Final Score: Atlético Ottawa 1-1 Halifax Wanderers FC
Goalscorers: Didić 4′; Mekideche 79′
Game of the 2024 season: 99
CPL match: 583

Match in a minute or less

Atlético Ottawa and the Halifax Wanderers combined for a 1-1 draw at TD Place on Sunday afternoon, a result that several other Canadian Premier League sides certainly won’t mind seeing after another busy matchday of CPL action.

It didn’t take long for Ottawa to find the net in this game, as Manny Aparicio found Amer Didić with a perfect cross into the box in the 4th minute, and Didić made no mistake in nodding home from close range to make it 1-0.

Despite going down early, the Wanderers would find their equalizer deep into the second half, however, as Lorenzo Callegari found Nassim Mekideche on a corner, and the Wanderers defender would find a way to nod home to tie things up at 1-1, which is how this one would finish.

Three Observations

A draw a missed opportunity for both sides:

Early in the season, it’s hard to be doom and gloom about draws, as it can be valuable to put points on the board, knowing that could pay off down the road.

At this stage of this season, however, where there aren’t many games left, it can hurt a little more leave points on the table.

Certainly, both teams will feel that pain after this game, one where they’ll both rue missed opportunities to take home all three points, instead settling for a draw that doesn’t help either team as they chase their respective goals.

For Ottawa, it’s all but extinguished their CPL Shield hopes, as they’ll be eliminated from that race if they drop any points or if Forge gains two points in their last three games, which is a tall ask.

As a result, it’s pushed them in a battle to defend second place, currently sitting just one point ahead of third place Cavalry and four points ahead of fourth place York. Given the difference between finishing in second and third can have on a team’s playoff journey, ensuring they don’t drop any further than second is a big goal, and they’ll look to keep their hold on that spot while pushing for that regular season title as long as they mathematically remain in that race.

“Until first is officially (impossible) to secure, I still think that’s something that we’re fighting for,” Ottawa full back, Matteo de Brienne said. “Obviously, second place isn’t the worst place to be, but when playing for this club, this organization and this city, first place is where we need to be and where we want to be, so until that’s done, we’re going to keep competing.”

Meanwhile, as for the Wanderers, they missed a chance to hop into a tie with Pacific for the fifth and final spot in the CPL playoff race, instead remaining two points back of the Tridents. Of course, that’s not a huge gap, so that’s not the end of the world, but given that Pacific are in action against Valour on Monday, they could extend that gap to five points with a win.

Then, a Valour loss could create more chaos, narrowing the gap between fifth and last place to two points, while a draw isn’t great for the Wanderers, either, as it’d put Valour one point behind Halifax, while pushing Pacific to three points ahead of them.

Safe to say, for a Wanderers team looking to get back into the playoff picture, this would’ve been a good opportunity to make some noise on the road against a tough team, but instead, they’ll now have to watch on nervously when Valour hosts Pacific later on Monday.

“It’s very difficult,” Wanderers head coach, Patrice Gheisar said when asked about the draw. “For sure, you feel torn. But the one thing I just told the team, which I have no problem sharing with the entire country, is that I felt inspired by their performance. I think you have to recognize the performance, you have to recognize the effort and intensity.”

“We’re proud of the fight, proud of the response,” Wanderers centre back Dan Nimick added. “But we need three points at this point in the season.”

Despite the Wanderers frustrations, as they out-shot Ottawa 15 to 10, had 1.41 xG to Ottawa’s 1.17 and created three big chances to Ottawa’s one, indicating they did enough to make a win a realistic possibility, Ottawa will arguably be the team less pleased with their point.

In the midst of a title race where Forge has essentially been perfect at home, picking up 34 points from 13 games (11W-1D-1L), that Ottawa has now drawn five and lost three of their 13 home games will be a point of frustration.

The best CPL team on the road this season, having picked up 20 points from 12 matches away from TD Place, they’ve done well to make up for some of those points they dropped at home, but not enough to keep Forge within touching distance.

On a day where they came flying out of the gates in the first half, scoring after just four minutes and finishing an advantage of 0.91 to 0.56 over their guests after 45 minutes, they’ll rue their inability to turn their opening goal into much more, instead allowing the Wanderers back into game.

“We’re an ambitious team, we have ambitious goals, and today, our goal was to get three points and to stay in the title race,” Ottawa head coach, Carlos González, said. “And I felt that we missed a big opportunity in front of our fans, so we are disappointed about that, and what we have to do is now rest and analyze deeply to see what we can improve in the second half (of games).”

Given that the Wanderers had to play a large chunk of the game down a goal, they’ll be pleased with their own response, as they outshot Ottawa eight to three in the second half and had 0.85 xG to Ottawa’s 0.26, but will wonder what they could’ve put together had they mustered up a stronger start.

Ultimately, however, that kind of sums up why both teams will be frustrated with the draw – Ottawa will feel they missed a chance to put the game away, and the Wanderers felt they got a hold of the game too late.

Perhaps, however, when looking at all of that, it indicates a draw was the fair result, making it fitting that’s how it ended, even if both teams weren’t pleased with that outcome.

Atlético Ottawa shine in the half-space in first half:

A huge reason for Ottawa’s success in the first half of this game?

They dominated the half space in the attack, as they did well to circulate the ball into dangerous pockets in and around the box.

In particular, they were lethal with how they opened up space through creative overlapping and underlapping runs, doing well to draw the Wanderers defenders out wide before playing dangerous passes into the pockets that then opened up.

