John Herdman doesn’t know what date it is.

Or the day of the week, or what he’s going to do tomorrow.

Two days after England knocked out Canada at the Women’s World Cup, the Canadian coach said he had gone through feelings of shame and guilt.

But the emotion that stands out, that Herdman can’t seem to force out of his mind, is one of dissatisfaction. His team believed they could beat England Sautrday if they were at their best. But their best, outside of a few minutes, wasn’t enough in a 2-1 loss.

“The frustrating thing is the semi-final was achievable on that day and we didn’t do it,” Herdman told the Star over the phone from Vancouver Monday.

Two English goals in a three minute period sunk the Canadians. Down by two with 75 minutes to play, the squad continued to battle, with captain Christine Sinclair scoring late in the first half to narrow the deficit. But it wasn’t enough to usurp the higher-ranked Lionesses.

Much has been made of the Canadians’ exit since Saturday. The No. 8 team in the world matched its ranking with a top-eight finish. But with a favourable draw and the support of a country behind, some say the Canadians fell short.

Herdman, whose team was a mix of veterans and first-timers, is not among them.

“We’re not going to come in there and say, ‘Look, we’re coming in to try and get out of the group stage because we’ve got a group of players that are over 29 or 30 years of age and a group of player that are under 20 and, to be honest, this team isn’t ready to compete for an event like that.’ We weren’t going to say that.”

And familiar troubles resurfaced, particularly around the net. Three years ago in London, Canada had the lowest number of shots on goals of the top six Olympic teams. In that tournament, Melissa Tancredi and Christine Sinclair scored 90 per cent of the team’s goals, Herdman said. Sinclair had two in the World Cup, one on a penalty, while Tancredi failed to get on the scoreboard.

“We’re having more shots, more crosses, more attacking players so the team’s moved forward, we just haven’t be able to find that final edge, that game-breaking edge,” Herdman said.

The Englishman will begin a formal review of his team’s tournament in the near future, but he says Canada’s result was a reality check for the country, whose women’s soccer team has only made it out of the group stage once previously.

“The things that we need to have in place aren’t in place yet, in terms of our system, our structure.”

He is working toward implementing a more complete system on the development side so that, like the Germans, the French and the Japanese, Canada has a team ready to peak at every World Cup cycle.

“For this tournament, we weren’t quite there yet and we weren’t meant to be there yet because this is going to take time.”

Loading... Loading... Loading... Loading... Loading... Loading...

But the World Cup is not over for Herdman, who says he’ll tune in for this week’s games. It would be nice to see his native England push on, he said, but he’s most interested in seeing good football.

“I’m just going to sit and enjoy it with my son, my daughter and my wife. I’m going to settle down, have a nice glass of wine, relax, watch the game and be an armchair critic.”

Read more about: