Canada’s women’s soccer team loses 1-0 to France in final Rio warmup game

AUXERRE, France — Head coach John Herdman repeated his disappointment following a 1-0 loss to France on Saturday.

Canada’s women’s soccer team were held off the scoresheet in its final warmup for the Rio Olympics.

“There’s no celebration coming off when you play well against France and you don’t get a result. What’s the point, you know?” Herdman said. “We’ll take this this close to the Olympics but tonight was about trying to push over that threshold, get the result to take us into the Olympics with a real clear mindset that we can beat these teams.”

Camille Abily scored on a direct free kick for No. 3 France in the 36th minute for the game’s only goal.

But the 10th-ranked Canadians had several scoring chances in a match that could have gone either way.

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“I think in all areas of the game we looked good, we just didn’t have that real clinicalness around the attacking third. Way better than I’ve seen before against this level of opposition,” Herdman added. “I think the girls have come leaps and bounds, but they’ll be disappointed because there was one thing in our minds tonight, we wanted to push the win out.

“If I’m being honest, I think we deserved the win. Very rare do I get a chance to say that about France. We outshot them, we outcrossed them, and at times outplayed them.”

There is history between the two countries. Canada edged France 1-0 for the bronze medal at the London Olympics four years ago.

The Canadians were missing veteran striker Melissa Tancredi, who sat out the match with an ankle injury.

Canada split its games in France, defeating 12th-ranked China 1-0 in Paris on Wednesday.

The Canadians opens the Olympics on Aug. 3 against No. 5 Australia, and also faces Zimbabwe and Germany in Group F action.

The Canadian Press