It’s time for Canada’s Olympic heel turn

Open this photo in gallery:

It is a rite of Olympic passage that every local you meet wants to know where you’re from. That way, they get a quick sense of how annoying the conversation will be. Canada scores high on this metric.

“I love Canadians,” a cab driver said on the way to the stadium in Saint-Étienne, France. “Much better than Americans. Very simple.”

He was trying to be nice, but that’s the best he could come up with? ‘Simple?’

People say they like simple, but no one wants to date a simple guy. Not until they’ve struck out with a long series of complicated ones. You know who’s complicated? America. But that would be a big leap for us. Baby steps.

Argentina, for instance. It’s also a one-note country in terms of international reputation – excellent at soccer, love a good steak, and then I’m out of clichés.

Wherever Argentinian teams have gone in Paris, they’ve been booed. Part of that is down to Argentina beating France in the final of the last World Cup. Most of it is because, after a recent win, several Argentinian players were caught on video singing a derogatory song about the French.

There were “if I offended anyone” apologies from the players, but not from politicians back in Argentina. They were fine with it. Accused of racism, they shot back that they refused to be lectured by a “colonialist” country.

So France hates Argentina, and Argentina gets to be the black hat at the Paris Games. Does that make you just a little jealous? It may not be right, but sometimes it feels good to break a rule.

Right now, for a limited time only, Canada has a similar opportunity.

Canadian women’s soccer coach Bev Priestman apologizes for drone-spying scandal

Canada to appeal FIFA’s points deduction at women’s Olympic soccer tournament

Thanks to the timing, the trickle truthing and the sheer stupidity of the Canada Soccer cheating scandal, this isn’t going to be the Olympic team people sing songs about later. Individuals may be celebrated, but the team’s image is already set: corner-cutters and bureaucracy run amok. That’s unfair to everyone who doesn’t play soccer, but there you go.

The brunt of this falls on the women’s soccer team, as it should. It’s having different effects on different members of that squad.

After their defeat of France on Sunday, a few were showing the first doubts of those thinking of going over to the dark side. At least temporarily.

“It feels like it’s us against everyone right now,” team captain Jessie Fleming said.

Yes, exactly. That’s how that works.

“We’re not part of this, and we’re getting sanctioned like we were doping,” said the hero of that game, Vanessa Gilles.

Every good heel turn begins this way – with anger over perceived slights. Anger that becomes rage.

Once you get to the point of “nothing I do will ever be good enough for these people,” you are well on your way to becoming the bad guy.

Canada used to know how to celebrate its bad guys. The 1972 Summit Series team? Bad guys.

Which is to say good, as far as we were concerned. But watch Bobby Clarke breaking Valeri Kharlamov’s ankle.

Canadian assistant coach John Ferguson later said of that play: “I said to Bobby, ‘Try to tap that ankle of his and break it. It’ll slow him down.’” In the movie, this is a line the villain that you sort of like better than the hero delivers.

Now name three people off that team without thinking about it. They’re probably Paul Henderson, Phil Esposito and Clarke.

Henderson because he scored the goal, Esposito because he called Canadians a bunch of whiners, and Clarke for putting a Russian in the hospital. Two out of three bad guys.

In order to create an impression beyond beige and polite, every country’s teams need a little behavioural yin to their yang. All yang is tedious. And let’s be serious – Canada is 95- to 98-per-cent yang.

The other day, an Argentinian volleyball player was asked about the booing by reporters here in France. This isn’t his fight. But he said, “I’d rather have people for you and against you than sitting there bored.”

To this point, the Canadian women’s soccer team has been big news here. The further Canada goes, the more that will change.

The spying scandal goes from bad to worse for Canada Soccer’s Kevin Blue

If Canada beats Colombia on Wednesday, they’ll finish second in their group. Then it’s probably Germany, who they can beat. And then who knows? At the risk of a jinx, let’s say the whole way.

I cannot think of an instance in which an individual or team who has been penalized by a governing body for cheating at a Games, while those Games are going on, then wins gold at those same Games.

The closer the women’s team gets to that history, the more it will be news outside Canada. The more it is news, the more unpleasant it will get for Canada. More questions asked of non-soccer athletes. More columns. More coverage.

If the soccer team wins here, they will be the only competitors from our country anyone outside it remembers. They will also go down as one of the greatest Olympic bad guys ever. Right up there with the East German swim team. Back home, the damage from the drone scandal is already done. This mess will take months to sort through, if it ever is. Years, probably. In the interim, the rot that allowed it to happen will find other dark, wet places to take hold. Wherever there is status to be gained from winning, there will be people willing to debase themselves to get it.

Canada could spend the next two weeks here trying to be small, all the while apologizing.

Or, like the Argentinians, we can own it. Chin out a little further, daring someone to take a swing.

Canada has never done a heel turn at the Olympics. It would be a weird sort of thing to set out to do. But having put ourselves into this corner, why not lean into it? Dare people to say something. If they do, say something back.

It might be fun to see how it feels to be American, just for a little bit.

Follow the latest news and highlights from the Paris Olympic Games