On April 12th, 2014 Ottawa will field a professional soccer franchise once more as the Ottawa Fury FC will make the 8 mile road trip west from their training camp base in Sunrise, Florida to Lockhart Stadium in Ft. Lauderdale to take on the Strikers.

The 2013 Strikers had the worst combined record in the NASL (7-5-14, 26pts), and saw the firing of their head-coach Daryl Shore mid-season to be replaced by Austrian Günter Kronsteiner. Under Kronsteiner, the Strikers would improve, but not enough to see them contend for the Fall Season title that the NY Cosmos would eventually run away with. The Strikers lost former NASL top XI midfielder Walter Restrepo in the off-season to the San Antonio Scorpions in what may be the strangest transfer agreement in modern NASL history. Restrepo was reportedly exchanged for hotel and transportation services when the Strikers visit San Antonio. The Striker front office would make amends to it’s supporters later by adding former FC Edmonton and Haitian international midfielder Chris Nurse as well as Bundesliga veteran keeper Oka Nikolov.

Coach Marc Dos Santos’ team, which he has assembled from scratch starting in late 2013, will finally see NASL competition. The squad Dos Santos has assembled is young but very deep and contains some players who are very versatile and can compete for starting spots all over the field. Below is my projected starting XI for the Fury’s inaugural match.

The keeper and midfield positions seem to be set in stone. Devala Gorrick, the eldest keeper on the roster (at 26) has shown enough in camp to be the #1. Richie Ryan and Nicki Paterson have developed great chemistry in the midfield especially defending and controlling possession. Sinisa Ubiparipovic has been arguably the best player at camp and looks to be more comfortable running at defenders creating scoring opportunities for the forwards.

On defense towering center-back Omar Jarun and dynamic left-back Maykon are virtual locks to start in South Florida. I have Mason Trafford starting as the other center-back but it could just as easily be Drew Beckie, who could also vie for the right-back spot ahead of Andres Fresenga, who I think wins the starting spot as he is more comfortable moving forward than Beckie is right now.

Oliver Minatel, who has been stellar this preseason, will be a starter next Saturday if his injury has cleared, which all accounts indicate it will. The striker position is interesting as Vini Dantas and Tommy Heinemann are natural strikers with different skill sets. Heinemann is a target-man excelling at winning balls in the air and holding the ball to distribute to the wingers and midfielders moving forward. Dantas, on the other hand, is more of a #9 able to run at defenders and finish in front of the net. I have Dantas staring on the wing as he’d be more suitable playing that position than Heinemann would. If the Fury coaching staff see Dantas as a striker only, I’d see him moving ahead of Heinemann as the lone striker and see Pierre-Rudolph Mayard slotting into the right winger spot.

It should be a great week, the Fury will announce a captain on Monday and the Fury supporters will be able to put their long anticipated wait behind them and watch their team in action for the first time.

Blog Smith @BlogFuryFC