We’re not going to Qatar to make up the numbers
Canada coach’s message to his World Cup rivals...
JOHN HERDMAN will be the other English manager at the World Cup. Unlike Gareth Southgate, he did not play football professionally and his path to Qatar is one filled with wanderlust, adversity, adventure and innovation. Born in Consett, County Durham, Herdman has spent the last 22 years overseas. Despite his protests, he has maintained his North East accent. ‘No one tells us that when I go ’ome though. I get ’ammered,’ he laughs.
And while he was once fuelled by a desire to prove people wrong, now he just wants to keep making history with Canada. After becoming frustrated by a lack of coaching opportunities in his homeland, Herdman headed to New Zealand in 2001 to hone his craft and revolutionise women’s football. He has been in Canada since 2011 and is the first coach to qualify for both the women’s and men’s World Cup.
He first did so with New Zealand women in 2007 and 2011. Then — after coaching Canada women for seven years, leading them to two Olympic bronze medals — Herdman took charge of the men’s side in 2018. The 5ft 6in ball of energy and enthunod siasm has transformed an ice hockey-mad nation, taking newly confident Canada to a World Cup for the first time in 36 years.
Despite being drawn in a daunting looking Group F alongside Belgium, Croatia and Morocco, Herdman is typically optimistic.
‘There’s nothing but opportunity for Canada at this World Cup,’ he enthuses. ‘We have to approach it with that sort of freedom — the desire to prove people wrong. Go and embrace it with an open mind and enjoy everything the World Cup is going to throw at us.’
Gone are the days when Canadian players viewed international duty as a drudge; a foregone conclusion playing second fiddle to CONCACAF heavyweights Mexico and the USA.
‘One of the key steps we took with the team in June was to look at what makes us favourites to win the World Cup,’ Herdman says. ‘And you do that with a bit of a smile on your face because you know, asking a team that’s never been to a World Cup to win a World Cup is maybe a bridge too far. But the reality is they have to think about what makes them favourites.
‘The fact that we’ve got Alphonso Davies, a Champions League winner in our team. We’ve got guys who have won league titles. So when we look at what makes us favourites, there are things there that are very unique to Canada. And we can harness elements of our tactical identity, of our team spirit, that no other team can do.’
Herdman’s coaching style is said to be intense and demanding, but cerebral, nurturing and creative. ‘Bobby Robson is my idol as a manager,’ he says. ‘He was one of the coaches that I’ve certainly tried to model some elements of my coaching style on. Particularly that more humanistic side, the ability to bring the best out of people.’
He is an open book and speaks passionately about, well, everything. Herdman grew up loving football but it took a snub for him to support Newcastle United after his father took him to St James’ Park to see his boyhood hero in 1986.
‘I was actually a Man United fan at the time,’ he tells The Mail on Sunday. ‘My dad was Newcastle daft. I liked Bryan Robson, he was from Chester-le-Street. I remember him being like the England hero at the time, Captain Marvel. I got a Man United kit for Christmas.
‘And I came out of there hating Man United because when they got off the bus, I was there with my kit — probably the only one welcoming them to the stadium. And none of the players would sign autographs. I remember Norman Whiteside telling us to do one as well!’
Herdman’s formative years were pockmarked by two seismic events. In 1980 came the closure of Consett steelworks where his grandfather and father worked. And in his teenage years his father’s deteriorating mental health culminated in his parents’ divorce. This was a particularly unhappy time with Herdman repeatedly getting into brawls with his peers in a deprived area.
Unable to choose which parent to live with, Herdman opted to live alone in a council house aged 16. The second of three brothers, he acted as a father figure to his younger sibling, seven years his junior, and immersed himself in coaching 11-year-olds as part of his
Duke of Edinburgh’s Award. It changed his life.
‘I’d had two really tough years, whether it was getting beat within an inch of my life and then the family breaking down. I could have easily went in the wrong direction. Coaching pretty much saved me.’
Herdman studied sports science at Leeds Metropolitan University and after a spell as a primary school teacher he coached at Sunderland’s academy. ‘In the Nineties, it seemed like if you hadn’t played the game, you weren’t going to get the job at that next level,’ Herdman says.
That frustration at a lack of opportunity in England saw Herdman persuade childhood sweetheart Clare to move 12,000 miles away to Invercargill to develop football. The rest is history.
Unsurprisingly, Herdman’s achievements have not gone unnoticed in his homeland — he turned down the chance to be women’s manager in 2017 — but he insists he’s going nowhere.
‘I’m signed here with Canada until 2026. We’ve got a home World Cup. A big part of taking this mission on was to take a squad where we can build the foundations of a high-performance structure, which was non-existent coming into this role — it was a complete rebuild.
‘Getting to the 2022 World Cup, we’ve got it to a certain place. The goal is to take it to the next level as we push towards 2026.’