Carolina Morace is out as coach of Canada's national women's soccer team.
She resigned on Thursday following a debriefing and analysis in the wake of Canada's disastrous performance at the just completed Women's World Cup in Germany.
Entering the tournament ranked sixth in the world, Canada lost all three of its matches, and scored just a single goal.
After that result, Morace, a former Italian international player, accepted some responsibility, but also strongly suggested that she had not received the necessary support from her employers, the Canadian Soccer Association.
That despite the fact that the CSA agreed to allow Morace to hand pick her coaching and medical staff, most of it Italian, and to relocate the team to Italy for a prolonged residency and training camp.
A long-simmering war between the coach and the association over the direction of the program had boiled over last February, with Morace announcing that she would leave the team after the World Cup.
That dispute, and a rift between the CSA and the Canadian players over compensation, were patched over in time for the tournament, with Morace pledging to continue coaching Canada through the 2012 Olympic Games next summer.
But after Canada was effectively knocked out of the World Cup at the group stage after losing its pivotal second match to France 4-0, the relationship between Morace and the players seemed to chill noticeably as the question became where to lay the blame. Canada finished the tournament with a 1-0 loss to Nigeria, a team ranked 21 places behind it by FIFA, to finish last among the sixteen teams.
The debriefing and analysis process included Morace and her coaching staff, other team officials, players, and representatives of both the CSA and Own The Podium – the latter having stepped in, along with B2ten, the private sector funding agency for amateur athletes, to provide additional support for the team in the lead up to the 2012 Games.
With Morace's departure, the CSA will now have to work quickly to find a successor. Qualifying for London 2012 takes place in Vancouver in January. Two teams from the CONCACAF region which includes the United States and Mexico will advance to the Olympics.