Prior to April 21, 2012 nobody born in Fort St. John, British Columbia had ever managed a club in the Mexican Primera Division. I've done no research into that statement but I am very confident writing it. In fact we can safely broaden it out and just say that nobody born anywhere in Canada has ever managed in the Mexican top flight.
So John van't Schip became something of a pioneer the day Chivas named him their new coach. To be clear, he's not really "Canadian" in any sense beyond the most literal definition of the term. According to Wikipedia, his family left BC in 1972 when the boy was nine. He's Dutch. And based on the confusion surrounding Jonathan de Guzman and whether he has - or was ever allowed to have - dual Dutch and Canadian citizenship, van't Schip may no longer be Canadian in any sense of the term.
But that doesn't change where he spent his early youth. Whether there's an asterisk beside the Canadian part of it or not, it's still pretty cool that a guy born in small-town BC is managing arguably the biggest club in Mexico.
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One is tempted to wonder if van't Schip's parents pulled up ship and headed back to Holland because they saw some soccer potential in the boy they knew wouldn't be fully realized in northern British Columbia. He eventually turning out 11 seasons for Ajax and getting 41 caps for the Netherlands too. Now he's following in the footsteps of a long line of Dutch managerial exports.
He began managing in the youth setup at Ajax before taking charge of FC Twente in 2001, where he led the defending KNVB Cup champions to an embarrassing round-of-16 exit at the hands of the Ajax youth side, prompting fans to riot in their new stadium. He did a four-year stint as assistant coach for Holland, followed by an interim gig as manager at Ajax.
In 2009 he moved to the expansion Melbourne Heart of the A-League, where by all accounts (or in this case the one account I've linked to) he did a decent job of getting that team up and running.
Now he's surprised some by getting the Chivas job. This was the work of Johan Cruyff, who advises the Mexican giants. The ESPN Deportes guys I was listening to yesterday weren't necessarily thrilled about the move, saying Mexican teams should stop paying for advice from people who don't know Mexican football.
Prior to leaving Australia van't Schip said he eventually wanted to return to a "big" football environment. Europe big. But outside the Old Continent Mexico is about as big as it gets. If he's successful at Chivas he will not pass go and will head straight to Europe to cash in those managerial chips. Kind of a pity that. It's wildly and irresponsibly speculative but I may as well just say it: he'd have the breadth of resume that would fit perfectly with the ideal qualifications to coach Canada's mens' team: a mixture of club and international management on three continents with key exposure to Latin America. The boy from Fort St. John returning to lead his birth country into soccer battle. Lazy writers from coast-to-coast would have a field day with the textbook definition of the coming-full-circle narrative.
And besides, how could someone boasting coaching experience in the Ajax youth structure possibly fare poorly in Canadian soccer?