Earl Cochrane is shown at a Canada Soccer event in Winnipeg in a May 7, 2022 handout photo. Cochrane marked his final day Friday as Canada Soccer's general secretary, looking forward not back. THE CANADIAN PRESS/HO-Canada Soccer-David Lipnowski **MANDATORY CREDIT**
Earl Cochrane marked his final day Friday as Canada Soccer’s general secretary looking forward not back.
His priorities now are spending time with his wife and two kids – and finding a new challenge. But Cochrane has had plenty of time to reflect since the April 20 announcement that he was stepping down as the governing body’s top staff official.
Cochrane is the latest Canada Soccer official to leave the beleaguered organization. Nick Bontis resigned as president in February, acknowledging change was needed to achieve labour peace with the national teams.
Cochrane says that was not the case for him.
“No “¦ I didn’t think that it required a different voice. I didn’t think that I was in the way” he told The Canadian Press. “It was really a decision that was personal in many respects, about me looking out for me.”
“It has been a lot in a relatively short period of time,” he added. “In some ways it’s one of the reasons I needed to focus on me a little bit and why I needed to focus on making sure that I was in the right head space. And why I ultimately decided that it was the right thing to kind of step away, not just for me mentally, physically, emotionally but for my family. It has been a lot.”
It has also been rewarding, he added.
“Being the first general secretary in 36 years to stand at (a men’s) World Cup and hear the national anthem be played are moments that I will never forget, hearing that crowd in Doha prior to the Belgium game is a memory that will be etched in my mind forever,” he said.
He also cited the push towards equity and the bid to make it the centre piece of a collective bargaining agreement with the national teams.
“They’ve been challenging. And it’s taken its toll on me. It’s taken its toll on the people around me. But I would do it again, because some of these things are vitally important – to this organization, to the people that play in it.”
Cochrane says there is “nothing specific” on his horizon.
“I’m going to take some time for me,” he said.
That includes looking ahead, with an eye to trying to do some good.
“I’m going to find a way to drastically affect change and make everything better, whether that is dealing in safe sport, whether that’s tackling issues about hatred, whether that’s governance challenges and issues that we’ve ultimately had to kind of go through the last couple of decades, I think I can have a significant impact in how I fix and make things better for people.
“I’m looking forward to what the future holds for me.”
Cochrane took over the job of general secretary last July after incumbent Peter Montopoli stepped down to become chief operating officer for Canada FIFA World Cup 2026. But Cochrane has had a variety of roles with the governing body over two stints dating back to 2001.
He immediately found his feet being held to the fire by his own players. The men’s and women’s teams issued a joint statement the day the hiring was announced asking for Sport Canada to investigate Canada Soccer’s governance practices and its agreement with Canada Soccer Business.
The labour dispute remains front and centre.
“We are trying to equalize something that is unequal in many respects, across the globe in our sport,” Cochrane said. “And not just in our sport, in every sport. It was always going to be a challenge and it will be a challenge. But it is again the absolute right thing to do and I was proud and happy that it was something that we embedded into our discussions.”
He also believes that, lost in the fog of the labour dispute, is the fact that “in many ways we are ahead of the curve globally.”
“And I think there’s a lot that other associations, other sports can learn from steps we’ve taken over the last several months, years.”
Cochrane joined Canada Soccer in January 2001 as general manager of the national teams program and director of communications before joining fledgling Toronto FC in 2006. He spent the next seven years with the expansion MLS franchise, serving first as academy director, then GM and managing director.
He spent 21 months as a member of Canada Soccer’s board in 2012-13.
He left TFC in September 2013, part of the housecleaning that saw president and GM Kevin Payne fired. Cochrane returned to Canada Soccer in early 2014, serving as deputy general secretary and chief strategic development officer.
Cochrane said while the women’s team is no stranger to success, the rise of the men’s squad “came upon people relatively quickly.”
“And I think that the organization hadn’t built itself a strong enough foundation to kind of prepare ultimately for that. But I think it goes even deeper too. Over the course of the last several years, there’s been a lack of alignment and a lack of understanding across the entire soccer landscape about the direction that we all wanted to go in.”
While working to continue that on-field success, Canada Soccer found itself “trying to manage and align a system that has some in some cases feeling like they haven’t been engaged enough over the course of the last several years.”
He believes some conversations, from regional issues to development of the women’s program, needed to have happened earlier and “be far more inclusive” to achieve that alignment and a common goal.
Cochrane points to the work Canada Soccer has done in club licensing as a major accomplishment in helping build a framework for clubs to succeed from grassroots up. That includes elements of safe sport.
“To be able to say to clubs ‘Here’s a tool box for you to help develop yourselves and start to set aspirational goals about what you want to be,'” he said.
“We didn’t need the Heritage Committee to do and start to enforce some of the things we had wanted to do from the safe sport perspective. We had started those – years ago,” he added.
But he credited players for pushing for the McLaren report, released last July. The 125-page report, by McLaren Global Sport Solution, concluded that Canada Soccer “mishandled” sexual harassment allegations in 2008 against then under-20 women’s coach Bob Birarda.
Birarda, a former Vancouver Whitecaps and Canada Soccer coach, was sentenced last November to some 16 months in jail for sex offences.
Cochrane calls the report a “pivotal moment” for the organization, allowing it to self-evaluate – “take the good, but then take the recommendations and not just embrace the recommendations but build upon those recommendations so that we could make this sport the safest not only in the country but perhaps a shining example for everyone.”
Cochrane’s appointment as general secretary followed an “extensive global recruitment process” that began in January 2022 led by Lighthouse Search, an executive search firm specializing in sport, media and entertainment. His appointment was approved unanimously by Canada Soccer’s board.
Canada Soccer said it chose Cochrane over more than 70 applicants worldwide with Bontis calling “his experience on and off the pitch across all levels of the game “¦ a huge asset for Canada Soccer.”
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This report by The Canadian Press was first published May 12, 2023.
