In the clinical world of elite football, where managers are often reduced to a series of results and tactical formations, Canadian women’s national team coach Casey Stoney has always been an outlier.
She carries a certain – let’s call it steeliness – which is a byproduct of a career spent fighting for the “bare minimum” in a sport that didn’t always want her.
But as she sat down to discuss the future of the Canadian team in a candid OneSoccer interview, it was evident that the steel remains and it, in fact, is also joined by something far rarer in the high-stakes environment of international management.
A raw, unfiltered vulnerability.
Dismantling the walls through radical honesty
The backstory to the days ahead for the CanWNT in 2026 is a bruising one. For the first time in recent memory, the Olympic champions have looked mortal as they have weathered a difficult year defined by five consecutive losses.
In the court of public opinion, the blame is usually shifted toward transition periods or the retirement of icons. However, Stoney isn’t looking for those exits.
Instead, she is looking in the mirror.
“I wasn’t at my best last year,” she admits with a level of honesty that stops the conversation in its tracks. It is a startling admission from a head coach at this level.
We are used to the no excuses mantra, but the former Manchester United women’s coach is offering a ‘why’ rather than an ‘if.’ She speaks of a period where the demands of the job collided with “personal circumstances” that drained her reserves.
“I gave what I had to give 100% of what I had, but that wasn’t good enough because of my personal circumstances,” she explains.
The struggle was about the heavy lifting of being a human being while trying to lead an elite collective, which led to challenges when it came to building trust within the team.
But the former England international isn’t shying away from it. In fact, she is reflecting on that time when the boundaries were set and the walls were up.
This period of introspection has fundamentally changed her approach to the SheBelieves Cup and the road to World Cup qualification. Stoney is now asking her players to be better and she is showing them the way too. By showing them how she is becoming better.
By revealing her own struggles to the squad, she has effectively dismantled the hierarchy that often keeps players and coaches at arm’s length. “I think showing that vulnerability, I think is important to players because that builds trust as well,” she notes.
A new presence for a new year
If 2025 was about survival, 2026 is going to be all about the response. Stoney describes herself as being in a different space now. A space that is characterized by a renewed sense of clarity and, more importantly, presence. There is a sense that the fog has lifted.
“I feel like I’m in a space where I can do that now. I think they deserve that,” she says, referring to the high-level leadership required to guide Canada through its current transition.
That presence is manifesting itself in a calmness and consistency of messaging designed to steady a team that isn’t used to the taste of defeat. Stoney is framing the five losses as the adversity required to find out what characters we want along the journey.
“I think when I look at my career as a player, the good times came from the bad times. We have to have adversity. It also shows us what characters we want along the journey. Cause it’s easy when it’s good and you’re winning; it’s not so easy when you’re in adversity.”
As coach Stoney prepares for the upcoming tests for the Canadian women, the narrative has shifted from the tactical to the personal. She is no longer just a manager trying to fix a football team. She is a leader who has reclaimed her own purpose and why.
