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Hockey culture has developed Canada's three soccer strengths - John Herdman
Soccer has developed huge popularity of its own in Canada, but ahead of the Women's World Cup's start on Saturday, Canadian head coach John Herdman maintains that his team has taken inspiration from another sport that's massively popular across the country—hockey. In a piece for The Globe and Mail, Herdman wrote that his team's strengths arise from Canada's love of hockey:
When we talk about the strengths of this team, we call them our three DNA strands, and you can see that the players have inherited them from this country’s hockey culture.
First off, there’s a real attacking mindset in the Canadian game, so with that, just as with hockey, you get a lot of quick counterattacks that our girls are really tuned into. It was on clear display at the Olympics, where out of the top five teams we had the fewest shots but had the highest percentage of converting shots into goals.
Then you’ve got power. Canadians have always been known for that, and when I coached against them as head coach of New Zealand during our first game in 2007, they smashed us 4-0; they physically dominated us. We’ve emphasized that in our training leading up to the tournament and I think Canadian fans are drawn to that, the physicality of what they expect us to be. So we can regain the ball quickly after losing possession and really impose ourselves on any opposition.
Lastly, when we analyzed the teams that finished on the podium in the last Olympics, the best were able to exert a greater amount of control on the game. People think possession of the ball is control, but it’s not. What you should be striving for is control in areas that the opposition doesn’t want you to be in. So we look at statistics such as how much time we spend in the opposition half, how many attacking quarter entries we have and the number of final acts, such as shots or crosses.
Deficiencies in that area have been Canada’s weakness for many a year, and now that we’re playing at home, we’d like to show Canada that we’ve grown and can control the game in the opposition half rather than rely on physical defending and counterattacking strategies.
There have always been plenty of comparisons between soccer and hockey, as the two have a lot in common for such different sports. Both are team games focused on moving a ball (or puck) up and down the playing surface and trying to get it by a goalie into a net. Beyond those surface comparisons, though, Herdman's comments illustrate that the Canadian team is taking some strategies from hockey as well; quick rushes and successful counterattacks have paid off for numerous hockey teams, and they should work for Canadian soccer too with the speed of players like Josée Bélanger and Kaylyn Kyle on the flanks. The focus on "control in areas the opposition doesn't want you to be in" also sounds a lot like some ideas favoured by hockey's advanced statistical movement. It's not just about having control of the ball, or the puck; it's about offensive zone control and the chances generated from that. This is an area Canadian stars Christine Sinclair and Sophie Schmidt excel in. As well, physicality obviously matters in hockey, but skillful physicality has been an important development for the Canadian soccer team too. It's a big part of the success players like Desiree Scott and Kadeisha Buchanan have found in shutting down opposing attackers.
It's somewhat funny that an Englishman like Herdman whose previous job was coaching New Zealand, two countries that aren't particularly known for turning out ice hockey players, has helped refine these hockey ideas and concepts into the Canadian national team. However, a big part of Herdman's success so far has come from his adaptability. He's brought the approach of working with the talent he has rather than trying to impose a particular system on players not suited for it (which was part of what went wrong under his predecessor, Italian coach Carolina Morace). In Canada, those cultural hockey influences on players make a lot of sense, and they seem to be turning into success on the pitch as well as on the ice. Fans of the frozen game may find some similarities watching the Canadian team in the Women's World Cup this month.
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