‘ Group of death’ doesn’t scare coach
National women’s team head isn’t concerned about the World Cup draw
John Herdman insists he’s more excited than nervous about Saturday morning’s 2015 women’s World Cup draw.
But the head coach of Canada’s national women’s team concedes that while coaches and executives have been studying best- case and worst- case scenarios for months, getting stuck in a potential “group of death” is always a possibility.
“You just take what you’re given and whether you have to beat them in the first round, or the quarter- finals, or the semifinals, it doesn’t matter. You’re going to have to beat the top teams,” Herdman said Thursday.
On Friday, FIFA will outline details of how the 24 countries will be placed into six groups when it announces the seedings and into which pots the teams will be placed ahead of Saturday’s televised draw, to be held at the Museum of History in Gatineau, Que.
The only thing confirmed so far is that eighth- ranked Canada, as the host, will be placed in Group A and will play its first two games in Edmonton and the third in Montreal.
The World Cup runs from June 6 to July 5 with games played in Vancouver, Edmonton, Winnipeg, Ottawa, Montreal and Moncton, N. B. The final will be played at BC Place Stadium.
Each of the six pools will get a seeded country to keep the elite teams apart in the round robin stage.
The U. S., Germany, Japan and France, currently ranked No. 1 through 4 in the world, are virtually guaranteed to get one of those seeds. With Canada a top seed as host, FIFA will likely select from Sweden ( No. 5), Brazil ( No. 6) and England ( No. 7) for the sixth team.
Canada, ranked No. 6 in 2011, had a tough draw that year when the World Cup featured just 16 teams. The Canadians were in a group with European champion Germany, African champion Nigeria and France and went 0- 3- 0 while being outscored 7- 1.
“France wasn’t a seeded team, but everyone knew they had the capacity to beat anybody,” said Herdman, who came on board after that World Cup. “And rankings don’t always reflect where teams are in the cycle of development and there’s a lot of them around,” he added, noting that Nigeria is a better team than its current ranking of 35th and that Asian runnerup Australia ( No. 10) and Norway ( No. 9) will be formidable.
“The gap in women’s football has closed — that’s very clear,” he said.
“Teams ranked 1- 20 can give each other a great match and you definitely want to stay away from teams ranked in the top 10. You wind up with England, France or Sweden in your group and all of a sudden you’re in a group of death.”
As for which top seed will lead the group scheduled to play at BC Place, Herdman said there have been no early indications. Some reports have suggested the U. S. will play the round robin in the East, but Herdman says the Americans could wind up in Vancouver.
“It’ll be luck of the draw,” he said.
Herdman did say that Canada will be quick to get to work once it finds out which three teams are in its group.
“The minute the draw is established,” he said, “we’ll activate our scouting plans. We’ve got people on standby, the scouts will start developing their blueprints and all the processes will be put in place.”