Valour FC clings to playoff hopes

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This article was published 17/10/2024 (436 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Valour FC’s magic number is three.

It’s the number of things that need to happen on the final weekend of the Canadian Premier League regular season for Winnipeg’s pro soccer club to clinch a playoff berth for the first time in franchise history.

First, Valour (7-7-13) needs to beat Cavalry FC at Princess Auto Stadium on Saturday (3 p.m.), then hope that Pacific FC, which currently occupies the final playoff spot, and Vancouver FC, which is two points behind, both lose to Forge FC and Atlético Ottawa, respectively.

Should all three happen, Valour would match Pacific at 31 points and claim the fifth seed as a result of the former outscoring the latter 6-5 in their season series.

There’s plenty left to play for, for nearly every team, as the playoff picture is far from set. While Forge is locked in as the No. 1 seed and York United knows it will be the No. 4 team, just two points separate Cavalry and Ottawa for the No. 2 spot, while Pacific, Vancouver and Valour all have a shot at the final spot.

Making it all the more exciting, every club will be in action at the same time on Saturday: 3 p.m. CT.

There are a lot of balls in the air, and Valour needs them to fall perfectly to punch its ticket, but belief is exactly what head coach Phillip Dos Santos has preached this week.

“If I had $15,000 to spare, I would buy the airplane tickets myself already for Monday night. That’s the type of feeling I want the group to have, and that’s the type of feeling I want to transmit to them, because, if not, we might as well come for a last dance celebration and I don’t want the guys to have that in their mind,” Dos Santos said after Thursday’s training session.

“I’ve seen crazier things happen in professional sports.”

Valour has flashed plenty of promise and an equal number of moments that were downright dreadful since joining the CPL six years ago, but this is as close as it has ever been to cracking the playoffs.

It looked like this season would be marred again by disappointment as the club, which played its first seven matches away from home, started 0-0-5 and were 4-1-9 by the halfway mark.

The tide changed in the second half of the season, however, and Valour has become a dangerous group, going 3-6-4 to stay alive in the playoff conversation.

“It’s an interesting context, the way that everything played out. We made a shift around mid-season in mentality, in terms of becoming the team that we want to be and just becoming solid, hard to beat and resilient,” said goalkeeper Jonathan Viscoci, who has had a strong campaign and is second in the CPL with 78 saves.

“It’s exactly what we wanted, it’s the situation we wanted to be in and we’ve really given ourselves a chance all the way to the end. I think from that perspective, it’s a little bit of a calming feeling because we know that it’s not totally in our control, but if we can (have) the best possible game that we can play and get a result, let’s see if the universe (complies) and the other scores go our way and let’s see what happens.

“It would be fitting for the adversity we faced and for overcoming them and applying the learnings.”

It’s been a matter of finding ways to earn points where they can in order to stay in the mix. Now, despite the odds remaining heavily stacked against them, there is a genuine sense of optimism that they can complete the seasonlong comeback story.

The buy-in from each player has been crucial while entering each match with their backs against the wall. The attention to detail in their own end has heightened, and it’s paid dividends in the offensive zone.

No one has benefitted from that more than forward Shaan Hundal, who has emerged as a main source of offence for the club over the second half of the season and is tied with Jordan Swibel for the team lead with seven goals.

“Guys are excited, obviously, to play a meaningful game right until the end of the season, and focused because we know we can get it done,” said Hundal.

“I think this last game, as obvious as it sounds, I think we’re most ready for it now than we ever were,” he said. “Even two, three games ago, I think we haven’t closed out games the way we’d like to and I know that everyone’s gonna be hyper-focused whether we have a 1-0 lead or even down 1-0 at half, we know how to handle those moments and just come back and try getting the win.”

Saturday’s affair will present an interesting situation for Dos Santos to manage, as he deploys a strategy that is aggressive enough to win but not so forward that it costs his club.

In short, he said it’s about picking and choosing which moments to press the gas and ensuring his club crosses the finish line when they do — something Dos Santos believes his squad’s makeup will allow them to do this weekend.

“It’s having clear references on when you’re going to do that,” Dos Santos said. “So, having those moments where the actions needs to end with something, and then there’s having clear references of pressure where you identify them and you say, ‘Okay, these are the moments we absolutely need to not concede free ground to the opposition,’ and that’s what we’ve been hammering on during the week.

“You can’t expect to win the lottery if you don’t buy the ticket.”

joshua.frey-sam@freepress.mb.ca

X: @jfreysam