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“Everybody should benefit. Everybody has to row in the same direction. That’s what we have to do,” Clanachan says, adding his immediate priority is launching CPL with seven teams and fielding a great product that finds favour with Canadian fans.

“Then, if things change and Ottawa wants to be part of it, that’s great. If not, at one point we’ll have to decide what we want to do about Ottawa. I started off by saying the people of Ottawa deserve to have a team in the Canadian Premier League. It’s Canada’s professional league. I can’t … I don’t see a world where a team from Ottawa is not playing in that league.

“Do you?”

OSEG’s stance on CPL is wait and see, and chief executive officer Mark Goudie says the door remains open to discussions at a later date.

“There is a sense of nationalistic pride around this new league that is joining, and that’s great,” Goudie says. “We endorse it and support it and love it and we want it to be successful, and there is a segment of our supporter base that, if it was their decision, would have chosen for us to be in the CPL in 2019.

“And I think there’s another segment that says, ‘We trust OSEG and we trust the Fury and, if they say (USL) is better for us for now, we’ll go with that …

“I think in market it was overwhelmingly positive. It changes when you get across Canada. I think there were teams that were looking forward in Canada to having an established franchise as part of their new league.”

Previous attempts to sustain pro soccer leagues in Canada have failed. In Clanachan’s words, however, “That was then, this is now,” and he offers a list of supporting claims: