I hope nobody experienced the University of Victoria Vikes - Vancouver Whitecaps match on Sunday as their first ever soccer game. Holy crap was that a dog; 90 minutes of pure boredom (or 89 minutes of pure boredom if you trust the scoreboard).

The Whitecaps started a second-rate eleven: trialists Greg Klazura and Nuru Sulley both started on the back end. First overall picks Omar Salgado and Darren Mattocks went up front, which looks bloody impressive on paper, and old Railhawks like Brad Knighton, Matt Watson, and Jun Marques Davidson got their chance. The lineup was rounded out by left back Jordan Harvey, centre back Carlyle Mitchell, midfielder/captain Davide Chiumiento, and midfielder Gershon Koffie. It was decidedly a second eleven but not exactly weak, not even compared to the defending CIS champions.

Vancouver held possession, never looked like losing, and got far more chances than they gave up. The lack of chemistry between some of the players was obvious and Victoria's gritty defending and superior team effort meant they gave the Whitecaps a competitive game, but I think everyone agreed who the superior side was.

However, the Whitecaps lacked an attacking mentality and were let down by their forwards. Chiumiento was the only guy determined to go on the attack and even he got bored half an hour in. Klazura, of all people, was the next-most audacious player and did a lovely job setting up Watson's eventual winning goal. Beyond that, the team spent most of its time holding possession but wasting it and getting involved in a chippy tick-tack tackle-fest with the Vikes on the abysmal grass of Centennial Stadium.

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Canada walked into BC Place last night expected to beat the Costa Ricans and instead, they kicked the holy hell out of them. Don't let Fernanda Barrantes's pride-salvaging goal in garbage time fool you: this was Canada's game from kickoff until they decided not to worry about it.

Another brace from Christine Sinclair (ho-hum) plus a few fine defensive plays in the second half (what?). Kaylyn Kyle and Sophie Schmidt finally got the monkeys off their backs by trundling in blue-collar goals after frittering away chances in the first two games, and there was even an embarrassing own goal for good measure. Canada romped through the game then took their foot off the gas pedal, conserving energy and secure in the knowledge that the Costa Ricans would never get enough. Barrantes's goal was excellent, but it was just one in a sequence.

Did that game answer your questions? Canada handled the Costa Ricans and got goals from a variety of players. Sinclair was the maestro, of course, but both Schmidt and Kyle deserve loads of credit. Kelly Parker and Christina Julien also had good chances while Brittany Timko had a goal called back offside by an eyelash. There was a good team effort which was not perfect but all the same was at a very high calibre.

Before the tournament, John Herdman said goal number one was to finish top of the group. Done. Goal number two awaits: a semi-final match against the loser of tonight's United States - Mexico tilt. That almost certainly means Mexico, who are on good form and will give Canada a tough time. But Big Red will be favourites, and they just put in a performance worthy of it.

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I'm sure Canada's 2-0 win over Cuba was much more frustrating on television than in person. The Cubans put ten women behind the ball from the start, the Canadians had a bevy of scoring chances, they got one goal from the spot and and one goal from the run of play, and that was it. A Cuban team that made Haiti look competitive got away with a relatively decent 2-0 defeat.

Canadian fans are worried, because we're Canadian fans and that's what we do. "Too much of the offense goes through Christine Sinclair!" "We couldn't break down a team that terrible!" "We beat Cuba 2-0; the Americans beat a higher-ranked Dominican Republic team by 14. We're fucked."

Well, Canada was playing the middle leg of a three-games-in-five-days stretch. They rested a number of key players. Canada's three best players, in my books, are Sinclair, Sophie Schmidt, and Candace Chapman: they went 45 minutes, 45 minutes, and no minutes respectively. Alyscha Mottershead and Chelsea Stewart both made their first starts for their country. Canada hit crossbars, had shots that would go in four times out of five slip wide, and put in their fair share of scoring chances despite playing at two-thirds speed against an opponent bunkering for ninety minutes. There was never, ever, and I mean not for one minute, any doubt that Canada would win the game.

Canada wasn't perfect last night. Their performance on set pieces was miserable. They could have worked it wide a little more aggressively, could have gotten the fullbacks more involved for the first hour. Their intensity level was low to match the quality of their opposition. Oh, well. Canada won, they looked fine doing it, and now a draw against Costa Rica still hands Canada first place in Group A.

We all wanted Canada to win by a couple of touchdowns, to make the Americans sit up and take notice of us as we took notice of them. Instead, Canada handed in a dominant but unspectacular performance. Oh well. Ultimately, the performance against schmucks like this isn't what matters: Canada's failure to finish their chances against a hell-bent-for-leather bunkering Cuban team doesn't indicate what they'll do against a Mexican or American team that actually wants to play some soccer. They got the required result; that will do.

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"It was perfect."

