Canada’s women’s program has qualified for another FIFA tournament. Canada’s women’s U-17 team qualified today for the inaugural edition of the FIFA U-17 Women’s World Cup New Zealand 2008. Canada qualified after beating Mexico by a score of 1:0 in the CONCACAF Women’s U-17 Championship in Macoya, Trinidad & Tobago.



“The team was ecstatic,” said coach Bryan Rosenfeld after the match. “We were exhausted, but ecstatic. We made qualification difficult on ourselves because we could have done it against Costa Rica (on 24 July), but we made it. We had many players that just wanted to go to New Zealand 2008.”



This year, Canada has already qualified for the Women’s Olympic Football Tournament and the FIFA U-20 Women’s World Cup Chile 2008. Since 2001, Canada has qualified for eight of nine FIFA women’s tournaments, including two FIFA Women’s World Cups (USA 2003 and China 2007). The FIFA U-17 Women’s World Cup features players born 1991 or later.



Canada’s women’s U-17 team, whose title sponsor is BMO Financial Group, won four of five games at the CONCACAF Women’s U-17 Championship. Canada won 3:0 over Puerto Rico, 4:3 over Jamaica, 4:1 over Mexico, and then anew 1:0 over Mexico. Tiffany Cameron, last year’s top scorer at the BMO National Championships U-16 Girls All Stars, was Canada’s top scorer in 2008 with five goals in five games. She also scored the lone goal in the qualification match against Mexico.