2015 Women’s World Cup could benefit from soccer fiasco

The Olympic footy furore might have been the best marketing the Canadian Soccer Association can buy.

Women's soccer keeps growing and growing and globally, but what often holds female sports back from getting mainstream traction is a lack of relatable storylines. There's no point in rehashing for the million and seventh time what happened on Monday to Team Canada, which beat France for the bronze medal on Thursday. One should know this much: it's the kind of catalytic event that ought to help sell the 2015 FIFA Women's World Cup. There's a ready-made storyline for the next three years: can Christine Sinclair, Melissa Tancredi and cohorts get a chance to take up some unfinished business with Team USA on home soil?

Try finding someone who didn't have an opinion on the Canada-U.S. match. This seemed to be a breed apart from the run-of-the-mill Olympic controversy which involves the populace getting mad about a sport with esoteric rules. Everyone, give or take Damien Cox (please, take him), realized it was a hornswoggle for referee Christina Pedersen to call that at that time.

Figure skating arguably never recovered from SkateGate in 2002, at least outside of its diehard fanbase. The great soccer swindle of 2012 showed how great an inroad women's soccer has made in Canada. Based on a Twitter census, there hasn't been a pause to try to marginalize the sport, any kind of, "Wait, why are we getting in such a twist over women's soccer?"

It was universal and far from backing away from it, it should be embraced. The best thing that ever happened to the World Junior Hockey Championship was the Piestany Punch-up in 1987 that cost Canada a chance at a gold medal. The WJHC was just a holiday diversion in those days. After that, it became far more imperative to watch it to see Canada win. That endured even after international hockey lost some of the juices of mutually assured hatred when the USSR collapsed. Now the world junior, thanks to Hockey Canada and TSN striking while the iron is hot, is a big-ticket event.

Women's team sports have come far enough that there should be no second thought about trying to play up a rivalry to the hilt. The 2015 WWC will have challenges. The tournament has been expanded, meaning the challenge will be to sell out stadiums without playing games in Toronto. The controversy from Monday will do a lot more to race casual interest in the tourney than all the tinkly-piano-music-tinged features about Christine Sinclair that broadcasters can air. A good hate-on draws a crowd.

Neate Sager is a writer for Yahoo! Canada Sports. Contact him at neatesager@yahoo.ca and follow him on Twitter @neatebuzzthenet.