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Aaron Nielsen ,

May 10, 2017 Email

Aaron Nielsen



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Now in it's fourth season, League1 Ontario continues to expand and has established itself as a league that helps players in advancing their careers, but also is a legitimate soccer league across the province of Ontario. The Men's league remains at 16 clubs for the 2017 season with a club from Ottawa joining the league - OSU Force who have replaced Kingston, while the Women's division sees three new clubs: Toronto Azzurri Blizzard, Unionville Milliken SC, and the West Ottawa Soccer Club. It will be interesting to see how the Ottawa clubs perform, as they have done well in past Ontario leagues, surprising clubs from the GTA. West Ottawa, who joins the women's league, has a history of succeeding at youth soccer tournaments across the province and like Vaughan and Woodbridge in the GTA, are one of the stable clubs in Canada. The OSU Force historically fits the development style of a Sigma FC, specializing in helping players go beyond youth soccer either playing soccer at a US College or professionally with notable alumni Kris Twardek. Ottawa already have had a presence in the PLSQ with FC Gatineau, although Ottawa Fury Academy is no longer playing in that league. This has given the Force a large talent pool to recruit from with the side consisting of past Fury Academy Players as well as players who play post secondary soccer at Carlton and Algonquin. Both Ottawa clubs will be looking to follow the footsteps of successful expansion clubs from 2016. FC London was impressive in their inaugural season in League1 Ontario and hope to repeat both the men's success of finishing in 1st place in the very competitive Western Division and repeating as league champions in the Women's Division. London also had the top scorers in both leagues with Elvir Gigolaj scoring 24 goals in the Men's League well Jade Kovacevic had 26 goals for the Women's team. Gigolaj returns to the Men's side in 2017, although the club brought in a new coach in Dom Kosic and made some roster changes, making the club younger so it will be interesting to see if FC London can repeat last year's success. The other two expansions clubs who impressed last season were the North Toronto Nitros and North Mississauga. North Toronto, who play at Varsity Stadium, I was able to see them play a number of times last year and they did very well finishing third in the Men's Eastern Division. The Nitros did lose Niba MacDonald, who is now playing professional soccer in Slovakia, although the team remains strong with many current University of Toronto players as well added former TFC Academy player Mirza Custovic and Lael Daniel who joins the club from Sanjaxx Lions. North Mississauga might not be able to follow up from their fourth place Men's Western Conference finish after losing many key players this off-season, including Jose Melo, Johnston Amoo, and Kevin Dhillon, while keeper Daniel Gosciniak joined Vaughan. North Mississauga do have a couple of former professional players in Europe joining the team in Anton Buretic and Jan Emil Weirum. When deciding the 2017 Men's Championship, the title should come down to the traditional powers of Vaughan Azzurri, Woodbridge Strikers, Durham United, Oakville Blue Devils, Sigma FC and Toronto FC III, who have re-branded themselves from the TFC Academy. After winning the 2015 L1O championship, Oakville had a disappointing season in 2016 finishing 6th, although they still have Filipe Vilela scoring goals and have added Woodbridge keeper Matt George and Mathew Santos who plays D1 soccer with Canisius. A traditional power in GTA soccer, Durham will look to improve on their 4th place Men's Eastern Division place and brought in two leading scorers from two other clubs in Master's Tyrell Rayne and Windsor TFC Stars Jumbo Iyowuna. TFC III finished third in the Western Conference in 2016 with a very young side in which most return for 2017. This added year of experience should make TFC III a contender in 2017 as they have very good skilled players in Kota Sakurai, Marko Mandekic, Nicholas Osorio, Dante Campbell and Ethan Beckford, while Daniel Da Silva also joins the team after playing with the Benfica Academy team in Portugal. Although 2017 Western favourite, in my view, is Sigma FC whose lineup gives the Canadian Premier League more credibility with them signing four professional players in Giuliano Frano, Jonathan Grant, Dominic Samuel and Jelani Smith. Although players to also keep an eye on are Simon Triantafillou and Faisal Ghaffur who will be attending American Universities next fall and are MLS and CanPL prospects for the future. The two top clubs in the East are Vaughan and Woodbridge and both have followed Sigma's lead with high profile signings this past off-season. 2016 Champions Vaughan have added former Toronto FC prospect Chris Mannella and Brandon John who played with Seattle Sounders 2 last season. Vaughan also return the core players from last year in Jarek Whiteman, Mills brothers Jason, Jashua, and Brandon and Mario Kovacevic, who last year combined for 40 goals. Woodbridge also brought in a former Toronto FC player in goalkeeper Quillan Roberts as well as former Italian league youth player Domenico Futia who joins Dylan Carreiro, Oscar Cordon and Humber star Joshua Paredes Procter, who moved from Durham to join the Strikers. Vaughan and Woodbridge are also two of the stronger women clubs in the league and with London and Durham United should challenge for the women's championship. I don't expect other clubs in the league to compete with the clubs above for the 2017 title in each league. Although last season, I was impressed by all clubs I watched in the league and in many cases the remaining clubs, Aurora FC, Sanjaxx, ProStars, Toronto Skillz and Masters played younger lineups and the same is expected from Windsor this year after creating a direct partnership with Toronto FC. One of the reasons why is the top players from these clubs are moving to more high profile clubs in the league, which might make League1 Ontario the most traditional soccer league in Canada or United States. This is due to a realistic off-season transfer market, including 49 players from the league since it started moving onto professional opportunities outside of the league. League1 Ontario did lose Kingston and areas like Hamilton and Kitchener-Waterloo, and a number of areas in Toronto and elsewhere still don't have a team but one can only imagine the desire for new expansion clubs in the league are only increasing. League1 Ontario is a league with real opportunities be it sponsorship, attracting fans to games, or player development giving new potential ownership real reasons for joining the league. Most importantly, the stability of the league means clubs like Sigma FC have already created long term profitable models based on grassroots soccer that goes beyond just player fees. A huge amount of respect goes to the people who have and still work for the league as well as the clubs involved. Canada has a legitimate soccer league which is not overshadowed by issues that plagued other leagues in Canada. You add the PLSQ, the PDL clubs out West and momentum for the Canadian Premier League and this is one soccer story Canadians can be proud of, will o nly continue to grow and is also 100% Canadian. Aaron Neilsen is a co-founder of Prospect XI (Prospect Eleven), a scouting network and online magazine dedicated to tracking/highlighting young players that refer to as "prospects" as well as their development pathways both within North America and worldwide. Follow PXI via www.prospectxi.com or on twitter @ProspectXI.