Canada men’s team qualified for their first World Cup in 36 years by beating Jamaica on March 27. Their head coach John Herdman achieved a unique milestone on Sunday night when he became the first individual to lead a Men’s and a Women’s team to a FIFA World Cup.
A 4-0 win over Jamaica finally pushed Canada over the line after they missed an opportunity earlier in the same window. Canada are now assured of back-to-back World Cup appearances at the very least, given that, as it stands, they are co-hosting the 2026 edition of the competition with neighbors USA and Mexico.
“”I still can’t believe it. I’ve been preaching this belief, but when it finally happens I’m speechless.
Canadians… we’ve won Champions League finals, we’ve got a kid playing in Bayern Munich, and we’ve got Canadians playing at all levels in Europe, and we’ve got Canadians going to a World Cup.
We’re a football country, that’s all we ever wanted. We wanted that respect. We wanted people to believe we were a football country, and we’ve proved it”.
said Herdman after his team secured qualification to the 2022 FIFA World Cup.
Remarkably, Herdman coached the Canada women’s national team between 2011 and 2018, leading them to consecutive bronze medal finishes in the 2012 and 2016 Olympics. Under him, the Women’s team also reached the quarterfinals of the World Cup in 2015, in which they played on home soil.
The Englishman was appointed as the head coach of the Men’s team in 2018, and in three years, they had jumped from 72nd to 40 in the FIFA World rankings. On Sunday night, Les Rouges achieved what had seemed inevitable for a while – a berth at the World Cup for the first time in nearly four decades.
