The Beautiful Game's Fans Cheer as the Canadian Women's Soccer Team Wins Bronze Medal

The Canadian women’s soccer team celebrates after game-winning goal against France.

The soccer gods smiled this morning on the Canadian women’s soccer team.  The winning goal came two minutes into extra time after a 90 minute contest that was dominated by the French team. In fact, France fired 25 shots towards the Canadian goal, compared to just four for the Canadian side. The winning goal was scored by midfielder Diana Matheson who pounced on a loose ball that bounced off a defender’s thigh to beat the French in a game they should have won convincingly.

The Bronze medal won by the Canadian women's soccer team is the country’s first team medal at the Summer Olympics since the 1936 Men’s Basketball victory. The women's team was obviously exhausted both physcially and emotionally from this week's roller coaster ride at the Olympics and they played like it. But they held on and with the help of an outstanding performance by goalie Erin McLeod managed to scratch out the win.

Christine Sinclair said after the match, "It's been a long battle on this national team and John (Herdman) came on board and completely changed it, I'm just so proud of this team. We battled through exhaustion today and came out on top."

Twitter was ablaze with mesages of congradulations after the historic win. A few minutes after Diane Matheson’s cool sidekick into the net, the cheers from Hayley Wickenheiser and many others were ricocheting across Canada. Hayley and thousands of other proud Canadians have joined together in a Twitter campaign that Canada Soccer is calling “the movement that has come from the fans”. #SinclairForFlagBearer. Now it's on to the Gold Medal game - Go Japan!