FC Edmonton gearing up again

FC Edmonton fans get behind their team.

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But what of the professional team that was arguably the most successful in Canada last year? FC Edmonton, who finished their first season in the North American Soccer League (NASL) with a 10-6-2 record and qualified for the playoffs, have actually been training for the entire off-season with an eye toward greater success in their second year.

And according to team technical director Joe Petrone, the Alberta based squad’s off-season plan has seen a still relatively new club to continue to train and gel together in preparation for the upcoming campaign, but it has also allowed them to evaluate all potential new player additions within the parameters of the existing core.

“With us the situation is a little bit different than it is with any other club. Our owner, and it's unbelievable that he is actually doing this, is allowing us to practice all winter -- which no other club does -- in order to bring in talent continually every week, which we are doing, and we are assessing whether or not that talent can replace the eleven players that we have lost and make us a better team,” Petrone said.

While Edmonton did release eleven players at the close of last season, it has been able to keep its core in place and will see significant continuity on the pitch this year. Stalwarts such as Shaun Saiko, Kyle Porter and Paul Hamilton will lead a team that won praise from NASL commissioner David Downs.

“We kept sixteen players, most of whom are first team players. We also need to highlight the fact that we need to fill 3-4 key positions now, when last year we needed to fill thirty,” stated Petrone, who believes FC Edmonton will benefit greatly from the simple fact that it has now played a season together in the NASL.

“I have built five professional teams in Edmonton and I can tell you that last year when we played our first ever game in Fort Lauderdale with thirty new players, it was a little bit tense for me because you never really know what is going to come out of the gate,” Petrone said.

“It's like a two year old horse race. You never know if those horses are going to come out of the gate or what they are going to do. But after those first three games on the road in which we won two and did well in the third, then I felt secure that we had made the right choices and brought up the right kinds of players.”

Many pundits considered FC Edmonton to be a major success story in Canadian soccer last year, not just because of their achievements on the pitch, but even more so due to the fact that it was the most quintessentially Canadian pro team in the country. While Toronto, Vancouver and Montreal fielded a squad mostly comprised of American and international players with a Canadian or two sprinkled in, Edmonton fielded a line-up that consisted almost entirely of young Canadian players. And according to Petrone, that was by design and according to a strict philosophy, rather than something that occurred by virtue of necessity.

“It's what our owner (Tom Fath) wants. He didn't really buy the team to make money, but to give back to the community in Edmonton, in Alberta and in Canada. He's a Canadian. He's an Edmontonian first, but he is also a Canadian. He has made all of his money here and, therefore, he wanted to give back. And he chose soccer to be the sport,” Petrone said.

While much has been written about the experiment inherent in Toronto FC bringing in a coach from the Netherlands towards the goal of winning in MLS with a Dutch style 4-3-3 tactical approach, it’s important to highlight that Edmonton’s organizational approach and philosophy is equally groundbreaking and unique in the Canadian soccer landscape.

The genesis of the team’s tactic came about from an early discussion between Fath and Petrone. They formulated a plan to bring in top coaches from the Netherlands to develop young Canadian players to the point that they could both compete with the FC Edmonton first team and/or be sold to MLS or European clubs to continue their development at an even higher level.

It’s a method that could pay major dividends for Canadian soccer in terms of the opportunity it provides for young players who aren’t yet completely ready to play significant minutes for MLS and European clubs or for whom opportunities abroad have not panned out as planned due to any number of circumstances. In essence, it is a model that fills a major gap in the Canadian player development model that has been highlighted many times over the past several years by Canadian national team coach Stephen Hart.

FC Edmonton recently hired a Canadian as an assistant coach and Petrone believes there are qualified Canadian coaches who could some day even fill a head coaching role with the Alberta-based club. However, at this point in the team’s evolution, he sees the organization’s Dutch coaches as the key component in FC Edmonton’s development model.

“I must stress that this experiment would not have been possible without bringing top European coaches to take care of the Canadian kids. If you immediately have an NASL team with essentially all Canadian players, it is only possible if you bring two or three top coaches from Europe. You have to pay a lot of money for them and we have done that. It has taken the vision of owner and it has allowed the Canadian kids to become better players than they were when they started at the beginning of the last season,” Petrone stated.

In terms of the club’s first season of competition at the NASL level, Petrone believes the fundamental lesson was that FC Edmonton had to learn to be a little more flexible tactically depending on the dimensions of the pitch that the squad was playing on.

“We play the Dutch system, which means playing out of the back. However, we played on a small field at Foote Field at the University of Alberta, which wasn't perfect as it is only 67 yards wide. And that created a big problem for a team that was trying to play wide and rely on its speed. However, we are 99 per cent sure that we will be moving over to another facility where will be on a much wider field, which will allow us to play our system at home,” Petrone said.

FC Edmonton’s second campaign will start in essentially the exact same way that its first did: on the road against the Fort Lauderdale Strikers. However, this year the matchup comes with the added context of Edmonton’s final match last season coming in the form of a 5-0 playoff defeat at the hands of the Strikers.

“In a way, I think it was a bad thing that we lost 5-0 in our last game. It was also a good thing that we lost 5-0, because had we won that playoff game and gone on in the playoffs and maybe won a championship, it would have been much more difficult for us in the third, fourth and fifth years of the franchise. That would be the case for any franchise,” Petrone opined.

“I have been involved with many franchises. The best way is that you just make the playoffs the first year or just miss out. And then you get a little bit better the next year and continue to improve in your third year. And then you actually win the championship in your fourth or fifth year. That is the evolution of how to build a franchise, both on the field and in the stands. If you win it too early, which doesn't happen very often, then it becomes a matter of what do you do in your second year and it becomes a little bit of a problem.”

Regardless of how Edmonton does in its rematch against the Strikers and in its second NASL season, Petrone and the rest of FC Edmonton management team are not losing sight of the team’s main long terms objectives, which centre primarily on developing, nurturing and providing competitive playing time to young players from Alberta and all across Canada. And with that in mind, regardless of which part of Canada you live in, FC Edmonton is a team that all Canadian soccer fans should be getting behind.

Steve Bottjer is a Toronto-based writer, podcaster and editor for RedNation Online, on online magazine covering all aspects of Canadian soccer. Follow RedNation Online on Twitter.