It’s all about respect
Canada’s road to 2022 World Cup begins with restoring pride, honour
There is no doubting the passion of Canadian men’s soccer head coach John Herdman. Fiery, engaged, driven, the 42-year-old helped take the country’s women’s team to unprecedented heights, capturing the attention of the country in the process. He is now aiming to do the same with the perennially disappointing men’s program after shockingly taking over back in January.
Herdman and Canada Soccer general secretary Peter Montopoli gathered at a downtown Toronto hotel on Tuesday afternoon to discuss the first steps in Canada’s road to the 2022 FIFA World Cup, which will be held in the winter (yes, the winter) of 2022 in Qatar.
The journey begins at BMO Field on Oct. 16, when Canada hosts Dominica in CONCACAF Nations League qualifying ahead of the inaugural edition of that tournament, which goes in September of 2019. The top 10 teams in qualifying for the tournament will qualify for the Gold Cup.
Herdman is trying to bring pride and honour back to a program that has not made it to a World Cup since 1986 and has seen far too much talent compete for other countries over the years.
It will start with the four Nations League qualifiers, with the second home game coming in March against French Guiana.
“Those four matches give us the opportunity to really start assessing the players. It’s not a given that you’re going to qualify for the Gold Cup and every game is critical to our success and achieving a World Cup qualifying berth,” Herdman said.
He and his staff want to get a feel for what they have and they want the top players to have a run of meaningful games to be a part of.
“It’s literally two years of consistent games that mean something and we’ll need our fans to get behind us,” he said.
“What it does is it keeps Canada on the map. A lot of players like myself were immigrants. We hold dual passports. I think our success will be able to hold onto those dual-passport players. If they don’t see the national team playing, if they don’t see us competing, if they don’t feel like it’s a relevant environment to be on, then they’ll move on. It’s natural. They want to compete consistently at the highest level,” he said.
Herdman believes there is already buy-in, most importantly from 17-year-old phenom Alphonso Davies, who is turning heads for the Vancouver Whitecaps and being pursued by some of the world’s biggest clubs. Davies competes for Canada, not his native Ghana. Herdman also mentioned Cyle Larin, Scott Arfield, Jonathan Osorio and Sam Piette, amongst others, “that will be here on shore consistently.”
Herdman talked up improvements in sport science and mental preparation that he has brought over from the women’s side, things he believed have been missing in the past when the men’s sides went into hostile, sweltering territory and discussed the buy-in he has already seen from many of his young potential charges, a pipeline he believes should allow Canada to overtake Costa Rica in due time and pull further ahead of some current contemporaries.
“I’ve been speaking to them over the last two weeks, spent don’t know how many hours with about 30 odd players talking about the importance and everything I’ve got back is they’re just excited, to get competitive,” Herdman said.
“It’s the competitive piece, that these games are meaningful, they’re going to take us somewhere, that’s what they’ve been craving. Not a friendly match, craving that level of expectations, scrutiny, consequence, which will breed a different culture, a less permissive culture, a more focussed and deliberate culture.
“They’re all in and they’re all excited.”
Herdman told a story of asking some of the players what they will be playing for when they put on a Canadian kit and being moved by their answers.
“I asked them some questions that maybe haven’t been asked before: ‘What does this mean to them?’
“No. 1 is they want to bring a level of respect to our country, football respect.
The second thing is they never had heroes,” he continued, explaining how one 22-year-old player said growing up he and his friends never had a Canadian shirt with a player’s name on the back. This young man said he wants to have Canadian kids wearing his national shirt with pride.
“There’s some real cool stuff that’s going to come out of this,” Herdman said.
“We’re going to fight and do everything we can to get this team over the line in 2022, or die trying.”
There’s that passion again.