The recent Meghan Trainor song with the lyrics “If I was you, I’d wanna be me, too,” could be the theme for Cavalry FC’s season.
Every other team in the Canadian Premier League is wishing they could be Cavalry.
The Calgary club (8-1) captured the spring-season standings, and playoff berth into the league final in the fall that goes with it, with a game to spare heading into Monday’s Canada Day spring- season-ending fixture against Pacific FC at 3 p.m. at Westhills Stadium.
Cavalry, which also dispatched Pacific FC and Forge FC of Hamilton in the first two rounds of the Voyageurs Cup, is also preparing to play the Vancouver Whitecaps of Major League Soccer in a home-and-home set in the third round of that competition, which is Canada’s version of the FA Cup.
You could say spring sprung rather brightly for Cavalry. Who in the league wouldn’t want to be them? A lot of what Cavalry has accomplished can be attributed to cohesion. While other franchises started from scratch in the CPL inaugural season this year, Cavalry moved up its 2018 PDL (now USL 2) championship operation, including the seven top players and head coach and GM Tommy Wheeldon Jr.
“They knew each other well right from the beginning of the season,” said Pacific FC head coach Michael Silberbauer. “But they still needed to execute and Tommy [Wheeldon Jr.] has done a good job and got them doing that.”
Also key has been Cavalry assistant coach and technical director Martin Nash of Victoria, the SMUS grad and former Whitecaps pro who was capped 38 times for Canada, including in 10 World Cup qualifying games.
“Seven players from our Foothills PDL team made the Cavalry FC roster and that has allowed us to have immediate chemistry,” said Nash, brother of two-time NBA MVP Steve Nash, after the 2-0 Voyageurs Cup victory at Westhills in May.
Wheeldon Jr. and Nash have it going on in Calgary. “We refused to lose,” Wheeldon Jr. said following the 2-0 Cavalry victory Wednesday over York9 in Toronto that clinched the spring title.
“That’s why we’re in the position we are in now. But this is not the end of anything, it’s the beginning of something special we’re building.”
The Pacific FC mantra also has been that it is building something special. But it has been a slow burn by comparison to Cavalry’s blowtorch. PFC (2-5-2) has gone with emerging young B.C. pros looking to work their way up to MLS or Europe.
Former Dutch Premiership pro and Danish international Silberbauer, when hired, said he was proud of his previous work on the bench as assistant coach of FC Luzern of the Swiss Premiership Super League and in moving some of those younger reserve players up to the first team and to better leagues such as the Bundesliga in Germany. He wants to do the same thing with PFC.
“Our philosophy is by design but we knew this was going to take time,” Silberbauer said.
“We will use the Monday game to continue to grow. But we still need to see more results and find ways to win games. We haven’t gotten over that bump yet to win more than we lose.”
The PFC plan was to supplement the youth brigade with strategically placed veteran players such as 27-time Canada capped former Scottish Premiership pro Marcus Haber, 56-time Canada capped former MLS and Bundesliga pro Marcel De Jong and German-import pro Hendrik Starostzik. But injuries put paid to those plans through much of the spring campaign, although several of the injured players are expected back for the imminent fall season.
PFC will be playing Monday to avoid finishing in the spring basement, something that could happen if the Island club loses to Cavalry FC and York9 beats or ties Valour FC on Monday in Winnipeg. There is no relegation-promotion.
