Princeton senior midfielder Diana Matheson is in China with the Canadian national women's soccer team to play in the 2007 FIFA Women's World Cup. Canada will have three group games between Sept. 12-19 against Norway, Ghana and Australia and must finish in the top two of its group to move to the elimination round.

Entry 3: Sept. 17

We played Ghana two days ago now and we beat them 4-0.  The first half was quite close and we only went into halftime with a one-goal lead.  As the game wore on, we were able to put more pressure on Ghana and the goals started to come.  Christine Sinclair, the leading goal scorer in Canada soccer history, got two of the goals.  I came off around the 85th minute and was replaced by Andrea Neil, who with the cap became the most capped player in Canada soccer history.
After a travel day following the game we had a fairly light day yesterday.  We had a training session in the morning and then spent the afternoon at Chengdu's Panda Breeding Research facility.  We were able to see many pandas and even a movie about pandas!  The weather was unfortunately too warm for the pandas to be outside, so they were housed inside when we saw them.  Still a one of a kind experience though.

Our next game is against Australia on the 19th.  They tied their game against Norway, so we will need a win to send us into the next round.  A tie or a loss will send Australia through with Norway.  It should be a close game as Australia is a quick athletic team that controls the ball quite well.  With a little luck though, we will come out on top!

Entry 2: Sept. 14

It is the night of the 14th here and we are busy preparing for our second match. We lost our first match 2-1 in a close contest to Norway. We had the run of play in the first half, but Norway took over for most of the second. We scored late in the fist half when Candace Chapman took advantage of a loose ball in the box. We also had another goal disallowed for, I think, contact with the keeper off of a corner. Oh well, these things happen.

In the second half, Norway had a few great chances and our keeper, Erin McLeod, came up with a few big saves. Unfortunately they managed to put two in, one off of a cross ball that was deflected to a free player in the box, and the second off of a rebound from a corner kick. Overall, it wasn't a bad first game for us, but it definitely wasn't the result we were looking for.

Yesterday was quite light with only a short recovery session for most, and a little extra sub-training for others. The rest of the day was spent getting treatment and relaxing. As for today, we had a light training session in the afternoon, a few meetings, and the rest of the day doing more resting and relaxing. We play Ghana tomorrow at 5, and this is a must win for us. Preferably a must win by a few goals, but one step at a time. They are a good possession team, but if we play well we should be able to shut them down. That's all from me for now. Good luck to the team at Notre Dame this weekend.

Entry 1: Sept. 9

I guess I'll start off with saying where we've been. We left for Asia around the 26th of August, heading first to Japan. We were there for just four or five days, just long enough for jet lag to fully set in and for us to play a friendly against Japan. After that, we headed to Singapore, which I did not realize was a full seven hour flight from Japan. Fortunately our airline had personal TVs and a wide selection of movies and TV shows. I give two thumbs up. We were in Singapore for just under a week, there for both heat acclimation and because it is in the same time zone as China. Training was fairly light during the week, so we had time to enjoy the island. The weather was certainly warm while we were there, but unfortunately we found out that Singapore is not known for its beaches. Nevertheless our time there was relaxing, and before long we were off to China.

The Canadian team has been in China for what I am told is three days now, although it already seems like a lot longer than that. Hangzhou, the city we are in now, is by far the nicest place I've been here. China seems to have done a great job of organizing the tournament so far, and the training facilities and the hotel have both been great. We will be here for our first two games, first against Norway and then Ghana, before heading off to Chengdu to play Australia. We kick off for our first game against Norway on Wednesday. It should be a tough game as they are the favorite in the group.