So, when you're the interim head coach of your national team, overseeing an eclectic squad of hungry youngsters, long-serving veterans and almost-complete unknowns, all of whom have question marks over their heads, how do you prepare for a couple of January friendlies?
By keeping things simple.
That's been Colin Miller's approach through a week of training ahead of Canada's matchups with Denmark on Saturday (12 p.m. ET / 3 p.m. ET, sportsnet.ca) and the U.S. on Tuesday (6 p.m. PT / 9 p.m. ET, Sportsnet) and the results have been, in his eyes, "hugely successful."
"It's a different type of football (compared to the club side)," Miller said Friday. "But the atmosphere in camp has been fantastic."
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The team, as has been well-documented, bears nearly no resemblance to the Canadian squad that crashed out of World Cup qualifying in October. But the camp does include a "spine" of "good, experienced guys" that Miller says have had a positive influence on the newcomers.
"We prepared the team as well as we possibly can, given the circumstances," said Miller. "Terry Dunfield, Dwayne DeRosario, Lars Hirschfeld have all been terrific this week in training, setting terrific examples."
But while those veterans will likely be among the starters, Miller said he'll do his best to utilize as many players as possible in the two games. His role, he emphasized, was to provide building blocks for the future and give the CSA an idea of the player pool it's working with.
The heat in the southern U.S. will have a little something to do with it, too.
"When we started training, I had a sweatshirt on, and I think someone opened up the oven door," Miller said of the conditions in Arizona. Canada will play Denmark in Tucson before heading to Houston for the U.S. encounter.
As for what to expect in those two games, Miller said he's minimized talking about the opposing sides with his players, mostly because he'd rather keep the emphasis on what they're trying to accomplish.
"The key to the whole week's training is how simple we've kept it," he said. "We've not gone to try and reinvent the wheel... (and) the players have genuinely bought in."
The team is being largely reinvented, of course, around a younger core. Many of those players were part of the famous 2-0 win over the U.S. (on U.S. soil) last year in Olympic qualifying, and would surely love the chance to pull off another upset. But Miller knows that in the long run, the results of these games mean little in comparison to the insight they can provide about the players involved.
"I'd like to get two solid performances," he said. "We'd love to win both games, but that hasn't been the be-all and end-all of this.
"We've tried to take the pressure off the players. What we've tried to build on is a new group of players, a younger group of players."
The attitude appears similar to that of women's national team head coach John Herdman, who began his rebuilding project at the four-nation Yongchuan Cup earlier this month. Prior to that tourney, Herdman quipped "Sometimes to achieve winning, you've got to forget about winning."
Indeed, the men's national team and its fans would do well to forget about winning for a little while, in order to (hopefully) achieve winning down the road.
As for Miller's thoughts on this summer's Gold Cup, and how this squad would be preparing for that, he said "you'll have to ask the manager of the team at that point."
Indeed, Miller will head back to his day job (as new head coach of FC Edmonton) on Wednesday, though the question had to be asked as to whether he'd entertain the idea of sticking around with the national team.
"Not many people get asked to be the manager of their national team, so if there wasn't an FC Edmonton in the equation, who would turn down managing their country?" he said. "But that conversation has never arisen."
Yes, on Wednesday, Miller will go back to devoting his full attention to FC Edmonton, while the hodgepodge group assembled for these friendlies will disperse to the various locales from whence they came, some of whom are likely never to be seen again for the senior national team.
But in the meantime, let's all take a good look at what we've got, eh?
NOTES: Striker Frank Jonke and fullback Andres Fresenga picked up knocks during training camp and are questionable for the Denmark game. Hirschfeld also suffered back spasms during the week, but Miller is "hopeful" he'll be ready for Saturday's matchup. ... The teams will be allowed six substitutions in each of the two games.
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