The Athletic.

Hello, I'm Mark Chalm and welcome to the Business and Sport podcast on The Athletic.

Matt Slater, back with us this week after a week away. And our guest

is John Hurdman, the English coach, looking to transform Canadian football into a force both on

and off the pitch, all the way from grassroots to elite level, ahead of Canada being one of three

nations co-hosting the Men's World Cup in 2026.

John is a former primary school teacher in England, was an academy coach at Sunderland

and has already led Canada's huge with popular women's team to Olympic medals and a World Cup quarterfinal.

He's now in charge of the Canada men's team who are bidding to qualify for a men's World Cup in Catow next year

for the first time since 1986. John, thank you very much for joining those. I've given a brief

resume of your career. Just explain your pathway into coaching, first of all. Yeah, the pathway into

coaching, you know, started with most young men who dream of being

a footballer playing for Newcastle United.

But that didn't transpire.

Being told you weren't good enough at 15, 16, pushed us in a new pathway, which seems to be the obvious one, which is into

coaching and started coaching at 16, picked up my first, my first FA coaching badge at 17,

and then that sort of catapulted it is into a teaching pathway through university. And then on the back of

that, started my own business as a franchise holder with Brazilian soccer schools up in the

northeast. That took us into an opportunity to do some lecturing and, you know, from that, professional academies.

And that's where, you know, I dreamed of being, you know, working at the highest level

with young, up-and-coming professional players. So that was at Sunland Football Club and

at Hartlepool United Centre of Excellence. I knew exactly what I wanted

...