Canada staying the course
Coach Heiner-Moller says fourth-ranked team is ‘on the right path’
Kenneth Heiner-Moller’s role with the Canadian women’s national team began as a temporary thing.
The 47-year-old Dane was on leave from a job with Denmark’s equivalent of Own the Podium when he acted as an assistant coach on John Herdman’s staff at the 2016 Rio Olympics.
Heiner-Moller had previously turned down job offers from Herdman, who he knew from the days when the pair squared off as head coaches — HeinerMoller with Denmark’s women’s team, Herdman with New Zealand’s. By 2016, HeinerMoller was intrigued enough by the Canadian squad to give it a go, a decision that would lead to him succeeding Herdman in January.
Herdman’s move to the men’s side of the Canadian program seemed abrupt, with the women’s game flourishing and the team then ranked fifth in the world. There wasn’t a need for a revamp of personnel or tactics and that was fine with HeinerMoller, who long ago bought into Herdman’s philosophies. “When John asked me if I wanted to continue (after the Olympics), if I didn’t want to continue the path that John had laid out, I was definitely not coming back,” Heiner-Moller said this week. “It’s definitely because I think we were on the right path.”
That’s not to say everything will be exactly the same under Heiner-Moller. “There will be some slight changes and there will be different players on the pitch and all that stuff, but I think it’s definitely not a totally different direction, it’s just an adjustment, it’s more maybe correlated to the players I’ve got and the players that were there a year ago,” he said.
“Every player that you’ll talk to on this team will say they love John, they loved what he was doing with this team, so no one will say they’re happy they got rid of him and neither am I. But I think it has been quite seamless and the best transition that can and could happen for this team.”
Heiner-Moller ran his second camp with the team this week, before Sunday’s 3-2 loss to Germany in a friendly at Hamilton’s Tim Hortons Field. The match was the coach’s sixth as a member of the Canadian program on Canadian soil but his first in charge, and doing so in front of a sold-out crowd was a tantalizing prospect.
“If you come from Europe, it’s something you dream of in the women’s game,” he said.
A year from now, Canada will be back in Europe for the 2019 Women’s World Cup in France, looking to better its quarterfinal finish on home soil in 2015.
Heiner-Moller sees a squad that performs at a high level when it’s at its best but needs to work on finding solutions to challenges earlier in some matches.
“I still think this is a team that hasn’t really reached the ceiling yet,” he said.
While huge player turnover between now and next June is unlikely, there is up-and-coming talent at the younger levels of the national team program.
“I think what’s interesting is what’s actually happening with the youth right now, we’ve got our U-17 team in the qualifications and there’s some great players there.”
Playing teams like thirdranked Germany and No. 1 United States, who the Canadians tied in a friendly in Vancouver last November, is imperative to Canada’s preparation for next year’s tournament, Heiner-Moller said.
He expects Canada will play another friendly in the next FIFA window, which is scheduled weeks before the World Cup qualifiers in October.
“We have said that this year will be a year for trying,” he said. “We’ll try different players, find the right players for the World Cup next year, find the right style of play … That’s what we’re doing, that’s what we’re planning for, to have a peak next year. A small peak at the qualifiers and then a bigger peak next year at the World Cup.”