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When you think of the greatest soccer players on the planet, who comes to mind?
Cristiano Ronaldo and Lionel Messi, perhaps? Maybe Kylian Mbappe, Neymar, or Robert Lewandowski?
Why not Christine Sinclair, who has more international goals — 190, for those counting — than all of them?
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"I'm just done with there only being male role models and male athletes to look up to," the Canadian women's national team captain and Portland Thorns superstar told Insider.
It's part of the inspiration behind her new memoir, "Playing the Long Game." A notoriously private and introverted superstar, Sinclair makes it clear from the opening pages of her book that "talking about myself has never been something I've liked to do."
That said, she recognizes that "if there ever was a right time — an opening to push for change, an opportunity to eradicate the fake distinction between women's and men's sports — the time is now."
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"So I'm talking," Sinclair writes. "About my career. About what's at stake. Hoping that a whole new world will open for the young female athletes coming up. Hoping for a different world for my nieces, in sports or out."
As she takes the reader through the story of her illustrious soccer career — in childhood, college, the pros, and international duty — Sinclair touches on inequalities that impacted her and teammates. She mentions how, if she were "a male soccer player on a big team in Europe," certain things "might be different."
But in the final chapter, she takes a point-blank approach to discussing "the inequalities [that] are there in absolutely everything." The Olympic gold medalist notes that while she once "bought into the whole idea that I was fortunate just to be able to play the sport I loved," she now knows that there is "so much injustice in the way we've been treated."
"It's not hard to imagine how my career would have been different if I had been a male at the same level in our sport," Sinclair writes. "I know I would be a lot richer."
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On the flip side, Sinclair speaks of how incredible it has been to watch the sport — and attitudes towards women's sports at large — evolve over the course of her career. In fact, she goes so far as to write that "the thing I'll be most proud of is that I helped to change the sport" once she retires.
"It's twofold," Sinclair told Insider. "On the one hand, you're proud of the changes that are being made. On the other hand, you're never satisfied. And sometimes, it seems like it's moving at the speed of a glacier."
Regardless of the pace of progress, she said that witnessing change over the course of her career has "made me realize that, if women's sports are given a chance, people watch, people come." And she's adamant about bringing that potential to fruition for the next generation.
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She wants equal pay for Canada's national team. She advocates for a women's professional soccer league in Canada. And she calls for more coverage — on television and beyond.
"I think, for so long, it's been done halfway," Sinclair said. "And when it's done like that, for instance, people don't wanna see it on TV if the camera angle is way up here — the quality matters and just the exposure of women's sports."
"It's still sad at times when, like for instance, Canada's games aren't on TV," she added. "You can turn on like drone racing or something, or here in the US, you can watch cornhole, but you can't see a WNBA game."
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Sinclair knows that "there's still a lot of work to be done" to rectify those injustices and give women's sports the platform they deserve.
Maybe that's when folks will start to bring up her name as the greatest to ever do it.
"Playing the Long Game" is available online and in bookstores now.
