John Herdman should be flying high.

Since taking over as coach six months ago, he’s turned around a Canadian women’s team and a program reeling from a crushing early exit from the World Cup. He guided Big Red to Pan Am gold; he steered them to a triumphal Olympic qualification in front of a massive home crowd. The fans love him, the players love him and if his Canadian Soccer Association higher-ups don’t love him, well, they really should.

But now, Herdman’s best-laid plans for London 2012 are in tatters. Immediately after the final match of the Olympic qualifying campaign, it emerged that a lawsuit with a team owner will force North America’s top women’s league, WPS, to shut down for the 2012 season. With that, a number of Canada’s best players have been put out of work, right when they need it most.

Asked about this dire situation at the CSA’s state-of-the-union press conference last week, words weren’t necessarily on Herdman’s side.

“Yeah,” he said, with a bit of a helpless laugh. “Just found out recently.”

There’s not much else that can be said when months of planning and preparation are chucked out the window. He talked about the need to “adapt and overcome,” about reviewing the situation and looking at “new models” for preparation.

In short: He doesn’t know. And you can’t really blame him. Having his players competing at the highest levels was at the core of Herdman’s strategy coming into the home stretch before London 2012.

“It’s a tough situation,” Herdman admitted. “When I set my stall out last year, I said clearly that I expect players to be playing in professional environments.”

Beyond being a disaster for the women personally -- the tough reality is that key players such as Karina LeBlanc, Sophie Schmidt, Lauren Sesselmann and, of course, Christine Sinclair have lost their jobs -- it takes them out of that top-level competitive environment and drops them into a state of limbo that could dull their skills going into an Olympic tournament they hoped would be their redemption.

WPS offered the highest level of competition in women’s soccer around, giving players a chance to push themselves, to improve and compete with world-class talent week in and week out. That’s what Canada needs, Herdman argues, to compete with the kind of talent that bested them at the World Cup.

“That’s where you avoid that ceiling effect, where you don’t grow taller than your best player,” he said.

North America’s second tier, the W-League, is a no alternative for an ambitious team.

“It’s not to say that the W-League won’t be strong this season, but if you want to win a gold medal, you’ve got to be competing at the same level as those players overseas,” Herdman stated.

Balance threatened

Some Canadian players do compete with Europe’s best -- a handful play their professional soccer in Sweden. The good news is that some of Canada’s out of work players are joining them. Goalkeeper Stephanie Labbe has signed on with Orebro in Sweden, while forward Christina Julien had her choice of Sweden of France before signing on with Swedish outfit Jitex.

But there are difficulties. The European transfer window is closed, meaning teams have filled their rosters and aren’t necessarily looking for new talent. For another, while Herdman is a fan of the German league, it doesn’t release players for the Cyprus Cup in late February, traditionally a crucial part of Canada’s preparations for summer tournaments.

Beyond that, there’s the real risk of upsetting a balance Herdman thought he had worked out when WPS was home to five or six key Canadians.

“WPS was going to hopefully house around 5-6 of our core players, with three or four up in Sweden and the rest in the W-League,” Herdman explained. Move too many players abroad and “you actually kill yourself, because you don’t have a core group to work with in Canada.”

At this point, unfortunately, Herdman’s only solution is a question. “We’ve got to look at the strategy now, and say ‘Is it better to start residing in Canada for the last three months building up to the Olympics or do we still keep pushing to take the girls into Sweden or Germany?”

Nevertheless, Herdman is keen to find a silver lining. Players with no clubs are players with no commitments, something he’ll try to take advantage of.

“We always had an annual plan which was set around FIFA dates,” he said. “We’re going to have to look at that now, because we may have more access to the players more, which might not be a bad thing.”

At this point, though, Herdman is facing a problem beyond the scope of what a coach normally deals with. The solutions he and the CSA come up with will likely help define Canada’s success or failure at the Olympics this summer.

Jamie Doyle is a Toronto-based writer, who is also a senior editor for Sportsnet Magazine. Follow Jamie on Twitter.