HERDMAN ASSESSES CANADA’S GROUP A OPPONENTS
CHINA
They were one of the leading powers in women’s football for many years. You’d always expect China to be in and around the podium. But the last six years, they’ve had to go through a rebuilding program and certainly the new coaching staff have looked at different types of players for their program. I think this group have been together now for four years, solid. We played them just before the Olympics and it’s pretty much the same team, when they were a lot younger, in 2012 and we beat them 1-nil and it was a very close game. We’ve just beaten them in China, 2-1, in their hometown, and we know they’re going to be one of the toughest teams in our group. They have a never-say-die attitude, they are hard-working, disciplined, but also technically very gifted, which causes you a problem. What doesn’t cause us a problem is that they don’t have a (Christine) Sinclair. And that’s what they’ve been missing for many years, that player you can absolutely rely on to score goals when things are tough. So, I would say China should be three points for Canada, our history suggests it should be, but we can’t take them lightly.
NEW ZEALAND
New Zealand are a team I know very well. This group of women, I started back with them in 2005 when I pretty much cleaned the program out and started with this young group of 17 to 20-year-old players and they became national players overnight and that group of women have slowly been developing international caps, international experience. They’ve been to pretty much every FIFA tournament since 2007. They achieved a quarterfinal place at the 2012 Olympics, their best-ever performance, so they’re peaking. They’re in a good space. But I think the beauty with this team is I know them. I know this team so well. I feel like they know me, but they don’t know my players. I know their players and I know where I can put pressure. I know where we’ve got to tighten and I know where we can ease off a little bit. Emotionally, it’s going to be a tough day for us. These girls I’ve known since they were young and I’ll have been one of the first coaches they’ll have remembered. If I can get through the emotion of it and just stay on task, this is a team that Canada should and can beat.
NETHERLANDS
If they weren’t in my group, I’d have put them as a dark horse for this tournament. They certainly have developed over the last 10 years as a nation. The Netherlands is one of the world-class football nations, they have a great football system, coach education system, they’re dripping in success in the men’s side, but it hasn’t translated to the women yet. But it is, and for the first time I’ve seen a Netherlands team that genuinely looks like a threat on the world stage. So I think these are the toughest opponents in the tournament. In the past, they had to rely on one or two players to try and get them through. Their system has produced a new potential (Christine) Sinclair, an 18-year-old goal scorer who scores every single game pretty much she plays. They’ve always had some players around the periphery of the team that were good, but they missed the goal scorer. They’ve got one now. So we’ve got to take care of (Vivianne) Miedema and (Manon) Melis and (Lieke) Martens, the Three M’s up front who are a formidable forward line. But we’ve got (Kadeisha) Buchanan back there and a few other key players that I’m sure can nullify their threats.