Kyle continues growth under new coach

Out of the entire Canadian women’s team roster, perhaps nobody grew more as a player under former coach Carolina Morace than Kaylyn Kyle.

Kyle, a 23-year-old native of Saskatoon, was on the fringes of the national team before establishing herself in the centre of midfield while Morace was in charge. With the Italian’s help, Kyle became a regular starter and one of Canada’s most consistent performers.

Morace is long gone, having parted ways with the CSA in the aftermath of last summer’s World Cup disappointment. But Kyle’s “soccer education” has continued under Englishman John Herdman, installed as Morace’s replacement last September, and the bulwark midfielder should be a key figure for Canada when it competes in the upcoming CONCACAF Women's Olympic Qualifying tournament in Vancouver.

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Kyle had a great deal of respect for Morace, but also holds Herdman in high esteem because of the open way he communicates with his players.

"John is very direct with you; he tells it like it is. … There's no hiding underneath him. It's a complete shift for us,” Kyle recently told sportsnet.ca.

Kyle recalled the first time she worked with Herdman one-on-one when her new coach politely, but very directly, told her what the consequences would be if she did not improve her positional awareness on the field.

“He told me, 'Look, if you don't improve this, I can't see you playing in our midfield.' It scared the s--- out of me,” Kyle admitted. “So I watched game tapes and he went over game clips for me. It's been awesome. I really think I will grow under him."

Kyle describes Herdman as a “phenomenal guy, on and off the field.” She also explains the Englishman is a stickler for details and goes the extra mile to prepare his players, often times showing them video of the first half during the halftime interval and providing them with their personalized game stats minutes after a match is completed.

Herdman goes to great lengths to provide his players with valuable intel and a dossier of information on opponents -- “ripping apart the other team” as Kyle describes it.

“He makes it easy for us. When we’re on the field, we don’t have to think; we just have to play because he’s given us all of the tools and we know what we need to do. We know that if one situation doesn’t work, he’s given us 20 other ones that will,” Kyle said.

“As a young player, it’s been great not having to be really stressed on the ball and just being able to play. I’ve really loved playing under him.”

Herdman also “rips apart your game too so you know what to work on,” according to Kyle, and is big on giving players one-on-one attention in order to help fine tune their game.

“For me, he’s stressed that I need to get forward and getting my first touch forward because I have a tendency to go back. So he’s been working on that with me and I’m getting better and better,” Kyle stated.

Like Morace, Herdman favours a technical brand of soccer that preaches passing and ball retention. The difference is that he’s a bit more flexible in his tactics.

“It’s still a possession game we play, but John talks about three attacking principles: it’s either going through the other team, going around the other team or going direct,” Kyle explained.

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Herdman’s biggest achievement, aside from guiding Canada to a gold medal at the Pan Am games last October, was his ability to help his players move past last year’s World Cup disappointment.

“When he first came he asked what we thought went wrong at World Cup, how we felt and what we were thinking. … I think by engaging us directly about it early on, it helped us out a lot with getting past Germany. We know that wasn’t our team,” Kyle said.

Still, Herdman has only been in charge since September and the Olympic qualifying tournament is the first big test of his tenure as coach. Failure to qualify for the London 2012 Olympic Games will be viewed as another failure for this team. There is little room for error, especially on home soil.

Kyle doesn’t think the relative short preparation time Herdman has had will adversely affect the team’s performance in Vancouver.

“If it was any other coach (I’d be worried). He’s a smart guy, and he has a great technical staff; we’ve bought into his system so much that we trust him 100 per cent and I think that’s huge,” Kyle said.

“He’s been so fantastic for us that we have all this confidence again. So we’re excited to get into another tournament.”