That was Canadian captain Christine Sinclair describing her goal-of-the-year candidate on a masterful set-up by veteran Melissa Tancredi. But she could have describing a lot more: a powerful 6-0 win, her own four-goal performance, a crowd that was a little short in numbers but way over the top in energy and enthusiasm. The first Western Canadian game for a Canadian national team in three and a half years could never have been worth the wait. But by god, those women did their best.

Canada's 6-0 win over Haiti was exactly what the world expected and Christine Sinclair's four goals was merely one more confirmation of her excellence. It silenced no doubters and heartened no boosters. But it was a tremendous show as the women, playing Vancouver's first international soccer game in more than half a decade, totally lived up to expectations in a way that so many of our teams don't.

We were against inferiors in borrowed equipment, the classic plucky underdogs who from kickoff were running hard, looking for a heartening result for a country that so badly needed something to cheer for. The movie script declared that Haiti, who played with pluck, courage, and near-constant effort, would at least get some moral victory. Instead they got a total trouncing, a potentially life-altering injury, and last place in Group A.

I can understand those watching on television not getting too excited about Canada beating the hell out of such a third-rate team. But as I said yesterday, this was about the occasion as much as the game. The occasion was fantastic, and then the players made sure it counted. I'm still walking on air.

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Not to brag, but it takes a certain kind of insanity to head down to Seattle the weekend before Christmas and watch teenagers play soccer.

The Vancouver Whitecaps Residency's trip to Tukwila to take on the hometown Seattle Sounders Academy was the last chance a Vancouverite had to see high-level soccer in Cascadia before the CONCACAF Women's Olympic Qualifiers. The results were mixed: the U-18 team dominated Seattle almost from kickoff. Vancouver leading scorer Caleb Clarke, exhausted from Canadian U-20 camp and an illness, could have had a hat trick within twenty minutes if his sights had been straight while only a few mistakes on the final ball prevented the Whitecaps from knocking in several goals. Seattle showed something for the first ten minutes of the second half, including getting a goal that (from my angle, which wasn't the best) didn't cross the line. But the Whitecaps finally finished one off in the last ten minutes through Carlos Marquez, got another from Yassin Essa on the break as Seattle went for an equalizer, and it was over.

The U-16 team lost ugly, looking a step behind from kickoff, getting worse through the first half, and picking up a bit in the second while still being decidedly inferior. The Whitecaps looked exhausted; the Sounders were bigger, stronger, and older. Only the heroics of Vancouver U-16 goalkeeper Marco Carducci kept Seattle from winning by a converted touchdown, and so impressed was I by his magnificent saves that I make him man of the match despite conceding four goals.

I've seen this game referred to, and even referred to it myself, as a "rivalry match". The Sounders put the word out to the Emerald City Supporters to cheer their boys against the hated enemy (and a few dozen put on their usual "the sort of thing you'll like if you like that sort of thing" song and dance). However, the youth wings of the Sounders and the Whitecaps have almost no history against each other: the Sounders don't play USL PDL and this is the Whitecaps' first year in the USSDA. The only time I can remember the Whitecaps and Sounders youths playing each other was at March's Supporters Summit, where their U-18s beat ours on the same field.

It was, however, a fun time, two games that made two sets of supporters very happy at different times, and a demonstration of how far elite developmental soccer has come.

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Today is a good day to be an optimist. The Canadian national team beat St. Kitts and Nevis handily, 4-0, at BMO Field. Dwayne De Rosario tied Dale Mitchell's record as the all-time leading scorer in Canadian men's national team history. There was an early scare when Ian Lake thwacked a shot off Kenny Stamatopoulos's goalpost but for the most part Canada was well in control. By the end of the game the St. Kitts players, particularly goalkeeper Akil Byron, were visibly decomposing; frustrated and heart-broken, they were playing soccer and looking for their goals (to their credit) but quickly gave into petulant, late tackles, pantomime fighting displays, and aimless runs with the ball as far as they could go as if they were too disheartened to try and beat Canada at their own game.

Some fringe Canadians showed very well. Tosaint Ricketts got his first start for his country and was an endless thorn in St. Kitts's side: generating dangerous chances with his speed and footwork, drawing a penalty, and eventually scoring another garbage time goal. Adam Straith and David Edgar (one ugly turnover aside) continued to impress, while Nik Ledgerwood beat (modest) expectations at right back. On the other hand, Dwayne De Rosario continues to look completely out of his depth in any international competition, the erratic Josh Simpson looked worse, and Patrice Bernier seemed old, tired, and not quite up to this level anymore. Canada's team defense continued to look pretty good except when it gave up sudden awful chances that will presumably burn us against decent opposition.

It was a generic good game. So no, I do not suddenly think that we're going to qualify for the hex. My pessimism remains unabated and I'll tell you why.

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Canada probably played well in our away match against St. Lucia; we don't know since we didn't see it but the 7-0 scoreline certainly suggests that we controlled the run of play. We certainly played well during the second half against Puerto Rico; not brilliantly but I'd say that if we played that well against Honduras we'd probably draw. Hooray.

