Christine Sinclair has scored 183 international goals. (Photo courtesy of Canada Soccer)
Christine Sinclair Tuesday named the Canada Soccer player of the decade after an unparalleled 10 years of world-class performances.
A Concacaf champion in 2010 and a back-to-back Olympic bronze medal winner from London 2012 and Rio 2016, Sincalir was the 2012 Lou Marsh Trophy and Bobbie Rosenfeld Award winner, the 2011 Women’s Professional Soccer championship MVP, and seven-time Canada Soccer Canadian player of the year.
Sinclair, the flag bearer at the London 2012 closing ceremonies, also was a four-time professional club playoff champion, three-time Women’s World Cup participant, four-time Concacaf medal winner and four-time finalist for the FIFA World Player of the Year. She scored 64 goals for club and 183 goals for country, notably moving within two goals of setting the world’s all-time international goalscoring record. U.S. standout Abby Wambach holds the record of 184 goals.
“Christine Sinclair is a once-in-a-generation athlete that has been at the heart of Canadian sport for over 20 years, but what she accomplished in the past 10 years has changed the sport forever in our country,” Canada Soccer president Steven Reed said. “Christine is the Canada Soccer Player of the Decade and unquestionably one of the greatest and most-loved athletes Canada has ever watched.”
Beyond sport, Sinclair was the first soccer player appointed as an Officer of the Order of Canada and the first to have her name engraved on Canada’s Walk of Fame. She received the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee Medal in 2012, earned honourary degrees from Simon Fraser University in 2013 and Kwantlen Polytechnic University in 2015, and was honoured by Women Against Multiple Sclerosis for her outstanding charity work. She was also one of four founding members of iS4 alongside teammates Karina LeBlanc, Diana Matheson and Rhian Wilkinson, a group dedicated to empowering others through workshops, speaking engagements, team building and soccer camps.
