'We've come home to win': Canada prepares for key CONCACAF Nations League game vs. Honduras

On Monday afternoon, the Canadian men's soccer team returned to train at the cold but familiar confines of BMO Field, one year to the day since an emphatic victory over Jamaica took them to their first World Cup in 36 years.

So much has happened since then — good and bad, on and off the field — the anniversary felt less like a chance for happy reflection, and more like a time to settle accounts.

Head coach John Herdman might have preferred to focus on Tuesday's match against Honduras. A win or a draw will see Canada through to the CONCACAF Nations League finals in Las Vegas in June. A loss means the Hondurans will go to the desert instead.

But the conversation soon turned to the ongoing institutional crisis at Canada Soccer.

Herdman, who coached the Canadian women before he coached the men, was asked how he felt when he heard that now-departed president Nick Bontis had referred to Christine Sinclair's demands for equal pay and treatment for the women as "bitching."

WATCH | Canadian men's team looks ahead to key match vs. Honduras:

Herdman took a long time to answer. His face went hard, and his eyes went black.

"I think frustrated," he said. "Really frustrated."

He was then asked what it has been like to coach through relentless off-field drama, including boycotts, real and threatened, by both national teams; protracted contract negotiations over World Cup compensation and other matters; the departures of Bontis, chief marketing officer Sandra Gage, and, this week, communications director Richard Scott; and reports that Herdman himself was on the verge of leaving to coach New Zealand's men.

"It's not easy," Herdman said. "Given I think everything that everyone has put into the program over the last 10, 12, 13, 14, 15,