CALGARY—As Calgary’s Foothills FC soccer team celebrates its first-ever league title, head coach Tommy Wheeldon Jr. says the win represents a change in the “Canadian soccer story we’re trying to tell.”

“Canada has talent,” he said.

The U23 Foothills men’s soccer team qualified for the Premier Development League (PDL) championship on July 28, after beating Chicago FC United 1-0 in the semifinal, booking its second trip to the championship game in three years.

Saturday’s league title match, played in Reading, Pa., needed an extra 30 minutes of overtime to determine the winner of the PDL.

The league finalists ended their 90 minutes of regulation time tied 2-2.

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Calgary’s Nico Pasquotti scored to break the tie and put his team up 3-2 at the 119th minute; forward Ali Musse sealed Foothills’ win with an insurance goal in the 120th minute to make the final score 4-2.

The win marks a bit of redemption for the Calgary club, which lost the 2016 PDL final 3-2 to the Michigan Bucks; the Bucks scored the winning goal on a penalty kick.

“It was there in the back of our minds,” Wheeldon said. “We kept saying that we’re not going to put ourselves in that position this time.”

For the larger soccer scene in Calgary and Canada, the head coach said it helps “change the landscape of Canadian soccer.”

The win should serve as notice that Canada has talented players who can develop into pro-calibre footballers while remaining in Canada to do so, Wheeldon said.

“It’s massive for Calgary; 98 per cent of our players are Canadian. The PDL is a 74-team league and it’s similar to the WHL (Western Hockey League) – it’s a feeder system to MLS (Major League Soccer).

“Calgary and Canada is a proven breeding ground for players looking to join the pro ranks,” he said.

Case in point, he’s already working on contract offers for some of his Foothills players to join Cavalry FC, which he’ll begin coaching in September.

Cavalry will be Calgary’s component of the Canadian Premier League (CPL), a tier 1 professional soccer league with seven teams confirmed across the country in Halifax, Hamilton, Winnipeg, Toronto, Edmonton and Vancouver Island.

Wheeldon described it as Canada’s own professional league, equivalent to MLS; the difference being that MLS is an American league with three Canadian teams, he said.

Cavalry begins its inaugural season in 2019.

“Guys don’t need to have an EU passport to go overseas to develop anymore;” they can do it in Canada and then transition to the CPL, he said.

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One of those players who’s developed his game here is Foothills goalkeeper Marco Carducci; he grew up in Calgary, spent several years in the Vancouver Whitecaps’ system and returned home about a year ago to join Foothillls.

“Nothing comes close to winning (the PDL final). And being a champion in the PDL, a 74-team league, is not easy,” Carducci said.

The prospect of joining Cavalry FC in the near future is an enticing one, he added.

“We’re building that support, CPL is coming in next year. There’s lots of exciting news with Cavalry, and we’ve been building towards this with Foothills this whole season,” he said.

Judging how Carducci and the Foothills squad saw themselves heading into the league final against an American team, belief in Canada’s soccer scene is growing.

“A bit of the thought we had before the game is we’re representing Canada, and we knew what that meant for us to come through – we were playing for our city, for our country and our club.”

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