Dane Kenneth Heiner-Moller leaves before chance to take Canada women to Olympics

• by Paul Kennedy  @pkedit, Jun 10, 2020

Kenneth Heiner-Moller, who coached Canada at the 2019 Women's World Cup, is leaving his post this summer to return to take a job in his native Denmark with the Danish Football Association as its head of coaching education.

Heiner-Moller, who will leave at the end of August, was an assistant under John Herdman when Canada won the bronze medal in women's soccer at the 2016 Rio Olympics, and replaced Herdman as the women's head coach  in January 2018 after the Englishman took the job as the men's head coach.

"It's beyond words how hard how difficult the decision is," Heiner-Moller told the Canadian Press on Wednesday. "Obviously this wasn't the plan. The plan was going to the Olympics, have that gold medal around our necks and then say 'You know what, congratulations, team, I'm off to the next task.' Then this COVID thing hit."

The Tokyo Olympics have been postponed until 2021, forcing Heiner-Moller to make a decision.

"I've always said you cannot plan a career," Heiner-Moller said. "But I knew that there was an opportunity to [take] kind of a different path in my career after the Olympics. But it was always 'After the Olympics, after the Olympics.' And when all of a sudden I wasn't capable of doing both, it was definitely something that shook the foundation underneath everything and then a decision needed to be made."