Through that, they grabbed their goal and put the Wanderers under a lot of pressure, forcing them deeper back without the ball. For a Wanderers side that wanted to come out and press, it was not an ideal game plan, which allowed Ottawa to play more on the front foot.

Yet, that’s why Ottawa had 15 touches in the box compared to just six for Halifax in the first half – they were able to push into those dangerous areas with regularity, such as on their goal.

At the same time, credit has to given to their four wide players for their ability to create those spaces.

First, there were their two wing backs, Matteo de Brienne and Dani Morer, who were instrumental in pushing up the field. Once they’d get there, however, they wouldn’t just overlap as one would usually expect them – they also sometimes tucked more centrally and underlapped, which was hard for the Wanderers to track.

That ended up providing space for their two wingers, Ollie Bassett and Ballou Tabla, to have more freedom on the ball. Bassett ended up profiting from that, most specifically, as he was deployed on the left, which was a perfect fit for his tendencies to play as more of a creative midfielder between the lines.

In this system, he was free to tuck inside with de Brienne overlapping him, or to push outside with de Brienne underlapping, with both combinations yielding positive results.

By comparison, Tabla’s tendency was to push wider in possession, but he too formed a nice partnership with Morer, allowing him to drift inside for a few dangerous looks at goal.

“When we set up the right way, I think we’re a very, very dominant team, and we showed that very well in the first half,” de Brienne said. “We managed to get into all those half spaces, get forward and created a lot of opportunities.”

Now, for Ottawa, that’ll be something for them to build off, as they struggled to find those half-spaces as the game wore on. Part of that came down due to fatigue, as they ran out of gas a bit, but they’ll also feel they could’ve done better to continuously attack those spaces as they did early on especially as fresh legs came on later in the game.

Had they done so, they perhaps could’ve put away the game earlier, as they did well to cause problems for their visitors with their early runs into those channels.

“We have two visions of today, the pessimistic vision and the optimistic vision,” González said. “I think that if we analyze the first half, that’s what we want to drag into future games.”

“We had a lot of dynamism in our playing, we had versatility, players were playing inside, playing outside, and found good spaces.”

“If we are pessimistic, however, (we’ll look) at how to solve the problems that we had in the second half where we weren’t able to control the game and maintain our lead.”

Wanderers grab control in second half to push for win:

It was a tough start to the game for the Wanderers, who didn’t just go down early, but also struggled to get their foot on the ball in the first half, too.

As a result, they reached half time having held just 46.1 % of possession, which is unusual for a team that likes to hold the ball as much as they do, especially given how early they went down a goal.

Yet, that can be attributed to two factors – they struggled to press as much as they would’ve liked, which allowed Ottawa to control possession, and they struggled to keep the ball and find spaces between the lines, finishing the first half having completed just 80.8% of their passes (Ottawa, meanwhile, completed 86.2% of theirs).

By comparison, in the second half, the Wanderers came alive in both areas of their game, as they kept 70.5% of possession and completed 83.8% of their passes, but were also much more effective in disrupting Ottawa’s possession game, as the hosts completed just 65.4% of their passes in the second half.

That allowed Halifax to wrestle back control of the game, as they started to force Ottawa’s mid-block lower and lower, doing well to let their midfielders and wide players see more of the ball in dangerous areas, such as Lorenzo Callegari, who finished with a game-high 88 touches in large part due to a strong second half performance.

As a result, they were much more dangerous on both sides of the ball late on, having grabbed the control they sorely lacked early on.

“As much as in the first half we were talking about how we were struggling with wide area defending, for me, the biggest problem was our attacking,” Gheisar explained. “Because we’re a team that everybody knows wants to be on the ball, our best form of defending is having the ball, so we just said, let’s get it back as quickly as possible.”

Yet, that’s a credit to what this Wanderers team can be at their best. A team that can be aggressive defensively and in possession, it’s important to remember that both sides of their game can complement the other, but that requires a lot of work on both sides of the ball to do so.

Early on in this game, the Wanderers struggled to do that, but as the game wore on, they started to get the aggression they desired.

Now, however, they’ll want to show that earlier in the game, and to play on the front foot from minute one, where they’re at their best. They’ll be pleased with the character they’ve showed in their last two games, having scored late equalizers in both to rescue points on the road, but they’ll also want to take it to teams earlier, especially given that they need wins if they’re to make the playoffs.

“I think a lot of the offensive side of things comes off the defensive side of things (for us),” Nimick said. “When we’re pressing them, we’re winning the ball back early, we get the balls in better areas, and we’re able to put them under pressure. Then we’re obviously not chasing them around and getting tired on the defending side of things, so we’ve got more energy to make runs cause the defence problems, and we’re able to keep the ball off that.”

CanPL.ca Player of the Match

Lorenzo Callegari, Halifax Wanderers FC

As usual, Callegari was central to a lot of the Wanderers success in this game, making a big impact on both sides of the ball in the heart of his team’s midfield.

That’s reflected in the numbers, as he nabbed an assist, created five chances, completed 68 of 76 passes (89%), had 88 touches, 14 passes into the final third, completed 4/5 crosses, had one interception, made nine recoveries and won one foul across 90 minutes of play.

What’s next?

Atlético Ottawa will head out on the road for their next match, but they’ll stay within Ontario, as a visit to York Lions Stadium to take on York United awaits them on Sunday, October 6th (5:00 p.m. ET). Meanwhile, the Halifax Wanderers will return home for a clash against Vancouver FC at Wanderers Grounds on Saturday, October 5th (11:00 a.m. PT/3:00 p.m. AT).

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