The Keeper Connection With Marco Carducci

Spring Season Review

With it being the first official season of the Canadian Premier League, what have your initial experiences been like within the league?

You know what, honestly, I’ve been super impressed with kind of everything from the get-go. Obviously, for a brand new league, there’s a lot of moving pieces and a lot of parts that have to go right but, I’ve been just blessed by really everything. This league means a lot for players like myself and for Canadian soccer in general. From a player standpoint, I’ve just been really impressed.

Obviously for us having had the great start that we did and being able to be the first spring season champions and put our foot in the door for the final is just icing on the cake sort of thing, but like I said I’ve just been super happy with how everything’s been going both on and off the field and we’re just looking forward to what’s to come.

So I think I have this right, it works out that there is a spring portion of the league and then there’s a fall portion as well and the winner of each of those portions will play in a final in October. Is that how it works out?

That’s right. So they actually just announced that it’s going to be a home and away final as there was some uncertainty about how it was going to work. But the winner in the spring (so like I said, as of a couple of days ago that is us) will play the winner of the fall. But the league will just carry straight through, our last game of the spring season is this Monday on Canada Day and the first game of the fall season is the next Friday. You have it right, the winner of the fall and the winner of the spring will then play a home and away tie, so it will be a two-legged final. That match will be at the end of October/beginning of November.

We’ve got our foot in the door with winning the spring and that was one of our goals for this season. We’re just getting started and we want to keep carrying it on into the fall season as well.

Do you know what happens if you guys carry on with your momentum in the league and win the fall portion as well?

So if we go on to win the fall as well then they will choose the second best team overall. So including the spring and the fall, the second best team overall (I guess just points total) will get the fall berth. We’re not satisfied yet though, we want to go in and win the fall as well and see what happens from there.

Are you surprised at how well you guys have started the season this year or are you where you thought the team would be at this point?

I think if at the beginning of the season you told me “Would you guys expect to win eight out of the first nine and lose the one game?” I think anybody would take that, but going into this year that’s what we set our goals for. It’s the first year and everyone’s going in with high hopes and I knew going in that we had a strong team. People have spoken plenty about the core group of guys that we kept together from Calgary Foothills in the PDL last year, but you also have to look at everyone we’ve added in as well.

I think from the beginning of pre-season I knew we had something special in this group. I wouldn’t say I’m entirely surprised that we’ve been able to have such a strong start, but in the way that we’ve done it, it’s obviously been pretty special for us.

I know what this team is capable of as the competition has been there the whole way through in the league as well. We have definitely had to fight out for some results and have had some bounces go our way as well, but that’s what it takes to be a winning team sometimes. I think, all in all, I know this team and what we can do. We’ve set our standards very high and we just want to keep rolling with it.

You mentioned there about the core group of players from the Calgary Foothills program last year who won the PDL Championship (a team which you were apart of). How important was it to have that core group of players coming into the CPL this year off of such a fantastic season last year in the PDL?

I think it’s been a big advantage for us. Most of these teams (ourselves included) didn’t have a lot of time to bring together a group of guys and get a good chance to build that team culture and that team chemistry. We didn’t have a lot of time to get to know each other or get to understand each other’s tendencies or just to bond and become a group of brothers. For us, we had at least a head start with that and I think it has shown in a lot of the games we’ve played.

The guys who came into the group who weren’t with us last year in the PDL have bought into the system, they are fantastic players as well as, fantastic people. Hearing Nikos (Giantsopoulos) conversation that he had with you, I would agree with him 100 per cent. We speak a lot about the culture that we’ve built here and I think that that’s gone a long way for us on the field and kind of shows with the gritty results that we’ve earned throughout the spring season.

Your coach, Tommy Wheeldon, was also your coach with the Calgary Foothills program as well. How has he transcended that culture from the Foothills into Cavalry FC?

I think Tommy and the entire coaching staff have done an excellent job of making it very clear what they expect and the standards that we’ve had. They’re the ones who set those standards and make it clear to us what is acceptable and what is not.

I think the key is that everyone’s bought into it. Obviously having a lot of guys coming in from the same team last year and going on a winning run definitely helps as well.

It’s been a pretty smooth transition and I think that’s credit to a lot of the newcomers at the start of this season who’ve just bought into it, have put in the work and they’ve really just blended into the system well and again, I think that’s shown on and off the field.

The full conversation between myself and Marco can be found on my podcast, The Keeper Connection. You can find the podcast on Apple iTunes, Spotify, Anchor, Stitcher and Google Podcasts.