‘You still have to go in and do the work’

One year ago, Valour FC had everything to play for as it concluded its regular-season schedule at home, still mathematically in the hunt for a playoff berth.

On Saturday, when the club hosts the last home game of the regular season against the Halifax Wanderers at Princess Auto Stadium (2 p.m.), the stakes will be the polar opposite.

The penultimate match of the 2025 campaign will be inconsequential for Winnipeg’s pro soccer side, which, with six wins, 15 losses and five draws, finds itself in sixth place and 13 points back of the Wanderers (10-10-6) for the fifth and final playoff spot in the Canadian Premier League.

It’s a grim scenario that fans have become all too familiar with over the last seven years. Valour is the CPL’s only original franchise that has never qualified for the post-season, and Vancouver FC — which joined in 2023 — is the only other club in that boat.

“It looks like the season is over, but this is our job, this is what we do,” said captain Raphael Ohin. “Regardless, you still have to go in and do the work. You still have to go in there — whether it’s the last two games, last game, last five — and compete, play with pride.”

Valour’s final match is against Pacific FC at Starlight Stadium in Victoria, B.C., on Oct. 18.

“In everything, just like you train for something, you also have to play for something,” Ohin added.

One thing motivating players at this point is, in fact, pride, as a win would ensure Valour doesn’t finish at the bottom of the CPL table for the third year in a row. They will also look to play spoiler to a Wanderers club that is fighting for a better playoff seeding.

“Yeah, obviously it’s disappointing to be in a situation like this and not playing for something,” said defender Rocco Romeo, who returned to the club after spending last season with Vancouver FC. “I think, at the end of the day, we’re in a position where we did this to ourselves, and it’s a matter of staying where we are and not dropping any lower.”

When Valour’s 2024 season concluded, the disappointment of falling short of their goal was abated by optimism for a more prosperous future after the club caught fire in the second half of the campaign and gave itself a fighting chance on the final day.

It’s a different tune this year, however. Another slow start put the club in an early hole and, while its play improved in the second half again, this time there was no pulling itself out.

“It was frustrating,” said head coach and GM Phillip Dos Santos.

“We go into a season feeling that we have the pieces to do more, but there’s a lot that (has to fall) into place.”

Dos Santos noted that while he managed to return most of the players from last season’s roster, the collective was unable to pick up where it left off in 2024, while some newcomers didn’t gel with the group as quickly as he had hoped.

Members of the club claim they had every reason to believe this would be a successful season — the most fruitful in the franchise’s history — after a promising pre-season, but it never took off once the games started to count.

“There’s a lot of things that are hard to assess until you have the players in place and you start playing competitive games,” Dos Santos added. “Then, you need a little bit of fortune. We couldn’t establish ourselves defensively; the team was conceding a lot. When we would go on the road and we would concede the first goal or a goal close to halftime, things would fall apart.

“You start to assess the resilience of the group and the belief that they have in each other, and I think that in the second half of the season, we got a lot better in that.”

That was due, in part, to the addition of homegrown midfielder Kianz Froese, who boosted offence, and defender Diego Konincks, who stabilized the backline.

Dos Santos said he was also pleased by the promising individual performances from some of the team’s youngest players — such as goalkeeper Eleias Himaras, midfielder Myles Morgan, forward Erik Pop and defender Kelsey Egwu — who took on larger roles as the season progressed.

“All of that, you want to assess individuals like that and say, ‘OK, these are all young Canadians who could be good CPL players in the future and beyond,’” he said.

Speaking of the future, that’s something Dos Santos said he isn’t thinking about right now.

For the third year in a row, the bench boss will enter the off-season with questions surrounding his future with the club. Dos Santos appeared to save his job after a strong finish to 2024, but whether club president Wade Miller saw enough to warrant bringing him back again remains to be seen.

Since taking over midway through 2021, Dos Santos has a record of 26 wins, 46 losses and 25 draws.

As for whether he wants to be back with the club: “I’m going to be where God wants me to be. If my future is staying here, I’ll have the energy and the heart to do it. But it’s early. We need to sit down. There’s fans, there’s an ownership — it’s not a decision that just comes to me,” he said.

“There’s so many questions to be asked, so I want to be where I feel that I’m in God’s will. And if it passes by here and the door is open, it’s the one I need to be in, that’s the one I’ll be in. I know for many people it’s going to sound a little bit uncommon, but that’s who I am as a person. That’s how I move, and that’s where my heart is in.”

joshua.frey-sam@freepress.mb.ca

X: @jfreysam