In an exclusive interview with Sky Sports, Canada head coach John Herdman discusses his remarkable journey to the 2022 World Cup in Qatar, from Consett to Canada via New Zealand, and how it was fuelled by the desire to prove people wrong back home...
Wednesday 23 November 2022 18:36, UK
"It is when you look back that you realise what it is that is motivating you," John Herdman tells Sky Sports; "When you are told you are not good enough or you are not going to succeed at a higher level, it fuels your desire to prove people wrong."
Herdman has already done that. But when the Canadian anthem is played at the Al Rayyan Stadium in Qatar on Wednesday evening, when he officially becomes the first coach to take charge of Canada's men at a World Cup game in 36 years, everyone will know it.
He is the boy from Consett, the town in County Durham, half-an-hour's drive from Newcastle, who sought his fortune in the new world. Home is Vancouver now. "Where my house is, I look out on the United States." But the journey there has been complicated.
His is a story of opportunities taken and denied, a lesson that hints at football's mistrust of the outsider and a reminder of what is lost when that thinking prevails. Mostly, it is a tale of one man's hard work and ingenuity taking him to the pinnacle of the world's game.
When Herdman was coaching in Sunderland's academy, he was all enthusiasm and drive but found himself frustrated by the obstacles in his path. The ceiling to his ambition seemed obvious to others if not to him - he had not played the game professionally.
"You needed to have played in front of 50,000 to understand the psychology of elite performance," he says, parroting what he was told. "Coming through in the '90s, you were seen as an academic. You had not played at the highest level. It became a motivator."
He recalls Tony Blair, Prime Minister at the time, "pushing a white paper around elite players becoming elite coaches" and the mood music telling him that his face did not fit. "I could see opportunities closing in the profession that I wanted to stay in."
That might have been that. A career in grassroots coaching, a worthy contribution to the game that he loved, but no adventure abroad, no Olympic Games, no draw with Mexico in front of 61,200 people in the famous Azteca Stadium, and certainly no World Cup.
"It is in my personality to keep pushing," he says. "I enjoy being in environments where you can learn and push yourself to the next level." Initially, he found just such an environment on the other side of the world. "Moving to New Zealand opened my mind."
He arrived in the country with his now wife Clare in 2001, joined the country's football programme and was coaching New Zealand's women by 2006. He would take them to two World Cups, one Olympics, and learn more than he can repeat along the way.
"I had to have a learner's mind if I was ever going to get there. I remember being in my office and to my left was Pat Barwick, an international hockey coach, on the right was Lester Routledge, an ex-All-Black who had just come back from coaching Italy.
"Working on the women's side, we were an Olympic sport so we had access to the Olympic coaching pathway. I was identified as an accelerator coach who they wanted to help on their journey, a funnel towards excellence. I was exposed to workshops, individual plans."
His mentor was Robbie Deans, an assistant coach with the All Blacks. Herdman recalls a creative culture that was a world away from the established wisdoms of football back home. There were conversations about statistics with Billy Beane of Moneyball fame.
"He was saying that he had just been to a Premier League club and that our work was innovative in comparison. Some of our analytics was built by the All Blacks performance analyst. We just would not have had access to that. It was a fertile grounding."
When he moved to Canada to take the job as coach of the women's national team in 2011, he found much the same. "Canada was a carbon copy." Even so, they had just finished last at the World Cup. Under Herdman, they won bronze at London 2012 and Rio 2016.
Attempting to recreate that success with the men was controversial in Canada, swapping his job with the successful women's team for a side that had not qualified for a World Cup in three decades. But he believed there was the potential to do so much more.
"We have a golden generation now which is amazing but even back then this was a talented Canada team. I did the research. On paper they were the fourth most talented team in CONCACAF, when you looked qualitatively at the levels they were playing at.
"They had been for 12 years and it was not happening. We had players like Jonathan Osario, Junior Hoillet, Steven Vitoria. I spoke to them. The feedback was that there was a lack of trust, an inability to connect in big moments. The foundations just had not been laid."
Before the emergence of Bayern Munich's Alphonso Davies and Lille's Jonathan David, the task was to build those foundations and heal the divisions within the group. His message was clear. "With the talent that we have, we can do this," he told the players.
"There was no Alphonso or Jonathan in that first camp but I told them they would qualify if they committed everything. We brought some clarity. We looked at all the things that the players had said were stopping us from qualifying. There was a poor-me culture."
The scale of the problem was clear in that first training camp. "There were fights on the field." With players from European backgrounds, Caribbean backgrounds and South American backgrounds, any semblance of unity or shared purpose was missing.
The second camp was worse than the first. "It went off," says Herdman. "That was the moment. I had to draw a line in the sand. I went after them about it. I told them that this was a dysfunctional team." It was the low point that became the turning point.
"We were going to do some tactical work but we knew that unless you build that culture then the tactics mean nothing because the guys cannot focus on their job if they do not trust the person next to them or the coach. It was about building that."
Herdman credits the players for leading it. "They brought it together. They do the work now. They set the culture." Even the setbacks are opportunities now. When they lost to Haiti at the Gold Cup in 2019, they responded by beating USA for the first time in 34 years.
"We have had a lot of breakthrough moments." Fifteen matches unbeaten during qualifying for the World Cup carried them to this historic achievement. And with Herdman having established the ground rules, the country's talent now has the chance to shine.
Davies is the darling of Canadian football, of course. A Champions League winner in 2020, he is now a leader of men at 22 years of age. "You have to pinch yourself to remind yourself that you are having conversations with such a young man," says Herdman.
"The conversations fluctuate." Herdman leans on his expertise, admitting to taking notes dictated from conversations with Davies about how Bayern prepare for big games. "And then we are talking about his rapping on TikTok," he adds, laughing.
"I have to constantly be aware of the journey he is on, the world he is in, and that he is evolving. The first part is about celebrating those things and reminding him of this journey. The second part is about tapping into his motivation. What lights his fire?
"You know that you cannot dip below the line ever. You are under pressure to perform. This is a Champions League winner. They need to see the effort. When they see that, they come with you. The top pros understand they need to work hard. It is so clear."
David is another of those who is likely to be key to Canada's hopes in Qatar. Like Davies, he is 22. Like Davies, he has been a revelation in Europe, winning Ligue 1 with Lille. "He is a special talent and his story is pretty amazing as well," says Herdman.
"This is a player who never went into an academy system. He was at Ottawa and was well managed by the people he had around him. From there, what we have seen is that this kid is like a 30-year-old senior pro in terms of his ability to handle pressure moments.
"He was the tournament top scorer at the Gold Cup. He went to Belgium and scored 20 goals and becomes the league top scorer. He went to France and won the league. There are others with similar techniques but he never seems to break a sweat. He is cold.
"I am excited to see how far he can go."
Some might be thinking the same about Herdman. He has gone a long way already. Four-and-a-half thousand miles is the distance from Consett to his home in Canada. And, on Wednesday, he takes charge of the first of at least three games at the 2022 World Cup.
It is safe to assume that he has proven a few people wrong now.
