Over the first few years of the Canadian Premier League, it has been no secret that one of the major goals of the league is moving players on to bigger and better things. A number of CPL players have used their time in the league to prove themselves at the professional level, and moved up to Major League Soccer or to Europe — an inspiration for many of the players still plying their trade from coast-to-coast.
Defenders in particular have had a lot of success in that regard throughout the league’s early years. Cavalry FC’s Joel Waterman came through the CPL-U SPORTS Draft, and just a few years later is with CF Montréal in MLS and went to the World Cup in Qatar with Canada last year. Lukas MacNaughton and Kadin Chung traded Pacific FC purple for Toronto FC red after winning the North Star Shield in 2021, and Diyaeddine Abzi was sold by York United in the summer of 2022 and headed to Pau FC in France. Dominick Zator, who played for Cavalry and then York, also made the move to Europe last winter, signing for Korona Kielce in Poland and playing his way into the Canadian national team picture.
Opportunities for players to move up to higher levels exist in this country like never before with the Canadian Premier League providing that platform, and for some of the league’s current best defenders, they are looking to have success for the rest of the season, before potentially moving on to pastures new.
With one quarter of the regular season left before an action-packed playoffs as two trophies are handed out in the Canadian Premier League for the first time, that is the focus for players, but they are also well aware that success — both individually and as a team — will help them move onto higher levels.
“That’s what drives me, it’s the winning, it’s the opportunity to show yourself, to express yourself, and being in an environment where you’re winning and where your teammates are with you every single day,” Pacific FC centre-back Amer Didić said to CanPL.ca. “That’s the most important thing, obviously, for me is to win something, but for every player, a byproduct of winning is good opportunities. I have goals and I know myself, I know I have the capability to be playing at a higher level. I don’t sit here thinking about that every day, it doesn’t kill me, all I can do is control every day, the training and the games and whatever happens happens, but definitely it’s always been an ambition to keep pushing myself and seeing what I can do.”
“Right now, the best thing that you can do as a player is focus on on the season right now, focus on Halifax, focus on doing as best we can with the team,” added Wanderers defender Dan Nimick. “That puts you in a better position to potentially make a move like that in the future. I think if we can finish the season strong, then there’s multiple players on our team who are in a position to make a good move like that.”
Didić and Nimick are both Canadian players who returned after playing south of the border, and in Nimick’s case also in England with the Leeds United academy and Harrogate Town. For another CPL standout, Cavalry FC’s Daan Klomp, the league was seen as an opportunity to move abroad from his native Netherlands and potentially catch the eyes of teams in MLS.
“The goal ever since I got here is to win the league with Cavalry first and foremost, but of course you play football to excel and move up to a higher team or higher league,” Klomp said to CanPL.ca. “It’s of course very important for me, but I focus on proving myself every game and every week so then hopefully something comes and I can move on to bigger and better things.
“I’m happy at Cavalry and we’re doing some great things over here, but as a footballer, always you want to achieve more and more, and the same thing goes for me. I like to learn a lot, and I’ve learned a lot here, but MLS teams will be unbelievable.”
Last season the CPL introduced the Defender of the Year award for the first time, with Forge FC’s Alexander Achinioti-Jönsson the inaugural winner of it. Didić and then-York United defender Dominick Zator were the other two nominees.
This year Didić is certainly in the conversation again, one of the best defenders in the league on both sides of the ball. There is no player in the CPL more feared on set pieces, with the 28-year-old already scoring four times. Teams have started having two or even three players mark him on corners to try and neutralize that threat, but he uses his height and strength to his advantage.
After a couple of years of dealing with injuries, he is finally fully healthy, and has been able to play most of the season so far. He puts that down to finally dealing with a lingering groin injury this past offseason.
“I’m very happy with just where I feel physically, and that’s allowed me to take this step and perform at the level I’m performing this year,” he said. “For the past two years it was honestly a struggle physically, as I was dealing with a very chronic injury ever since I left Edmonton, even halfway through that last year in Edmonton, with my groin. It was something that, last year since day one preseason, was there with me every single day and every single game, and it never went away last year.
“That was very tough mentally for me, to be able to overcome that and then play every single game, a lot of people don’t know about that but it was very hard to get past that. This is the first year in a couple of years where I came into preseason with no pain, no nothing, and I was able to push in the offseason and get my physical standards up to to normal.”
Now that he can move freely without feeling that pain, or worrying that he might make the injury worse, he is playing at an incredibly high level once again, the kind that saw him get called up to the Canadian men’s national team in 2020 and score against Barbados. That year he also went on a preseason trial with the Vancouver Whitecaps, and MLS is a level he is targeting again.
