Every day over the past six weeks has been the same for Jacob Carlos.
Valour FC’s newest addition – his signing with the club becoming official today after he spent every day since mid-February with the word ‘Triallist’ preceding his name – would head to training with one goal in mind:
Keep eyes straight ahead and focussed on the prize — i.e, a roster spot — and don’t let the various hypothetical scenarios to making the squad blur the daily process.
And then came the official word Friday that Valour had signed the midfielde and their Canadian Premier League U-Sports Draft pick.
“It’s a huge stress relief,” began Carlos in a chat with valourfootball.club. “When I got here I tried to block out all the noise and stay focussed and whatever the circumstances were or whatever I might have been hearing I just blocked that out and kept working hard.
“This is my first pro deal, and I was pretty excited. I called my mom and my dad, my girlfriend, and my close family. Words can’t explain my excitement. It’s a blessing.”
Valour selected the 20-year-old Mississauga Rams product 12th overall in the 2022 draft after his sensational season last year in which he scored twice and added two assists in 11 matches for the Ryerson Rams.
He came to Valour camp flashing a maturity in his game that the coaching staff came from his days as a younger working with the Toronto FC Academy as well as time with Académico de Viseu FC in Portugal and Swedish club IK Frej.
“He came into a pro environment and you felt right away it wasn’t new for him,” said Valour FC GM and head coach Phillip Dos Santos. “That helped him a lot. He came in with a nothing-to-lose mentality and he just worked extremely hard. He’s a player that still has a lot to clean up in his game, but his work ethic, his understanding of what we require and ask of him, his ability to adapt, his ability to play in more than one position all came into account.”
There’s also this: when the club announced Thursday that Raphael Ohin had suffered an ACL injury to his left knee and would be out for an ‘extended period’ https://valourfc.canpl.ca/article/i-know-its-going-to-be-tough-and-its-going-to-take-some-mental-strength-but-ill-push-through there was an obvious need to bolster the midfield.
“I don’t like to say this, but sometimes the misfortune of one becomes the fortune of another one,” said Dos Santos. “We were asking ourselves ‘what do we do with Jacob?’ because he was very close. And then with what happened to Raph Ohin the door opened for Jacob and it made our decision easier. Even prior to that we were saying, ‘Man, we would love to keep him and make it work because he’s still young and has a good margin to progress.’
“There’s a spirit in which he plays the game and that’s the foundation for him to grow.”
Carlos is already well aware of that a roster spot certainly isn’t a guarantee. Even with today’s positive news he’ll hardly change is approach to daily training.
“After the first week of camp I thought if I can just stay confident I could make it,” he said. “So much of this is a mental battle. After the first week I found myself saying, ‘OK Jacob, you can do this. But you can’t drop your level. You can’t get comfortable, even if you’re on the team.’
“I never got comfortable, I’ll never get comfortable because I want to keep progressing in this game and getting better.”
Carlos was quick to thank Dos Santos and assistant coaches Damian Rocke and Jay Bhindi for their help during camp, but also went out of his way to mention his coaches at Ryerson and those who helped him during his days as an amateur.
“Without all of them,” he said, “I wouldn’t be here.”
And now that he’s scribbled his name on his first professional contract, Carlos can now focus on April 10th – the 2022 CPL opener against FC Edmonton in Alberta.
“I’m trying not to think about it, to be honest,” he said with a grin. “I just don’t want to overwhelm myself on that day. But I know it’s coming very soon.”