In one of the first scenes of The Pitch, a behind-the-scenes documentary about the creation of the Northern Super League (Canada’s first professional women’s soccer league), an emotional Christine Sinclair is interviewed about the struggles of being a female soccer player in Canada.
Sinclair, the national team’s all-time leader in goals (190) and caps (331), lamented how after the program’s biggest accomplishment–winning an Olympic gold at the 2020 Tokyo Olympics–the players couldn’t come home together to be greeted by fans. The reason? There was no pro league to come home to. Instead, they dispersed across the world. Some to the US. Others to Europe.
“We didn’t even get a chance to come home,” Sinclair said, her voice tinging with sadness.
The Pitch was directed by Michèle Hozer and made its Alberta debut this week.
There were two screenings and a red carpet event attended by Sinclair, members of Calgary Wild FC, numerous members of the local soccer community, and mayor Jyoti Gondek. After the screenings, there were question-and-answer sessions with the audience that included Hozèr, NSL co-founder Diana Matheson, Wild CEO Lara Murphy, and former national team goalie Stephanie Labbé. More screenings are scheduled across the country over the coming months, and it will air on TSN in the new year.
The film followed Matheson, a longtime member of the national team, and Thomas Gilbert, who she met while studying at the Smith School of Business in Kingston, Ont. There are numerous scenes that show the process in creating important league rules and policies, along with the struggles the women’s game has confronted in Canada over the past few years.
In one scene, Matheson is in the back of a car wondering aloud if the future league should do away with ties and instead have longer extra-time sessions before penalty kicks (the NSL ultimately decided to have ties). In another, she’s walking through a park and talking about international transfer rules. The movie also shows Matheson on the phone at different points trying to sell prospective investors on the league.
“I think we are very lucky to have attracted a lot of incredible women who have come from men’s professional sport, and they’ve wanted to come into women’s professional sports,” Matheson said in the Q&A.
“In the journey of women’s professional sport, there is this sense where we don’t have to just be, you know, ‘men’s sport part two.’ I think we’re trying to figure out how we can all build differently.”
Much of The Pitch chronicles the struggles of Canada’s women’s soccer program over the years, from decades-old pay disputes with Canada Soccer to the recent cheating scandal at the 2024 Summer Olympics in Paris and former head coach John Herdman’s complex legacy with the program.
At one point, former Canadian national Amy Walsh, now a commentator on NSL broadcasts, said she had to quietly retire after becoming pregnant. Walsh then says that a basic human right is being able to be a parent and work.
“It’s sometimes not easy being in a male dominated industry, and you’re always fighting for what you know is yours,” Hozèr said.
“And you know you performed well. I think also it was important to bring in the whole maternity theme in…it is a female led project, and I think that women of all professions can see a lot in this film and in the struggles that these women had to endure.”
The documentary also relived some other celebratory moments in Canadian women’s soccer history.
Sinclair and others recounted the team’s bronze medal at the 2012 Olympics in London, a moment they said “changed everything.” There were scenes of the players with their medals around their necks being mobbed by hundreds of adoring fans at Pearson Airport in Toronto.
After the screening, Labbé recalled being in the locker room ahead of a match versus Germany during the mid-2010s. Canada had never defeated Germany, and veteran Melissa Tancredi gave a pre-game speech that Labbé still clearly remembers.
“She talked about, ‘If we get this win, every single player in this room, your name is on that game sheet for life,’” Labbé said.
“‘Your name will always be on that game sheet for the first Canadian team to ever beat Germany in a major tournament’…I think the same about every single player that signed up to be in this league from the start, like your name will forever be in history.”
In The Pitch, Sinclair summed up the sentiment and importance of the NSL in one of the film’s final scenes.
When a little girl says she wants to be a soccer player, Sinclair said, “My dream is that they’re not told that that’s not possible.”