Didić leads the league in aerial duels won, with 63, eight more than second-place Manjrekar James of Forge FC, and 14 more than third-place Abdou Samaké of Valour FC, two other players who will be looking to end the season on a high and potentially be in contention for the award.
“At 6-5, it’s important to be on the end of things in the attacking zone, you should be able to use your height and such,” Didić added. “The past couple years, it’s been really tough on my body to literally jump. This year I just feel like I can jump, I can do pretty much anything I want in the air and be that force that the coaching staff expect for me on the defensive side as well on the attacking side.
“As the season progresses, it’s been a little bit tougher in the box, you got two guys on you, sometimes three guys, you’re trying to fight through, but at the end of the day that just opens up other things for (centre-back partner Thomas Meilleur-Giguère) and others.”
There may not be a more dominant player in Canada on set pieces than @Pacificfccpl's @amerdidic_ 💪
After another headed goal from Đidić on Friday, here are some of his best moments this season! 🔱#CanPL I 📺 @onesoccer pic.twitter.com/zj7TNv7Xly
— Canadian Premier League (@CPLsoccer) June 5, 2023
Didić and Nimick share the league lead for goals this season among defenders, with four apiece, and in Nimick’s case that is tied for the team lead in Halifax as well. Nimick has taken a couple of penalties for Halifax this season, scoring both of them, also adding two headed goals — including one last weekend in a 3-0 victory over Valour FC in which he earned the Performance of the Match, and was then named the CPL’s Player of the Week on Monday.
He has also been one of the better players in the league this season with the ball at his feet, with a 87.16 per cent passing accuracy and two assists on the season to show for it. One of the best goals of the season thus far came on a long pass down the pitch from Nimick, on a dime for striker Theo Collomb, who volleyed it into the back of the net for a 1-0 win over Atlético Ottawa.
Nimick leads the league with 137 successful long passes, is one of just two defenders with at least 100, and 26 more than second-place defender Luke Singh of Atlético Ottawa. Defensively, he has won possession of the ball 72 times in the defensive third of the pitch this season, six back of Manjrekar James for the league lead, and won possession 101 times overall.
With composure and prowess on both sides of the ball, he has fans clamouring for him to be called up to the Canadian men’s national team sooner rather than later, and many don’t expect him to be playing in the CPL for very long. He is firmly in the race for the aforementioned Defender of the Year, and likely also in the conversation for the Player and Players’ Player of the Year awards.
“As a team, it’s our philosophy where we want to we want to score goals, we want to have possession, and we want to be dangerous. I think my skill set as a centre-back suits that,” Nimick said. “I like to think I have a quite a good passing range and can find multiple passes and I’m calm under pressure. That’s something you need to have playing Patrice (Gheisar)’s style.
“Everyone across the backline and everyone in the team has that, so I think that’s what’s working well for us. Off the ball, when you’re attacking, you need to be switched on the whole time. That’s something we’ve been working on, and something I’ve been working on — organizing the people in front of me — and it’s really helped improve my game. You’ve seen that in the performances from the team on the field.”
Pure class 🥂
What a stunning ball from Dan Nimick and a brilliant volley from Théo Collomb!@HFXWanderersFC go in front at home 🔥
📺: @onesoccer
— Canadian Premier League (@CPLsoccer) July 23, 2023
For such a talented and mature player, it’s easy to forget that this is Nimick’s first professional season. He was drafted by the Vancouver Whitecaps in the 2023 MLS SuperDraft, but did not sign with the club in a move the Whitecaps will likely regret, instead moving to the opposite coast to join Patrice Gheisar’s new-look Halifax Wanderers side.
The addition of men’s national team defender Doneil Henry has also boosted his first season as he gets to work with one of the top centre-backs in the country.
“I think I’ve adjusted well, I think the coaching staff and my teammates have taught me a lot really quickly in my first season,” Nimick said. “I think that’s helped me to adjust really well, and I’ve enjoyed every moment that I’ve played so far this season. I think I’m performing at a level that I’m really happy with to this point in the season.
“Doneil’s got unlimited experience in the professional game. He’s someone who has been everywhere, played at every level, and someone I can really watch what they do on a day-to-day basis and learn from, and hopefully I look to be at his level one day in my career.”
Nimick’s durability is also something that should be looked at fondly. He and Cavalry’s Klomp are two of just five players to play every single minute so far this season, and the only two outfield players — with their goalkeepers Yann Fillion and Marco Carducci also in that category, along with Valour FC’s Rayane Yesli.
That isn’t the only similarity between Klomp and Nimick. Both are strong defenders, but also thrive on playing attacking football and starting attacks from their own half of the pitch.
