Canada national team head coach John Herdman didn’t mince words following his team’s 2-0 Concacaf Nations League Finals loss on Sunday night.
Herdman challenged the Canada Soccer Association to “get serious” after his team fell short of lifting a first trophy since 2000. Canada, who finished first in the Concacaf World Cup Qualifying tournament last year, were blanked by the U.S. men’s national team in Las Vegas on Sunday night.
“We’ve got to get serious about winning a World Cup,” Herdman said postmatch. “When you play at home, you get a chance to win it. You get a chance to get to a semifinal, a quarterfinals, semifinal, and then get on the road to win it. And we’re not serious. We’ve brought a World Cup to our country and we’re not serious about winning it.
“You see how close that team is tonight,” Herdman added. “Tactically we were there. Chances, shots we were there. The margins were so tight tonight, so tight. We’ve got to get real.”
Canada out-possessed the USMNT 64%-to-36% at Allegiant Stadium, but failed to make the most of its offensive opportunities. USMNT goalkeeper Matt Turner was rarely troubled by the dynamic Canada attack, which missed six of their 12 shots in total in the match.
The Americans raced out to a 2-0 advantage through Chris Richards and Folarin Balogun’s first international goals before delivering a strong defensive performance in the second half. Herdman voiced his frustration with the Canadian federation, admitting the current financial struggle shouldn’t jeopardize his squad’s chances of taking the next step forward as a program.
“We’ve got to get real and quick because these players, they deserve it,” Herdman said. “They deserve this shot. The country deserves it. All the people that worked to bring it deserve the shot. Let’s get after it. We’re close. It’s not a secret the organization has been suffering financially. Even through the World Cup qualification and your head coach is raising money to make sure we’ve got charter flights, security on those charter flights.
“We’ve the best generation of players we’ve had and there’s more coming,” he added. “You can see it. Young [Ismaël] Koné just dropped out of the sky, Tajon Buchanan just dropped out of the sky, Ali Johnston. It’s coming. We’ve got to figure this out financially.”
Canada will joint-host the 2026 FIFA World Cup, alongside the United States and Mexico for the first time. After earning a first World Cup berth since 1986, the Canadians struggled in Qatar last year, losing all three of its group stage matches against Belgium, Croatia, and Morocco.
With a golden generation of players at his disposal, Herdman is hoping the Canada Soccer Association can resolve its issues well ahead of the next World Cup tournament.
“It’s the preparation period,” Herdman said. “This costs a lot of money to get things put together for these windows. You don’t get time to work with the players. There’s no time.
“But we need this September window,” he added. “We need the resources where we can actually put a camp together, where I can work for six days on the things that make the biggest difference moving forward.”
Canada will face Cuba, Guatemala, and a preliminary round winner later this month in the Concacaf Gold Cup group stage.
I’ve followed Canada for a long time —- starting in ’86 when we (USA) didn’t make Mexico and they did. Growing up in Ohio— my club team played tons of Canadian Youth Clubs—– Burlington Youth, and Oshuwa Turul come to mind as always having good teams ages ago. Their players were always quality. So for years —– during the regimes of Waiters, Lenarduzzi, Mitchell, Gold Cup winning coach Osiek, Colin Miller, Hart etc….. I followed their team. I never understood why with so much talent up there– they they didn’t do better. I always rooted for them to do well. I frequented the old Voyagers board and also like to read their Canadiansoccernews message boards to keep up to date on how things are going up North (although I never posted). I have to say— that my soft spot for them has surely hardened —- partially because they seem to be sort of “expecting” things to happen for them—because of their obvious increase in talent lately. But over the last several years — they been harder for me to stomach. Partially as a result of what I think are unrealistic expectations of their fans. Check out Canadian soccer media reports and their fan boards prior to the final. Many were talking “championship” prior to the semifinal actually starting. Coach H does not always seem to take responsibility for poor performances and seemingly has an excuse for EVERYTHING. I know we can be fickle US fans— but when we play poorly——-I think many of us are our own team’s harshest critics.
