Canada head coach Jesse Marsch this week signed a contract extension through to the end of the 2030 World Cup.Tony Gutierrez/The Associated Press
Two notable things happened this week in Canada’s set-up ahead of next month’s World Cup.
Head coach Jesse Marsch began to lower the bar for performance. Asked at the opening of a U.S.-based training camp about the number of injuries to key players, Marsch said, “How much time do we have?”
Of the injury that matters most, to star turn Alphonso Davies, Marsch prepped everyone for disappointment. Marsch said Davies will play in the World Cup, but, “I don’t think he’ll be quite ready on June 12.”
In other words, if Canada wins its opener against Bosnia-Herzegovina, Davies will get the time he needs to fully recover. If Canada loses, Davies will appear in the next game on crutches, trying to head the ball the length of the field.
The rest of the roster looks like the aftercare unit at an orthopedic clinic. Most of them are moving around, but gingerly. None of this is the coach’s fault, but it bodes ill for his Hollywood international debut on Canada’s behalf.
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All of this makes the other notable thing weird. On Monday, Canada Soccer extended Marsch’s contract to cover the period from now until after the 2030 World Cup.
Marsch is a good talker and seems like a smart guy, but he hasn’t done anything yet. Again, not his fault. He’s had no opportunity to do so.
This World Cup is that opportunity. Why extend him two weeks before he’s had the chance to show everyone his work?
Despite its new relevance, Canada still has many soccer weaknesses. The most embarrassing is its tendency toward cultism.
No coach is ever just a coach. They’re all visionary geniuses. None should be limited to minding the team they were hired to manage. They should gradually assume total control of the program, top to bottom. None is ever really judged on their performance. They are admired for their grandiosity.
Carolina Morace stands out as an exemplar of the type. She moved the women’s team to Italy, with the enthusiastic financial backing of her overawed bosses. Then she finished dead last in a Women’s World Cup and, on a flying visit to Canada, demanded a raise.
John Herdman was her ultimate successor. One Olympic bronze medal with the women’s team – albeit a legendary bronze – convinced the people in charge that Herdman shouldn’t just oversee the women’s senior team. He should control Canadian soccer, full stop.
Ten years ago, if you and two friends started to kick a ball around in the backyard, Herdman would pop his head over the fence and start barking at you about triangles.
Coach John Herdman, centre, wears a dejected look after Canada's 4-1 loss to Croatia in the 2022 World Cup group stage.HANNAH MCKAY/Reuters
Then it was Bev Priestman at the women’s team who could do no wrong, until she could do nothing but.
The lesson is obvious – don’t be so gullible. It’s fine to assume the best of everyone, but safer to assume it based on what they’ve done, not what they’re promising.
You think France or Argentina run around handing out extensions to guys who’ve never taken their team to a major tournament? They do not, and they are pulling from coaches who have unlimited employment options. If you’re coaching Canada, you may have options, but they have limits.
The whole point of hiring coaches on a contract basis – rather than just giving them a full-time jobs – is to set easily identified benchmarks. By this date, you should have done so and so. Get this first set of tasks done and we’ll talk again.
So what is Canada saying to Marsch? Lose three in a row – just as your predecessor did – and we’re cool. You can try again next time in Morocco/Portugal/Spain, by which time Davies will be closing in on 30 and fully robotic from the knees down.
This isn’t a knock on Marsch. He may be the most penetrating soccer mind since whoever invented the bicycle pump. But the onus is on him to prove that with a diminished team at a home World Cup, not on Canada to reassure him that we think he’s the greatest even if it turns out that he isn’t.
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The whole thing is starting to get that bad Qatar 2022 feeling. The trouble with that team wasn’t the team, as such. It was the way in which that team carried itself. They were simultaneously full of themselves and lacking all confidence. They were the world champions of positive self talk, but somewhat less than that in midfield. All of that flowed down from the coach. It’s a new guy now, but the talk hasn’t changed much.
This will be “the best squad Canada’s ever had,” Marsch said this week, of a team that has lost every game it has ever played at a World Cup. I’m not even sure that qualifies as faint praise.
“We’re going to be all positive in making sure that everything we do is about a relentless desire to achieve our goals, and we’re not letting anything get away,” said Marsch.
Every time I hear a coach, any coach, speak this way, my hand reflexively reaches around to make sure my wallet is still in my back pocket.
The fear seems to be that if the United States bomb out in the coming weeks, Marsch will be its first phone call. But a contract doesn’t solve that problem. If the U.S. wants him and Marsch wants to go, he’ll go. That’s how soccer works.
Famously, Marsch wanted the U.S. job during the last hiring round, but it went to a bigger name, Mauricio Pochettino.
Pochettino is in the same spot as Marsch – home World Cup, squad in flux, prospects all over the place. But whereas the pressure is off Marsch, everyone knows that if Pochettino loses, he’s gone. They may hood him and run him out of the building as he walks to his final press conference. This is also how it works, at major soccer nations.
In Canada, we get it mixed up. We fall in love with the idea of people, rather than anything they’ve done. We are highly vulnerable to sophistry. And we’re doing it again.