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“It’s been good to see the real emotion and players going at each other so I’ve enjoyed that.”

It’s a relaxed environment that surrounds Canada in its first camp under its latest head coach. Training so far has been just a short trip from the team’s hotel in a gated golf resort.

Saturday’s game will be about 20 kilometres away in the small city of San Pedro del Pinatar, a largely quiet city that will be bustling in a few months’ time as a popular vacation destination for Spaniards.

Herdman was ushered into his new position as Canada parted ways with former coach Octavio Zambrano, who was in charge of the men for less than a year.

Herdman becomes the latest coach to try and bring some measure of success to a Canadian men’s program, a task proven too hard for coach after coach.

“As a group they’ve started to see that the World Cup is realistic to them,” said Herdman. “They’ve started a bit of clarity on what it’s going to take and what the standards are going to be like moving forward.”

Herdman has surrounded himself with members of his women’s staff at this camp, including former women’s national team player Robyn Gayle, sports scientist Cesar Meylan and goalkeeper coach Simon Eaddy.

Never shy of using technology, Herdman had a coach flying a drone above the field on Thursday for aerial video of the session.

“The organization has stood out for me in terms of on and off field stuff,” said veteran David Edgar of the camp. “We’ve got a clear vision of where we want to go and how we setup the next four years. We’re going to do everything we can to succeed in that vision. But as I said, what we got is clarity.”