A Valour FC practice session earlier this week has officially ended, and GM and head coach Phillip Dos Santos is seated beside goalkeeper coach Patrick Di Stefani watching a dozen or so players putting in some extra work.
Crosses and corners are being delivered into the box and the consistent finish from his troops has the Valour boss beaming.
And it’s in this moment when he is reminded of a quote he delivered after last weekend’s 1-nil win over Vancouver FC – that despite Valour’s big possession numbers and chances, the team needed to continue to work on its finish. The analogy Dos Santos used: the orange looks good, but now it needs to start delivering juice.
“It’s just finish. Look there… there’s going to be juice now. There’s the juice,” said Dos Santos, at the exact moment Pacifique Niyongabire buries a chance. “You see? That’s what we need more of.
“What I’m just saying is there’s a lot of good things and superficially it looks good. We see the dynamic of the team; you see that for many moments in many games there’s a lot of control and we’ve been able to get into good spots on the ball. That’s what a coach asks for. But that doesn’t mean anything if there’s no final product.
“That’s why I spoke about the orange that looks nice from the outside but has no juice on the inside.”
Valour plays its 13th match of the Canadian Premier League season Saturday against Cavalry FC, taking a 13-match home unbeaten streak – seven wins, six draws – into the Canada Day affair. Critical now is to keep that streak alive by building on more finish in the final third while adhering to its stout defensive play.
There have been a few blips this season for Valour – most recently a 2-0 loss to HFX Wanderers in Nova Scotia on June 10th – but the club has since rebounded with two home wins sandwiched around a 1-nil defeat to Pacific FC in Victoria in which they paid for one obvious mistake.
Yet, overall there’s been progress and with that a growing sense of confidence in the Valour clubhouse.
“It’s one thing to play well occasionally but you look at the team and there haven’t been many games where we came out upset about how they approached the game,” said Dos Santos. “Yeah, you might have spells in games where you drop a little bit the levels of performance or the qualities of execution isn’t there. But overall, the team has been solid. What it gives us is a foundation from which to build. That’s what a coach wants. We don’t want to find ourselves in a position where we’re always second guessing whether we are maximizing the players in a certain system or should we be looking at another structure.
“When the team responds inside the principles we want to set for this team, then it makes the work easier because you’re fine-tuning things. It’s now our blueprint and now we can work on the little details – the matters that for me make the difference.”
Dos Santos & Co. are hopeful the club’s increasing attendance carries into Canada Day as the team works to establish IG Field as one of the CPL’s toughest stops.
“We’ve been pleased in how our fan base is growing,” said Dos Santos. “The last few games the crowds have been getting incrementally better, with this last game being the best so far. We see the difference, we feel it. There’s an energy in the stadium.
“Hopefully Canada Day will bring more people out. We need it. I’ve said it before: this club doesn’t belong to us; it belongs to everyone and for us to be successful as a team we need everyone to be engaged in what this is all about. Let’s make it a festivity and try to get a win on a day like that.”
‘V’ NOTES
-Left back/midfielder Matteo de Brienne has resumed full practice as is an option for Dos Santos on Saturday.
-Winger Kian Williams was not at practice on Thursday and is listed as day-to-day.