Klomp is sixth in the league in aerial duels won with 40, has completed 89.27 per cent of his attempted passes this year, and is fifth in the league in successful long passes among outfield players with 98. He also has two goals, including one that Dennis Bergkamp, the great Dutch attacker that Klomp credits with making him fall in love with football, would be proud of.
“A lot of people asked me if I actually meant it, and I did,” he said of his goal against Vancouver FC where he flicked the ball to himself before a great finish with the outside of hit boot. “It was a bit of an awkward ball that I got from from Jesse [Daley] because it bounced a couple times and it had a lot of spin on it. The only thing that came up in my mind was to flick it over.
“I didn’t check behind me if there was someone in my back, so with the flick I tried to flick it over, but then I saw [nobody was really there]. After that I had almost a clean run at the goal, so I was happy to finish with outside of the boot.”
GOAL 🐎🐎@CPLCavalryFC go up 2-1 over @VanFootballClub as Daan Klomp shows off the flicks and tricks before rounding off with the finish
🔴 WATCH #CanPL on OneSoccer pic.twitter.com/Sd5kWeBJxH
— OneSoccer (@onesoccer) July 22, 2023
Klomp spent much of his first two CPL seasons at right-back, but this year he is playing his more comfortable central role that allows him to get on the ball a bit more and try to dictate play through the middle of the park. He is fourth in the Canadian Premier League with 1,443 touches of the ball, signalling that a lot of plays start with him out of the back as he decides to play it long to an attacker, short to a midfielder or another member of the backline, or back to Carducci in goal.
As a former midfielder, Klomp’s comfort on the ball has helped him transition very well into this new and preferred role, another similarity between him and Nimick — who played right-back at Leeds and in midfield in college before becoming a centre-back primarily later on.
“I feel like I can excel in this position,” Klomp said. “I learned a lot from playing right-back but now I’m happy to finally play centre-back again, and I think it’s going well. At right-back you get higher up the pitch, and that is something that I really want to do centrally as well.
“I like stepping out of the back, so you see a rotation between me and Charlie Trafford as well sometimes where we switch positions. It’s been nice, me and Charlie work well off each other. That’s definitely something I loved at right back is playing higher up the pitch.”
Klomp’s positional change is part of what he calls a “new Cavalry”, which has seen the side evolve tactically with a bit of player turnover since he arrived before the 2021 season.
“I definitely see some changes, I feel like our playing out from the back has improved a lot because [before joining the club] I heard that Cavalry is really known as a team that plays front foot football, more like long ball stuff, and really high on pressure,” he said. “I feel like we still have that initial high press, we really want to play front foot football, but when we possess the ball we control it. We really like to dominate the play now instead of having a bit less of possession, but be high up the pitch.”
It may be a “new Cavalry”, but the team are up to their old tricks and currently lead the league on 36 points with just seven matches to go. With an incredibly tight playoff race, in which the four teams below them are tied on 32 points, and sixth-place York United are on 29. The Cavs have a reputation of always being the bridesmaid but never the bride, but this year are playing some of their best football and are in pole position for the regular season title.
Like Cavalry have at ATCO Field, the Halifax Wanderers have made their home ground a fortress again, and look like they’ll make the playoffs for the first time since finishing as runners up at the Island Games in the 2020 CPL season. What started as a total rebuild of that club with more than a dozen new players has turned into a campaign with more moments of magic every weekend.
“I think looking back on the season so far, as a team, we can be we can be happy with the performances we put together,” said Nimick. “It was a very new group coming in, both with the staff and with the players, so it took a little bit for us to gel and really understand each other on the field, but I think you’re starting to see it come together now. We’re right up there at the top of the league with the points, so looking back we can be happy.”
Out west, despite a recent dip in form, the Tridents still believe that they have all the talent necessary to make a run at a second North Star Shield, or win the regular season title after leading for much of the season.
“We just have to keep the goal in mind, which is to win win the league outright, and that has been our goal since day one,” said Didić. “From there, if we can achieve that goal, then the next goal is obviously to go into playoffs and win it. Something that’s very, very, very, very important for me as an individual and as a collective, is to be able to go and lift something at the end of the year, and obviously, the Concacaf spot is very important for us as well as a club.”
Defenders will of course be crucial in this final stretch of the season, and any little defensive errors could prove to be costly as every fine margin comes into play. With the motivation of winning not one but two trophies, earning spots in next year’s Concacaf Champions Cup, and individual accolades — as well as the potential for moves to bigger and better things — the end of the 2023 Canadian Premier League season will be absolutely must-watch.