New era for Canadian women's national team begins at Pinatar Cup

A new era for the Canadian women’s team begins this week when it competes at the Pinatar Cup. 

The invitational, four-nations tournament in Spain marks Canada’s first matches under Casey Stoney since her appointment as coach in January, allowing the team to finally move on from the drone spying scandal that enveloped the program and former coach Bev Priestman at last summer’s Paris Olympics. 

Stoney, 42, arrives on the job with a pretty big reputation as both a player and coach, although this will be her first coaching job at the international level. She also has a huge task ahead of her, starting with Canada’s games at the Pinatar Cup against China (Feb. 19), Mexico (Feb. 22) and Chinese Taipei (Feb. 25). 

A defender of some repute, Stoney turned out for Arsenal, Charlton, Chelsea, Lincoln and Liverpool during a 19-year playing career. She earned 130 caps for England from 2000 to 2017, and represented her country at three FIFA World Cups and three UEFA European Championships. She also captained Team Great Britain during the 2012 Olympics in London. 

It shouldn’t come as too much of a surprise that the former defender has put an emphasis on keeping things tight at the back during her coaching career. During Stoney’s full two years in charge of the San Diego Wave in 2022 and 2023, her team had one of the best defensive records in the National Women’s Soccer League. 

Canada is well-known for its defensive prowess, which is something Stoney will be looking to build upon at the Pinatar Cup. But the long-standing criticism of this Canadian team has been its lack of creativity in the final third and that it doesn’t score enough. Getting the Canadian side to be more ruthless in front of goal will be one of her objectives in Spain. 

“I think what the team has done in the past has been very good. They've been defensively organized. They're hard to beat. (Now) it's about how we can create and score more goals,” Stoney said.  

“How can we be more progressive with our play? How can we free them up a little bit in terms of freedom? How can we make sure that we've got really good attacking players on the field at all times to cause the opponent problems? We want to get in front of the opponent's back four in the early stages as much as we can.” 

Getting more out of her Canadian team on the attacking end, while at the same time maintaining its defensive structure, will also be one of Stoney’s aims at the Pinatar Cup. 

“We want to create more. You create more, you get more chances to score, while still being defensively organized. We've got good structure around the ball and good connections. We can always counter-press to win it back again,” Stoney explained. 

Too often in the past, this Canadian side has been too slow and methodical on the pitch, failing to recognize when to pick up the pace during key moments in games. That’ll also be something to look for from Canada at the Pinatar Cup. 

“We want to be a high-energy team. We want to be an entertaining team,” Stoney promised. 

The most recognizable names on Stoney's 26-player roster for the Pinatar Cup are the team’s core of veterans, including captain Jessie Fleming and fellow midfielder Julia Grosso, goalkeeper Kailen Sheridan, defenders Vanessa Gilles and Ashley Lawrence, and forwards Janine Sonis (formerly Janine Beckie) and Adriana Leon. 

Stoney is challenging her group of veterans to show more leadership, especially in mentoring the team’s younger players. 

“This team has always had a fantastic culture. It's giving the leaders more responsibility to take care of those younger players. When I was a player, it was always about leaving the shirt in a better place. And I think that the responsibility of senior players is to bring those young players through, to lead them, to guide them,” Stoney stated. 

She added: “It can be daunting sometimes coming into a new environment, but we want to make it a very open environment where everybody's open-minded. It's a big change now. So, everybody's coming into that situation a little bit new, but it's their job to look after them.” 

After a difficult year that was highlighted by the Olympic scandal, Canada closed out 2024 with an emphatic 5-1 win over South Korea in December in an international friendly 

The win hinted at a possible path forward for Canada, as interim coach Cindy Tye gave national team debuts to three newcomers — centre back Megan Reid, midfielder Jeneva Hernandez Gray and forward Nyah Rose. 

Tye also heavily relied on attackers Marie-Yasmine Alidou and Olivia Smith, two attackers long overlooked by Priestman. Alidou and Smith responded with a goal and an assist each. 

Expanding the player pool and giving chances to young prospects is something that Stoney is keen to do. For the Pinatar Cup, she recalled Smith (a 20-year-old who is impressing during her debut season with Liverpool), Alidou and Rose, while also giving a first national team call-up to 19-year-old defender Ella Ottey. 

“I've got ideas in terms of principles of play and the way I want to see the game, but I don't have any biases at all in terms of players. This is a blank canvas, an equal opportunity for everybody. Obviously, I've assessed the squad in depth, but I want everybody to come (to Spain) and have a fair chance, and that's the way we will look at this camp in terms of the games,” Stoney promised. 

This year is relatively quiet for the Canadian women’s team. There are no big Concacaf tournaments or Olympics to play in, and the qualifying campaign for the 2027 FIFA World Cup in Brazil doesn’t start until next year. So, Stoney has a nice, long pathway to acclimate herself before the stakes are meaningful. 

That being said, Stoney wants to hit the ground running by beginning to shape and mould the team in her image. That process will start with this month’s Pinatar Cup, but it won’t happen overnight. 

“We’ve got one day to prepare before we play China. So, it's about getting the group together. It's about them understanding me as a head coach, and the way that we're going to play, and that's going to take time. We're going to have to have patience with that. It’s not going to be a wholesale change, but there are going to be changes,” Stoney said. 

“With that, there's going to come some challenges. So, my expectations of this group are to come in and be open-minded; to come in and to work hard to be open-minded to the things that we want to apply, the principles that we want to apply. We want to be a dynamic team. We want to be a team that can go up against the best teams in the world. And we've got to have a certain way of playing to be able to do that.” 

Editor's Note:

John Molinaro is one of the leading soccer journalists in Canada, having covered the game for over 20 years for several media outlets, including Sportsnet, CBC Sports and Sun Media. He is currently the editor-in-chief of TFC Republic, a website dedicated to in-depth coverage of Toronto FC and Canadian soccer. TFC Republic can be found here.