Four months before her team was to step onto the sport’s biggest stage, Carolina Morace announced she was walking away.
Canadian soccer officials were about to learn something about the Italian coach that Morace’s players already knew.
She does not bend, not even a little.
And that’s a good thing for Canada’s women’s soccer team as it prepares to open the FIFA Women’s World Cup – their confidence is at an all-time high, and the coach they adore is set to stick with the team through the 2012 London Olympics and perhaps longer.
“I could talk for days about (Morace),” said midfielder Carmelina Moscato. “She demands the best from us every day. She is emotional, she is passionate, she is an expert. . . she is by far the best coach I’ve. . . we’ve ever had.”
Canada, ranked sixth in the world, opens against two-time defending champion Germany in Berlin on Sunday.
The 47-year-old Morace announced in February that she would resign after the World Cup, citing a lack of support for the women’s program. Her players rallied around her, threatening to boycott games. The dispute was finally resolved earlier this month.
Her act of defiance was bold, coming just as the team was about to set up camp in Europe for its final run to the World Cup, and with the Canadian Soccer Association in the midst of its bid to host the 2015 tournament. (Canada would eventually win the right to host the event after Zimbabwe, the only other candidate, dropped out).
But the CSA likely looked tame to Morace, who has survived the macho world of Italian soccer.
Morace made her Italian national team debut when she was 14 and went on to captain the team, scoring 105 goals in 154 international games – including the first hat trick at the FIFA Women’s World Cup in a 5-0 victory over Taiwan in 1991.
She was a vocal leader for a squad desperate for support, scolding Italian soccer officials for their treatment of her team.
Morace went on to earn a law degree and was a soccer commentator on Italian TV.
She made headlines in 1999 when she became the first female head coach of a men’s professional side, Viterbo of Italy’s third division. Newspapers trumpeted her hiring as breaking a taboo. Corriere della Sera’s story ran under the headline “Morace: My Challenge to Chauvinism.”
Morace’s tenure with the men’s team didn’t last long. She quit after three months citing interference by the team’s owner who had fired assistant coach Elisabetta Bavagnoli. Bavagnoli, a former teammate of Morace’s in Italy, is now an assistant coach with the Canadian women’s team.
The CSA hired Morace in 2009, and she’s since led the team to a CONCACAF title and a near-flawless record of 10-1-2 in international matches this year. More importantly, she’s painstakingly transformed a team previously known for the long-ball, kick-and-run style of former coach Even Pellerud.
Morace stripped the game down to the basics, focusing on the simple tactics of passing and moving, the tic-tac-toe of maintaining possession.
“I love it, I truly enjoy playing the way she has us playing,” said Canada’s captain Christine Sinclair. “I’m the type of player that I want to get it, give it, get it back, little touches, little passes, the little combinations that she’s tried to teach us. It’s definitely coming along, and I think our entire team, you can tell everyone is having a lot of fun with it.”
Added Moscato: “Tactically it doesn’t get much better than her. It’s been amazing to see our transformation over the past two years. We look, play and think completely different.”
The Canadians say they’re also fitter and faster than ever, thanks to Morace’s soccer-specific training regimen.
“She’s turned us from athletes into soccer players,” Sinclair said. “The thing that I feel most (improved) is my speed. You can train and run and do those things to get you in shape to play 90 minutes, but for me it’s been completely different. . . the agility work, speed work, acceleration. That’s what I notice most in my game.”
For their final months leading up to the World Cup, Morace took her team to the place she knows best. The squad has spent the better part of the last four months in Rome, living in a hotel with its own pristine pitch right on the hotel grounds.
Canadian goalkeeper Karina LeBlanc said the time together has been invaluable.
“There’s so many benefits, obviously we’re more cohesive as a group, and Carolina is a tactical genius of the game, so we’ve all got more of a chance to spend time learning exactly how she sees the game,” said LeBlanc.
“And if you’re in Italy you fall in love with the sport all over again because they value it at a completely different level here. You’re not just a spectator when you go to a game, you’re learning the game here, you’re learning things about position, learning about other positions, and so just being in this environment has taught us all a lot.”
Morace scheduled regular days off that allowed the players to pack into their rental cars to soak up the city.
“For me, just driving by the Coliseum, you kind of feel a little spoiled being here,” said defender Candace Chapman. “On the field, you work as hard as you can, and it’s the same sacrifice wherever you are, whether it’s in Vancouver or Italy. But it’s a nice present when you can have that, to be able to go out into Rome.”
“She definitely knows when it’s time for business, but at the same time she knows when we need to relax and have some fun, and I think she creates a good balance,” Sinclair added.
Morace invited several Serie A coaches to come and see the progress her team had made, and they came away impressed.
“For sure they are better,” Morace said. “I remember the first match we played (after her hiring) in Cyprus in 2009. It was the first for us, they were scared, they played all the time back, they don’t play in front. Now they can play at the same level as the top teams in the world.”
Morace is proud of how far her players have come.
“What I said to them the other day is: I think we have two strengths,” Morace said. “One is the organization that we have on the field, and the other one is the predisposition of the players to go to the wall if we ask something. This was a very hard camp, but even when they didn’t have the energy to continue to run, they continued without complaint, just to push each other.”
Six of the 16 teams in Germany will be coached by women: Silvia Neid (Germany), Hope Powell (England), Eli Landsem (Norway), Pia Sundhage (U.S.), Ngozi Uche (Nigeria), and Morace.
Canada failed to advance out of the first round at the 2007 tournament, going 1-1-1 in China.
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