Former Toronto FC head coach John Herdman before a match between the New England Revolution and Toronto FC on March 3, at Gillette Stadium in Foxborough, Mass.Icon Sportswire/Getty Images
John Herdman, who has been dogged for the past four months by the Canada Soccer drone spying scandal, resigned Friday afternoon from his position as head coach of Toronto FC.
Mr. Herdman, 49, the former head coach of the Canadian men’s senior national soccer team, had joined the Major League Soccer team only a little over a year ago. He had a storied career with Canada Soccer, during which he coached the women’s national team to two Olympic bronze medals before he joined the men’s team in 2018 and took them to the 2022 FIFA World Cup. It was the first appearance at that tournament for the Canadian men’s side in 36 years.
But he was unable to replicate the magic during his first stint as a manager of a pro club. In Mr. Herdman’s first full season with TFC, the team finished with a record of 11-4-19 and missed the playoffs for the fourth year in a row.
During an end-of-season news conference last month, Keith Pelley, the president and CEO of Maple Leaf Sports & Entertainment, which owns TFC, remarked that, “the club lacks an identity.”
Canada Soccer insiders say its culture problem runs deeper than drones
Mr. Pelley added that management would be devising a new identity over the ensuing two months, “and that will trigger every move that we make, and it will be something that will resonate through the entire organization.”
There were troubles brewing for Mr. Herdman outside TFC, with uncertainty swirling around him from the moment the drone scandal exploded in Paris in late July. Days before the Olympics began, Joey Lombardi, a coach with the women’s team, was arrested for flying a drone over the New Zealand’s women’s team practice. He was sent home from Paris along with his boss, Canadian women’s assistant coach Jasmine Mander. The team’s head coach, Bev Priestman, followed. All three are now serving one-year bans from FIFA for their role in the scheme.
In filings to FIFA’s Appeals Committee, Canada Soccer identified Mr. Herdman as the likely architect of the federation’s drone strategy, submitting that it was “investigating the history of this matter, but we suspect that the practice of using a drone stems back to John Herdman when he was the head coach of the women’s national team. In other words, this was a practice started by one person – John Herdman – and continued by Bev Priestman. It was not facilitated by the federation.”
In Canada Soccer’s filings, the organization quoted an e-mail Ms. Priestman had sent to a human-resources consultant in March asking for advice on what she could do about a performance analyst who was refusing to spy. “I know there is a whole operation on the Men’s side with regards to it,” she wrote.
Canada Soccer hired Sonia Regenbogen, a Toronto-based lawyer, to probe the circumstances surrounding the drone usage in Paris and what it called “the historical culture of competitive ethics within all of our programs.”
John Herdman, then head coach of the senior men's national team, prepares for practice with Bev Priestman, then a member of his coaching staff, ahead of a game against the United States in the final of the CONCACAF Women's Olympic Qualifying Championship, in Houston on Saturday, Feb. 20, 2016.Neil Davidson/The Canadian Press
Mr. Herdman told reporters during the Olympics that he was “highly confident that, in my time as a head coach, at an Olympic Games or World Cup, we’ve never been involved in any of those activities,” and he pledged to participate in the third-party investigation.
But when the report into the scandal was released earlier this month, Ms. Regenbogen noted that Mr. Herdman had not made himself available for an interview. (Upon the release of that report, Canada Soccer said that Ms. Priestman, Ms. Mander, and Mr. Lombardi would not be returning to the organization.)
Canada Soccer announced it was initiating a disciplinary procedure against Mr. Herdman for “potential violations of the Canada Soccer code of conduct and ethics.”
Like all MLS and other pro soccer teams in Canada, TFC is a member association of Canada Soccer, and is thus subject to its regulations and oversight.
Canada Soccer did not immediately respond to a request for comment about Mr. Herdman’s departure and the effect it might have on the disciplinary process.
If Mr. Herdman declines to participate, he could be suspended permanently from any professional or amateur soccer activities in Canada until submitting to the process.
In a statement issued by TFC, Mr. Herdman said he had “made the difficult decision that it’s the right time for me to step away from the club, as the organization defines its vision for the future,” He added: “It has been an honour to wear the Toronto FC crest and contribute to the growth of the club. Working with this dedicated group of players and staff has been a true privilege.”
Mr. Herdman had brought a number of those staff with him from Canada Soccer, prompting some to complain that he had shortchanged his legacy at the federation by leaving it depleted of coaching talent.
Among those who joined him at TFC, as an assistant coach, was Jason de Vos, the former director of development at Canada Soccer who served for about eight months as its interim general secretary in 2023, when the organization underwent a pair of workplace investigations, which The Globe and Mail reported last week, that had probed allegations of misconduct by Ms. Priestman and Ms. Mander.
The Globe reported that those probes noted staff had raised concerns about spying. Mr. de Vos told The Globe that he couldn’t discuss those investigations because of confidentiality issues, but that their findings were treated with “the seriousness and diligence they warranted,” adding that he introduced policy changes as a result.