Defeat. It was bound to happen, and it’s always difficult to tell if you’d rather it occurs as a result of a bad performance or as a result of just not being able to convert when you’re the better team They each have their respective lessons that
Frustration. Every season is going to bring it at some point, and we’ve been fortunate to largely avoid that emotion through the first quarter of the season. Tuesday morning/afternoon against Forge, that frustration was felt through the individual, collective, and organizational level of fans, players, and coaches alike
Prolific. Prior to 2025, it’s certainly not a word you would use to describe Atlético Ottawa. On Saturday, the new reputation was cemented as the home team put five goals past Jonathan Viscosi. That, to anyone paying remote attention, is not the story of this match. Sam Salter pulling
Confidence. It’s evident to anyone watching whether you have it or not. It manifests in different ways, whether through the exertion of your will on an opponent, a calm in the face of tremendous pressure, or in the willingness to do the stuff you used to do in your
Ugly. No one who watched Tuesday’s game would confuse Atlético Ottawa’s performance for anything else. It was to be somewhat expected, with a heavily rotated side, and only three days rest after a big win away from home. Even so it still should not have felt as nervy
Opportunity. The best teams take it when it presents itself. Too many times over the past couple of years, this hasn’t been something that Atlético has done. Saturday continued a trend of this team bucking that trend. It was also another instance of the team meeting adversity head-on, absorbing
Belief. Every soul that walked into TD Place on Saturday had it coursing through their veins. The first two matches had brought forward the most entertaining football the team has ever played. As such, conceding an early goal didn’t bring down the mood in the stands. A frustrating refereeing
Proof of concept. Any organization, whether it's sporting or not, needs to display a proof of concept when it undergoes fundamental change. Atlético Ottawa gave us glimpses of that in the final 30 minutes of their opening match, and, in their second, showed a full 90 minutes of
Miserable. Perhaps that’s a bit of an understatement to describe the cold and wet conditions that accompanied the opening of the 2025 CPL season in Ottawa. Equally, it describes the feeling of Atlético Ottawa supporters through the first 55 minutes of the match. The team came out flat, disjointed,
You ride for six hours each way in the back of the bus, only to be provided with disappointment after disappointment. This is the life of a football fan. It's not even the performance in this case (which it was the last four times I've been
It was typical Atlético Ottawa, until it wasn’t. Every single trend that has fed into the story of Atlético Ottawa’s 2024 campaign was on display on Sunday afternoon: Ineffective at breaking down a low block through the first-half? Check. Janky set-piece goal direct from a corner? Check. A
The more things change, the more they stay the same. I’m pretty sure I’ve led off at least one of these pieces in the exact same way at some point this season, but that only further serves my point. A week after a midfield performance that completely overwhelmed
It’s only been six weeks since the last time I was genuinely excited to write this column, and yet it has felt like an eternity. Atlético Ottawa’s 2-0 win over Forge felt like the team’s most complete performance since their 3-0 win away to Vancouver in July,
If you’ve been following my writing this season, you’ll know that I’ve been vocal about my struggles to find new ways to praise the play of Amer Didic. And yet, here I am, telling you why the man with the magic hat should add a Golden Scarf
I sit here, writing this at halftime, because trying to evaluate 65 minutes of a game down to ten men is an entirely fruitless venture. It's not as if there was much of anything to speak about for the first 25 anyway. Just more of the same moribund
Did I ever tell you what the definition of insanity was? Insanity is doing the exact… same… thing over and over again and expecting things to change. #19 Rubén Del Campo (6): It was not a banner day for Rubén by any means. He was left out to dry for