When the World Cup draw is made on Friday, one coach will be desperate to land England in the draw.
Canada’s remarkable journey from irrelevance to the finals is one of the stories of qualification and it has been led by John Herdman, a coach who hails from County Durham and has taken the road less travelled to Qatar.
A charismatic, confident character who still wakes in the early hours of the morning to watch Newcastle United play, he has incorporated psychology, technology and the importance of personal responsibility into creating a Canadian success story.
In one way his is a story of perseverance of spirit – of a young man who lived on his own in a council estate at 16, refusing to be a product of the environment he grew up in. But on the other hand, it shows just how much work the coaching culture of this country has to do.
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I spoke to Herdman back in October at the start of the World Cup qualifying campaign and he recounted a formative moment in his career, coaching in Sunderland’s Academy where scepticism about his lack of professional playing career proved an insurmountable hurdle to progressing in England.
“I will never forget there was an ex-England player, who was at the time in the England youth coaching system, and I was coaching his son at Sunderland,” he said.
“I’ll never forget him: he stopped me and he said: ‘Look John, you’re a really good teacher-coach. I wish I had the teaching skill you had but the one thing you’ll never have is that experience of standing in a field in front of 60,000 people.’
“And he said: ‘That’s why you’ll never get to the highest level.’ It’s always stuck in the back of my mind: my God, I want to prove you wrong. I won’t name names but it’s always stuck with me.”
A voracious learner, he moved his young family halfway across the globe to New Zealand to take on a regional football coach job. There he immersed himself in a culture that saw different sports sharing knowledge of analytics, sports science and technology. He learned about the use of substitutions from the national hockey coach, and analytics from the All Blacks.
It stood him in good stead to transform Canada’s fortunes, crossing over from the women’s team and overcoming what he said was “deeply ingrained” misogyny to lead the men’s team.
Canada were ranked 94th in the world when he took over but they’re now 33rd. For this qualification campaign they’ve developed a ruthless winning culture that comes directly from Herdman’s fighting DNA.
Matches against Mexico and the US were scheduled in sub-zero temperatures, making the most of Canada’s natural advantages. Previously Herdman felt his team rolled out the red carpet for opponents, only to then face hostile environments when they travelled to the likes of Panama, Honduras and Jamaica.
“It’s difficult to get out of – you have to master so many different environments and playing styles. One of the challenges has been to make us harder,” he admitted.
It helps that this is a golden generation led by Alophonso Davies, Bayern Munich’s outstanding full-back. Herdman has personally led a drive to persuade Canada-eligible players to commit, working for months to bring Porto’s Stephen Eustaquio into the fray. He’s been crucial.
“It’s been about showing this group they can do something no-one has ever done before,” he says.
On Friday the reality will hit home that they’ve made it. But for Herdman you feel, the mission is far from accomplished.
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