Christine Sinclair came onto the pitch in the final four minutes of overtime in hopes of squeaking in a goal before the final whistle Sunday night, Nov. 5.
However, she committed one foul, didn't register a shot and had to listen to the sound of her latest club season come to an end as Portland Thorns FC lost to NJ/NY Gotham FC 1-0 in the National Women's Soccer League (NWSL) semifinals.
The Burnaby sports icon finished her 2023 campaign with three goals in 19 regular-season matches with the reigning champions.
Sinclair will now wait to see if Portland will re-sign her for one more season as she wished for in her retirement announcement from the Canadian women's national team.
"P.S. — Portland, how about one more year?" the 40-year-old wrote in a post on Instagram.
Until then, Sinclair will now focus on her final matches with Canada — two friendlies against Australia, including her swan song not far from her hometown of Burnaby.
Her final international contest is scheduled for Dec. 5, 7 p.m. at BC Place in Vancouver.
The game is drawing a lot of attention from fans that the stadium has opened the upper bowl for additional seating as of Oct. 30 in hopes of a sell out.
Sinclair has played 14 seasons of club soccer going back to FC Gold Pride (San Francisco) in the former Women's Professional Soccer (WPS) league.
The Burnaby South Secondary grad's last 11 have been with the Portland Thorns, which has included three championships in 2013, 2017 and 2022.
She's accumulated 68 goals in 180 appearances in the NWSL.
Internationally, Sinclair is the greatest goal-scorer in history with 190 goals in 329 caps with Canada, including six trips to the FIFA Women's World Cup, since coming onto the scene as a 16-year-old on March 12, 2000.
Her last meaningful game on home soil was on Sept. 26 when she came off the bench in the second half of Canada's 4-1 aggregate win over Jamaica to qualify for the Paris 2024 Summer Olympics.
That's when Sinclair realized it was getting close to calling it a career.
"After Tokyo, deep down inside, I knew I didn't want to play in Paris," she told The Canadian Press. "The way the Tokyo Olympics ended, you can't beat it.
"I wanted to give it one more shot for the World Cup, just because I really thought we could be successful there and we hadn't been successful in a long time at World Cups."
