Long wait between matches

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This article was published 25/11/2020 (1769 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

It’s going to be a long winter for most Canadian Premier League players.

It’ll feel excruciatingly long for those with experience playing overseas, as they’re used to being on the pitch for nearly 11 months out of the year.

But as everybody knows, 2020 is not a normal year. The CPL and its eight teams, including Winnipeg’s Valour FC, had to scrap their 28-game regular season and replace it with a single-site tournament in Charlottetown, P.E.I., this summer that was dubbed The Island Games. Valour played seven games before being eliminated.

Players were thankful they had at least something to play for, but at the same time, these guys don’t train year-round to play a measly seven matches. With that, many players were hopeful they could get loaned to a club overseas over the winter, but Valour head coach and general manager Rob Gale said it’s not as easy as making a phone call, packing your bag and driving to the airport.

“Lots of players don’t have options for dual-passports to be able to go somewhere else and play. Even then, contractually trying to get them into a new league with different off-seasons (is challenging),” Gale said Wednesday.

“We thought we had a solution for seven or eight players all in one destination and that fell through over a technicality and a FIFA rule. We tried hard to get them into a loan environment and unfortunately for many of those guys, they’re just training on their own when they can, how they can, with the restrictions… We have a workout plan that gets sent out, but nothing beats competition. That’s our biggest challenge.”

Even though most soccer leagues around the world have found ways to play this year with limited fans or none at all, many clubs are financially struggling. Bringing in a Canadian import and giving them minutes over a player who’s already in that team’s backyard isn’t a feasible or affordable option.

Valour winger Stefan Cebara, a 29-year-old from Windsor, Ont., said there also isn’t much of an incentive for teams overseas to bring in players for a brief stint. The CPL regular season typically starts at the end of April.

“High-ranked teams don’t have a lot of interest in bringing in a player for three or four months. That’s a very short time,” said Cebara, who made five appearances for the Canadian senior men’s team in 2013. Before signing with Valour earlier this year, Cebara played professionally in Hungary, Slovenia, Slovakia and Lithuania.

“It’s good for the player, but it isn’t really good for the club giving you a loan unless they’re desperate at a position. To find a team desperate at a position isn’t easy, especially at this time. A local player whose ambitions are to stay with the club long term and do something special with the club. A (loaned) player is basically there to maintain their fitness and your goals and everything is concentrated on Valour in Canada. It’s not an interest to a club giving you the loan.”

There’s only three players from Valour’s 2020 roster that continued playing after the trip to Charlottetown. Goalkeeper James Pantemis (Montreal Impact) and defender Julian Dunn (Toronto FC) were loaned to Valour and returned to their MLS clubs after the tournament. Pantemis made three starts for the Impact last month while Dunn was able to train with Toronto’s first team. Veteran midfielder Jose Galan travelled home to Spain to suit up for third-tier club CP Villarrobledo.

A pandemic world also makes discovering players more challenging. Gale and his staff travelled to Europe last off-season to build their scouting network and connections.

Since watching players in person is impossible now, Gale said all you can do is “lock yourself in a room and watch football matches all day.”

The club has already announced several players from last year’s squad will be returning, including Cebara, midfielders Raphael Ohin, Brett Levis and Moses Dyer, defenders Andrew Jean-Baptiste and Amir Soto, and forward Austin Ricci. There are others that have re-signed and the club will announce them shortly.

Valour’s been able to reach agreements with some new faces as well.

“We got a couple exciting international signings that are pretty much done and dusted,” Gale said. “They’ll be announced hopefully in the lead up to Christmas. It’ll be sort of a Valour advent calendar with weekly signings. We’re excited by what we’ve managed to tie down and achieve and to be fair, the majority of our work for the squad building for next year has been done.”

There hasn’t been any news on what a 2021 CPL season will look like, but Gale said everything is still on the table and the league is preparing for different scenarios.

However it shapes out, it can’t come soon enough for the players.

“I think it’s a bigger mental challenge than physical,” said Cebara on the extended off-season.

“I’m sure we can all find ways to work out and stay in shape. It’s our job. But basically, it’s a very long time, so we have to fight it out mentally and not lose motivation because the season will come and we have to be ready.”

taylor.allen@freepress.mb.ca

Twitter: @TaylorAllen31