Canada’s MNT coach John Herdman (44), an Englishman from the footballing hotbed of the old country’s North-East, simply bleeds and breathes against the heartbeat of his adopted nation.
Attend a press conference or talk to him, and you can feel the passion and committed energy he puts into his role, a self-preserving challenge to make Canadian soccer regionally competitive and worldly noticed.
Herdman feels a patriotism here he hasn’t elsewhere, not in New Zealand where they adopted his ‘Whole of Football’ blueprint and not in his homeland where as a youth coach at Premier League Sunderland he realized opportunities would be limited, not having played the game at an elite level.