Valour FC puts boot to season

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 21/10/2019 (2498 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

There were no champagne bottles in sight. No high-fives, hugs or any joyous celebrations of that nature.

Instead, Valour FC’s locker room was rather lifeless on Monday. Players cleaned out their lockers and made their final preparations to return home as they said goodbye to a disappointing season. For some, home is just a few minutes from IG Field, while for others, it’s a long flight overseas to places such as Spain and Belgium.

It was the last time this group would be together in the same room as Winnipeg’s professional soccer club saw their inaugural Canadian Premier League season come to a close on the weekend.

Valour’s last match was a 2-0 road loss in Victoria to Pacific FC on Saturday. The loss dropped Valour to fifth place in the CPL’s fall standings with a 5-9-4 record. Including the 10-game spring campaign, Valour finishes with an 8-4-16 record for 28 points, tied with HFX Wanderers FC for the lowest total in the seven-team league.

There were a lot of things that went against Valour, from injuries to key players to a game schedule filled with odd quirks. But Valour midfielder Louis Beland-Goyette is, refreshingly, never shy to call it how he sees it. The 24-year-old from Pointe-Claire, Que., believes Valour deserved to finish where they did.

“No, I think it’s fair, to be honest,” Beland-Goyette said Monday. “We have a lot of talent, a lot of players that have talent. But we weren’t able to get it all together and mix that, maybe, with some hard work. If you look at a team like Calgary (which finished both seasons in first place), I think it’s a good example of talent, hard work, team spirit and I think we were maybe lacking a bit of that and I think that showed in the standings at the end.”

Valour struggled on both ends of the field. They scored the second-fewest goals (28) and surrendered the most with 52 in 28 games. You don’t need to be a soccer genius to know that’s not a recipe for success.

“I’ll take responsibility for the players,” said Valour head coach and general manager Rob Gale. “I picked a group of players I thought had the talent to win and compete at this level and we fell short of that, so that responsibility falls squarely at my door.”

Some of Gale’s biggest signings didn’t pan out. The most notable was English-born striker Stephen Hoyle, the team’s first international signing. He was an accomplished goal scorer in New Zealand’s premiership league and arrived with lofty expectations. He’ll forever be in the Valour record book for scoring the franchise’s first goal. But that was his only goal in seven appearances with the club. He quickly lost his starting spot and the two sides parted ways in July, making him the first player in the CPL to have his contract terminated.

Gale also had misses on defence. Former Syracuse University teammates Skylar Thomas and Jordan Murrell were the core of Gale’s defensive unit and were voted co-captains. But Valour surrendered the most set-piece goals and Thomas and Murrell were on the field for the majority of them. Murrell was also stripped of his captaincy and served a six-game league suspension after having a meltdown in a loss to HFX Wanderers FC in August.

Beland-Goyette was asked his thoughts on why Valour struggled with set pieces and his response makes it difficult to not put the spotlight on Murrell and Thomas.

“I think it’s maturity and leadership,” Beland-Goyette said. “We had nobody step up on the team and say ‘Look, I’m going to be the guy to clear the ball on set pieces.’ If everybody reacts that way and says that to each other, we’d never concede that many set pieces. I think it’s more of a mentality.”

It wasn’t uncommon to see Valour get outmuscled for the ball as they were a group that desperately lacked size. Outside of Thomas, who’s 6-4, there wasn’t another player on the roster 6-1 or taller. In fact, 14 out of 22 players on the team are under six feet tall.

Gale admitted Monday he underestimated how physical the league would be.

But it wasn’t just personnel decisions that hurt Valour; the team was constantly shuffling their lineup due to injuries.

Croatian midfielder Josip Golubar was expected to be a veteran presence on and off the field but the 34-year-old suffered a torn ACL in the third match of the season. In the same game, a 1-0 loss to Cavalry FC on May 8, star attacking midfielder Michael Petrasso went down with an injury. He tried to come back a couple weeks later but ended up with a Grade 3 groin tear and missed the remainder of the spring season and the beginning of the fall. Valour went 1-6-2 in Petrasso’s absence.

Winnipegger Ali Musse was expected to be a main source of offence for the club but he only appeared in 13 matches and finished with two goals. Uruguayan defender Martin Arguiñarena was one of Valour’s more consistent import players but tore an ACL and missed the final 10 matches.

Valour’s schedule also didn’t do them any favours. They opened the season with five games in two and a half weeks. The grind continued in August as they were treated to six games in 24 days.

But injuries and a demanding schedule don’t excuse everything. Valour had an embarrassing stretch of 14 games where they failed to score more than once in a match. When Valour did find the back of the net, there was a good chance it came off the foot of a Winnipegger. Attacking midfielder Marco Bustos and striker Tyler Attardo were two of the biggest bright spots for the club. Bustos led the team with seven goals and Attardo, an 18-year-old, netted six. Valour had eight Winnipeg players on the roster and the homegrowns were often the most consistent players.

And no, Valour didn’t give their fans at IG Field much to cheer about with a home record of 4-2-8. However, the fan support was strong. No matter the weather or how bad the result was, the fan section known as “The Trench” was out in full force belting out chants. Valour had the third-best attendance in the CPL.

Winnipeg Free Press | Newsletter

The Warm-Up

Winnipeg Jets Game Days

On Winnipeg Jets game days, hockey writers Mike McIntyre and Ken Wiebe send news, notes and quotes from the morning skate, as well as injury updates and lineup decisions. Arrives a few hours prior to puck drop.

Sign up for The Warm-Up

Sign Up

I consent to the Terms and Conditions, Cookie and Privacy Policies.

I consent to CASL agreement.

Gale said Year 1 didn’t go exactly to plan, but he’s confident the future remains bright for this franchise.

“I think it’s been a massive educational process for everybody involved,” Gale said. “I think that would be fair to say. And a roller-coaster, for sure, of emotions and experiences for everybody. But, there’s a solid, solid foundation here going forward. For us, the values that we wanted to bring as a football club and what we want to be recognized for in our community here and as a team across the province, I think we’ve laid some absolute solid foundations and building blocks to take it forward into Year 2 and build.”

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.