Canadian men's World Cup journey is about to get real

John Herdman, the coach of Canada's men's national soccer team, wears his worry on his face.

Speaking to reporters from his Slovakian hotel room last week — ahead of all-important friendlies against World Cup-host Qatar in Vienna on Friday (1 p.m. ET), and Uruguay in Bratislava, Slovakia on Tuesday (noon ET) — he appeared wan, anxious, not his usual exuberant self.

He admitted that lately his nights have been interrupted by more than jet lag.

"These last four months since June, there just seems to be so much happening," he said. "Some super positive, and some things that, yeah, are keeping me up at night."

June was a reference to Canada's previous international window, which was a debacle from the start. After guiding his team to its first World Cup in 36 years, Herdman could only watch when everything he'd so carefully built began falling apart around him.

First, Canada Soccer's proposed Vancouver friendly against Iran was cancelled because it was an unforgivably bad idea; a hastily arranged stop-gap match against Panama was then scuttled by a player strike over their World Cup wages.

That dispute remains unresolved. And now, just two months from Canada's World Cup opener against vaunted Belgium on Nov. 23, Herdman's navigation of a litany of other dilemmas will dictate whether he's able to answer, positively, one overarching question: can he recapture the sense of joy, brotherhood, and predetermination that got his team to Qatar in the first place?

"I've got no doubt difficult decisions are coming," he said. "There are a lot of moving parts at this point."

WATCH | Chris Jones breaks down Canada's World Cup friendlies:

Unusually, this year's World Cup will be held in the winter to avoid the worst of Qatar's heat,