Valour set for Canadian Championship debut

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This article was published 03/06/2019 (2631 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Valour FC’s next two games won’t count in the Canadian Premier League standings, but that doesn’t mean they’re not extremely important.

Winnipeg’s professional soccer team will make its Canadian Championship debut on Wednesday. Valour will hit the road to play the first leg of its second-round matchup against the Halifax Wanderers FC. The game kicks off at 4:15 p.m. at Wanderers Grounds. The second leg will take place at IG Field on June 12.

The Canadian Championship is a 13-team tournament featuring clubs from five different leagues, including the three Canadian Major League soccer teams: Toronto FC, Montreal Impact and Vancouver Whitecaps.

The competition was introduced in 2008, with the winner qualifying for the CONCACAF Champions League. This year marks the first time a club from Manitoba will be in the competition. The winner between Valour and Halifax will go on to play the United Soccer League’s Ottawa Fury in the third qualifying round. Awaiting the winner of that matchup will be Toronto FC, the defending three-time champions, as they have a bye to the semifinal.

“It’s the beauty of the game,” Valour head coach and general manager Rob Gale said on cup competitions. “Say for supporters, they dream of, you know, knocking off one of the big teams. For players, it’s a chance to test yourself. And the fact it is purely Canadian, uniquely Canadian, with all the teams in it just makes it even better.”

All seven CPL teams are in the competition, but Valour, Forge FC and FC Edmonton were all given byes to the second qualifying round because they were the first three established teams in the league. Halifax played a semi-pro team from Ontario, Vaughan Azzurri, in the first round and advanced on away goals with a 3-3 aggregate score. Halifax was far from impressive against Vaughan, but is coming off a come-from-behind 2-1 win over Pacific FC on Saturday. Valour and Halifax met once already in the CPL season, with the Winnipeg side coming away with a 1-0 victory at home on May 11. Valour is also coming off of a win this weekend, as it defeated FC Edmonton 1-0 at Clarke Field on Sunday.

The winner of the home-and-away series is decided by aggregate, which means you add together the scores of the two games and whoever has more goals wins. If it’s a tie, the club which scored more goals on the road advances. With the series starting in Halifax, Valour midfielder Michael Petrasso said it will be important for the team to get off to a good start and not put itself in a hole when it plays the second game in Winnipeg.

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“I think if you look at it nowadays, with the away goals, playing away first is obviously tough,” said Petrasso, who assisted Ali Musse’s game-winning goal in Edmonton on Sunday. “But I think going there is the most important because you don’t want to go down on goals and bring it back. So, I think we’re going in there to get goals and win the game because we want to bring it home in a better situation than chasing.”

Petrasso said gearing up for cup competitions is always exciting, as it gives players an opportunity to see how they stack up against teams in higher-calibre leagues. Petrasso got a taste of cup action in 2014 with English club Oldham Athletic when it played the powerhouse Liverpool squad at Anfield in the FA Cup.

“That was probably one of the best experiences of my life,” Petrasso said. “You go there and Steven Gerrard was on the field, Luis Suarez is on the field and it’s just kind of like a big thing. You know, when you play against them, it’s like a dream come true. And it would be the same for Valour playing against Toronto FC. I’m sure if we played Toronto FC and they came here, we would sell out the stadium.”

taylor.allen@freepress.mb.ca

Twitter: @TaylorAllen31

Taylor Allen
Reporter

Taylor Allen is a sports reporter for the Winnipeg Free Press. Taylor was the Vince Leah intern in the Free Press newsroom twice while earning his joint communications degree/diploma at the University of Winnipeg and Red River College Polytechnic. He signed on full-time in 2019 and mainly covers the Blue Bombers, curling, and basketball. Read more about Taylor.

Every piece of reporting Taylor produces is reviewed by an editing team before it is posted online or published in print — part of the Free Press‘s tradition, since 1872, of producing reliable independent journalism. Read more about Free Press’s history and mandate, and learn how our newsroom operates.