VAN DIEST: Plenty of lessons learned for Canada at FIFA World Cup

AL RAYYAN, Qatar — Canada head coach John Herdman is always talking about ‘learnings’ when it comes to lessons acquired along his FIFA World Cup journey.
The term ‘learnings’ makes me cringe as it doesn’t exist and it’s a colloquialism, I’ve only heard Herdman or his disciples use.

Regardless, Herdman and Canada Soccer learned plenty of lessons in its brief competitive tenure at the 2022 World Cup in Qatar, which came to an end Sunday with a 4-1 loss to Croatia here at the Khalifa International Stadium.

All the talk from Croatia following the victory had more to do with sticking it to Herdman and Canada for comments made in post-game following the narrow loss to Belgium.
Canada played extremely well in the opener and probably deserved something out of the game. But anyone who has ever played soccer knows the ball doesn’t care about deserve. It rolls the way it wants whether it’s fair or not.

So, it’s understandable Herdman and his troops would be fired up after the loss to Belgium and in an attempt to keep their spirits up, he uttered the phrase ‘F’ Croatia. That should have stayed in the huddle, the way some things stay in Vegas.

Nothing good could have come out of revealing what he said, and the Croatians, who were dragging their lower lips after being held to a scoreless draw by Morocco, ran with it and used it as motivation. As if trying to get a result out of the finalist from years ago wasn’t going to hard enough for Canada.

“I want to thank the head coach of Canada for the motivation,” said Croatian forward Andrej Kramaric, who scored two goals in the win. “I do believe he could have chosen better words to express himself. He could have formulated it a bit differently and Croatia demonstrated who ‘F’ed whom, that’s what we did.”

Perhaps Herdman felt revealing the comment would somehow throw Croatia off its game, or maybe, he was still fired up when escorted into the press conference room after the game, he figured it would make a good soundbite.

Herdman is wonderful for the media, he always seems to have something to say and demonstrates an eloquent way of saying it — ‘learnings’ aside.

The second question in the post-game press conference after the loss to Croatia wasn’t about his tactics, but about the comment. A late-arriving Croatian reporter asked about it as well towards the end of the availability.

“There’s a respect there for Croatia, and as I keep saying, we’re here to push as far as we can as a team, we’re here to change the mentality of the group,” Herdman said. “I could have been a little bit more composed coming out of the huddle, but that’s my learning, I’ll take that on the chin. But from a mindset point of view, I think we showed in that first 25 minutes that Canada can compete with the best in the world.

“I don’t think we gave them an easy night tonight, they might be celebrating now, and that’s great, they deserved it, they scored four goals. But there is a lot of pride in our performance, I thought we had some moments. I think guys like Alphonso Davies, Tajon Buchanan, Atiba Hutchinson, Junior Hoilett, Jonathan Osorio; young lads that were brought up through Canada really showed they could compete together.”

Canada did show well against Belgium, but considering they lost 2-0 to Morocco on Sunday, the game might have revealed more about the sharp decline of the Europeans than it did the rise of the North Americans.

Herdman went with a similar lineup against Croatia, but when things started falling apart a half hour into the game, he was slow to react.

Hutchinson, perhaps the most loyal player to wear a Canadian jersey on the men’s side, looked like a 39-year-old trying to keep up to the Croatian midfield. It was his man who scored the opening goal for Croatia and it was through his legs where the third came.

No one deserved to play a World Cup game for Canada more than Hutchinson, but he probably should have come off the field sooner than he did.

“I thought Atiba was just next level in that first half, some of his touches; he’s living what he said, to play fearlessly and I was really happy with his performance,” Herdman said. “My plan was to bring him out in the 55th (minute) and he said he wanted to keep going, and you need leadership in there and he wanted to keep going and he did himself proud and our country proud.”

Overall, Canadian soccer fans got probably what they expected. The run in Concacaf was exceptional, but the region is about three rungs below the elite teams of the world.

Canada Soccer also learned some valuable lessons at the tournament. It has been 36 years since Canada has been at a World Cup, so perhaps it can be excused for showing up 40 minutes late to its first official press conference.

But when it comes to marketing its players, perhaps it should take a page from the elite nations who make its stars available to all media outlets, not just a select few broadcasters.

Lionel Messi, Cristiano Ronaldo, Harry Kane, the list goes on, all have made themselves available to everyone during the tournament.

Not one print journalist heard a thing from Alphonso Davies or Jonathan David through the lead up or first two games of the tournament. Both blew off the international print media in the mix zone after the loss against Croatia.

Now that Canada has been eliminated from advancing to the next round, the international print media has no interest in Davies or David, they’ve moved on.

Now that’s a learning.

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