A lot of their fans = Full of excuses
Their manager = Full of excuses
One hundred percent agree with this. I think One’s Kristian Jack (if you can find the post-match comments) said it best when he reamed the CanMNT for being naive and ill-prepared. He also lit into Herdman for player choices, finding Davies’ real position on the field, and other issues. The Canadian fans are definitely deluding themselves after the Octagonal. They don’t have near the level of investment, depth, dual national recruiting pool (and when they have dual nationals, those players have better options elsewhere) as the US. They don’t qualify for prestigious youth tournaments to start that recruitment early enough. By nearly every objective metric, they are behind the US. Herdman’s done an amazing job and the Octagonal was a high watermark but, as far as I can see, it was the peak for this group: the right set of circumstances, the right blend of youth and experience, the right time (in catching the US amidst growing pains and Mexico on the downswing). It won’t happen again.
He is right, though. Canada has gone from 0-60 faster than any nation I’ve ever seen in terms of developing as a soccer power. There was once a point not long ago at all when Canada was basically Dwayne De Rosario and ten palookas…I remember one time maybe ten years back the Canucks were trying to qualify for the hex needed just a tie or a win against Honduras to make it over the line. They lost 8-1 and made Jerry Bengston look like Ronaldo.
Jerry Bengston, for those who missed his brief inglorious stint in MLS, is, uhm, not Ronaldo. He’s more like Ronald McDonald. With the shoes.
So it’s a little jarring to look out at Canada now and see a bunch of Ferrari-level athletes out there and watch them not just make the World Cup but all but run #2-ranked Belgium off the field in the opener. How they somehow lost that match against the Waffles I have no idea (but it certainly derailed their whole World Cup.) And now they’re legit better than Mexico – actually way better, at the moment – and have multiple guys playing for Champions League-level teams in Europe? How’d that happen? They have all of three MLS squads in Canada. Three.
So I don’t blame Herdman for getting irate with his confederation, which is pretty much an AYSO chapter that is doing this generation of shockingly talented guys absolutely no favors. I don’t think Canada will ever go back to losing to Honduras 8-1, but they also caught lightning in a bottle with this generation and it’d be a shame if they missed it for lack of confederation support.
Three MLS teams is all Canada really needs though. The majority of its population is located in those three metro areas. Then you have the Canadian Premier League which fills in the gaps in the smaller markets and has gotten better in quality every season and who’s attendance keeps growing. If you ask most Canadians they’re no longer worried about the talent level drying up and confident player development will continue to improve in spite of the CSA.
Now on to Herdman’s comments. Most Canadians and the Canadian media agreed with his statement about the CSA but they also felt he was deflecting from his own shortcomings. Even Atiba Hutchinson didn’t agree that player preparation time was the issue for Canada’s performance on Sunday.
Instead, Canadians feel Herdman might have reached his ceiling and even worse there’s suspicions that he might have lost the locker room and the players no longer trust Herdman based on his highly questionable tactics at the World Cup. The questions now are who would replace him and should they replace him?
There were dreams of Ancelotti as he lives in West Vancouver and has been vocal in the media in wanting to coach Canada and was even at the final on Sunday but the CSA was never gonna be able to afford him and he’s off to Brazil now anyway.
So in an ironic way, Herdman is right, the CSA probably won’t do the right thing but from the Canadian fans’ perspective the right thing to do now is to find someone better than Herdman.
for all the socialism talk in this country, we pump a lot of money into “olympic” sports systems, including USSF, which is basically a professionalized version of what used to be an amateur setup dominated by college players and semi pros. canada might be more socialistic on the whole but they don’t spend a bunch on sports. people will want CFL teams in different cities and they won’t spend public funds to build bigger stadia. so you either have a rich owner or a nearby college or you’re out of luck.
anyhow, if you look at canada’s schedule it’s pretty obvious they run it lower-rent. was obvious before they got this good.
there are two layers to it. 1, the funding generally is a parking brake on the team no matter how good the pool is. 2, like every other team their pool rises and falls. it probably hurts more now because this is peak canada and the parking brake is still on. if they throw more money into the team in 5-10 years this bunch will be gone and so what. throwing more money into down ebb canada probably just keeps them top 6 or 8.
Sky Dome, BC Place, and BMO Field are all government funded stadiums. CF Montreal’s stadium was built by their owner.
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Herdman as the former manager of the women’s team is probably pretty upset about the lack of funding for the women too. The women tried to sue in March and the federation threatened to sue them.
How about you focus on winning ONE game at the World Cup before you talk about winning it.