s defence was resolute in Tokyo, giving up just four goals in six games, only three of the 12 participating countries scored fewer goals than Canada’s six.
But that doesn’t mean losing sight of Canada’s bread and butter.
“For sure we will be a clean-sheet team, we’ll aim to keep clean sheets, that’s who we are, that’s what got us on the podium,” Priestman said. “But at the same time, we know that we need to score more goals.”
Priestman and her players will never turn their noses up at a tightly fought win over the United States, for instance, but she conceded that Canada, ranked sixth in the world, has to start dominating some of the Tier 2 and Tier 3 countries, such as a 23rd-ranked New Zealand squad.
Far from resting on her laurels, it’s that kind of evolution that the English coach knows that her team will need to undergo to push on in its quest to add a World Cup to its Olympic crown. Priestman will be using the rest of this celebration tour, which will continue in the new year across Western Canada, to prepare for next summer’s CONCACAF W Championship, which will also double as the region’s qualifiers for the next World Cup, in New Zealand in 2023.
Having only once made it as far as the semi-finals at the World Cup – in 2003 – Priestman sounds more than ready to take on her latest challenge.
“I think I’m more hungry and motivated than I’ve ever been to make sure that we go now and do what we need to do to move towards succeeding in a World Cup, which this group hasn’t truly done yet.”