Against this, Canada played terribly for ninety minutes at home against a Puerto Rican team that was willing to sit back and absorb everything we threw at them. We played badly for ninety minutes at home against St. Lucia, one of the worst national teams in the world. We played badly for the first half of that match in Puerto Rico. We played badly for almost every minute of the 2011 Gold Cup where we were eliminated in the group stage, although that hour where the United States was sitting back lazily and letting us waste ourselves against Tim Howard weren't as terrible as most of them. Now we've played another awful minutes away to St. Kitts and Nevis. They weren't bunkering like Puerto Rico. They were going on the attack and looking for a vital win in front of their home fans. Yet we played their game, and played it terribly, and got out with a 0-0 draw to a team that earlier drew at home to St. Lucia, whose most dangerous forward was a 39-year-old from the Indonesian league, and which has an Elo ranking of 161.

Canada has advanced from the second round of World Cup qualifying. Against a group of the most astonishing minnows ever aggregated into our attention, we have proven that we're basically better than them. We have established our margin of slight superiority over Puerto Rico, which is not a country. We have shown St. Lucia, which has about the population of Richmond, that we are generally better at soccer than they are. And we've shown St. Kitts and Nevis, which has the GDP per capita of Libya and a smaller population than St. Albert, Alberta, that on a soccer pitch we are their equals.

After one perfunctory and meaningless game against St. Kitts and Nevis in Toronto, Canada will advance to the third round of qualifying where we will play Panama, Honduras, and Cuba. You may recall Honduras when they handed the asses of much better Canadian teams back to them in 2007 and 2009. Panama, of course, eliminated Canada from the most recent Gold Cup despite playing a second eleven and demonstrating all the urgency of lazy buffalo.

Never has the utter impotence of Canadian soccer been more vividly demonstrated. You think Canada might get to the hex? Then you're insane.

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The problem with playing minnows is that it creates optimism.

I knew that there was no possibility Canada was good enough to qualify this World Cup cycle. Heck, before the groups were even drawn I was calling for Canada to bring up some youth players and get some experience since there was no chance whatsoever of us getting through barring the most unlikely miracle.

But we had just about the easiest draw imaginable for our qualifying groups: avoiding every reputable team in the second round, avoiding Panama and the United States in the third round... it would have been difficult to ask for more than we got.

We scraped out a win over St. Lucia at home; it was actually a dismal game considering how pathetic St. Lucia was but hey, a home win, that'll get some people cocky. Then we won at Puerto Rico away; a proper game and a decent test but, again, not an inspiring performance with a score made lopsided by Puerto Rico's blatantly surrendering in the last twenty minutes. Then we destroyed St. Lucia 7-0, and while it's difficult to ask for anything more it was still just St. Lucia, the worst team I've ever seen on television.

Today against Puerto Rico, I expected our opposition to be going for goals in a literal must-win game. Instead they bunkered from the kickoff, wasted time, and generally tried to end their own World Cup qualification campaign. Congratulations on your draw, retards. I hope it was worth giving up all your hopes and dreams.

Canada reacted to this as it reacts to all adversity: by failing.

Look at Canada's competitive games since 2008. There were a handful of good results (a 2-2 draw with Mexico in 2008, victories over Jamaica and El Salvador in the 2009 Gold Cup) and a heaping pile of crap. Every time the chips have been down it's been Canada who was found wanting. This is the weakest team we've assembled in years; a team made weaker by Kevin McKenna and Will Johnson's injuries and Andre Hainault's sleaze.

Canada will still get out of this group, of course. There's no doubt whatsoever; I'd bet my life savings on it. But they're not good enough to qualify. Their latest pathetic performance in a proud history of pathetic performances will hopefully put to rest any hope the fans might have had left.

So why do we pretend to ourselves? Why don't we just call up young players and build for the future? Let's get some promising kids tied to Canada, get them used to each other, hopefully snatch an upset along the way, but all in all ensure that we have the best possible team for 2018 when we have a chance instead of jerking around for 2014 when we don't?

Dwayne De Rosario, the self-absorbed piece of crap he is, had another game where he thought he'd be the hero and break Dale Mitchell's record. Julian de Guzman was typically incompetent, Olivier Occean looked out of shape and out of his depth. None of these useless slabs of meat will be of any value in 2018, not that they're of much value now. So why not bring in young kids with something to learn? Replace fringe veterans like Terry Dunfield and Kenny Stamatopoulos with quality youngsters like Matt Stinson and Michel Misiewicz. What, we wouldn't qualify for the next World Cup if we did that? I've got news for you: we're not going to qualify anyway.

Because we're Canada, and our inability to make a single far-sighted decision is why we have such an incredibly awful soccer team, that's why. Ah, well. A man can dream.