Two days after head coach John Herdman suggested that midfielder Diana Matheson may not be fit to play in the upcoming Olympic qualifying tournament, he appears to have removed her from the roster.
The Canadian Soccer Association reported on Saturday afternoon, via its Twitter account, that Matheson would be replaced on the roster by 20-year-old midfielder Alyscha Mottershead, who earned her first cap for the women's national team as a substitute against Sweden in a friendly on Nov. 22, 2011.
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Matheson, 27, has made 130 appearances for the senior national team, but Herdman said that there were "complications" in her recovery from knee surgery in late 2011. Her absence, though not entirely unexpected, will necessitate some adjustments for the Canadian team, whose first match of the Vancouver-based competition is against Haiti on Thursday.
Addendum: Evidently the team was well-prepared for this possibility, as a release from the Canadian Soccer Association states: "Mottershead had already been training with the Canadian team in California in case Matheson was not ready to join the tournament roster."