Herdman to step into men’s coaching role
John Herdman led women to Olympic bronze, top 5 rank
TORONTO — John Herdman, who led the Canada’s women’s soccer team to back-to-back Olympic bronze medals, is taking over the Canadian men’s program.
He replaces the fired Octavio Zambrano, who was named head coach of the Canadian men’s national team program last March. Herdman’s new title is national team head coach and men’s EXCEL director.
“It was an organizational decision. Octavio’s departed Canada Soccer effective immediately,” Canadian Soccer Association president Steve Reed said.
Reed denied that any specific incident had triggered Zambrano’s sudden departure.
“We’re looking at long-term, what we felt was necessary in terms of the development of our programs on the men’s side,” he added. “And we wanted to build that long-term alignment much like we’ve experienced on the women’s side.
“When we did that organizational review, we determined that John Herdman was the right person to lead that.”
Former assistant coach Kenneth HeinerMoller takes over the Canadian women. Coach of the Danish women’s team from 2006 to 2013, the Dane was a part of Herdman’s coaching team at the Rio Olympics as a part-time assistant before moving to Canada to be a full-time member of his staff.
“Speechless right now,” Canadian women’s captain Christine Sinclair said on Twitter.
The Canadian men are currently ranked 94th in the world while the women are No. 5.
The 42-year-old Herdman took charge of the Canadian women in August 2011.
Gradually, the charismatic Herdman built it back up while developing a pipeline of talent.
The English native took Canada to a recordhigh fourth in the world rankings after winning bronze at the 2016 Olympics, cracking the top five for the first time.
Herdman had been linked in some circles to the vacant English women’s coaching job, but he wanted to keep his family in Canada.
He had recently talked of a move back to the men’s side of the game, but not until the 2020 Olympics. It appears that the men’s opening came sooner than expected.
“I’ve done seven years with the (women’s) team,” Herdman said in an interview Monday. “I’ve enjoyed every minute of it with the group.
“I’m a builder. I’m a developer. With Canada Soccer and the rest of the crew we sort of built that program back up from scratch, built the high-performance system, built the talent development system, brought the right people in.”
— The Canadian Press