He knows his lines by heart and has a fiery passion for the game coupled with the calm demeanour and steady hands of a brain surgeon.

And so, make no mistake, after already playing the role of the understudy and waiting patiently for this opportunity, Rayane Yesli is more than ready for his moment in the Valour FC net.

Winnipeg’s Canadian Premier League squad opens the 2023 regular season this Sunday in Toronto against York United FC and we begin our Valour FC preview series by focussing on the club’s goalkeeper position.

“I’ve been working hard for this for a long time,” Yesli told valourfootball.club this week. “But the real work starts right now. I feel good. There’s a lot of responsibility on my shoulders, but I’m comfortable with that.

“The staff has given me their trust and confidence and that means a lot.”

Yesli made nine regular season starts for the club a year ago, posting a 4-1-4 (win-draw-loss) record, conceding just eight goals and posting four clean sheets. And with Jonathan Sirois – who led the club in starts over the last two seasons and was the league’s top keeper in ’21 – now a regular with CF Montreal, it’s Yesli’s turn for a heavy workload in the net.

He’ll be pushed by Jordan Tisseur, who spent last year with FC Laval in Première ligue de soccer du Québec and the Université de Montreal where he helped the school capture a bronze at the U-Sports National Championship.

“We’re comfortable with what we have at the position,” said Valour GM and head coach Phillip Dos Santos. “We all know Rayane’s qualities. We all know what he brought to the table when he was called upon last year. We’re confident he’s more mature now with more experience and he has a personality where he doesn’t shy away from responsibility. We are convinced he’s going to embrace the role and do the job for the team.

“We feel we have a good mix. We have a guy who has acquired experience over the last couple seasons and he’s still young with a good margin to progress. That’s something we have to keep in my mind. Now he’s going into his first season where he’s got the pole position for the No. 1 spot.

“And we also have someone in Jordan who comes in a little bit like he was coming in last year, with less experience and also from the college system that we believe we’ll see progression throughout the year.”

Yesli, selected third overall by Valour FC in the 2021 CPL U-Sports Draft, began last season working behind Sirois. But with every start he flashed more and when the club made a charge up the standings it was Yesli manning the net.

That put Dos Santos & Co. in an intriguing position: continue to run with Sirois, who had been such a star for the club while on loan, or let Yesli have a long run.

“For me it was very easy. I don’t run away from those things,” said Dos Santos. “I always put the team first and my thought always was whatever decision I make will be the best for the team. At that time in the season we all felt Rayane had an edge and that’s why we gave him a chance and when he was in there he dealt with things very well.

“We were also already eyeing things for 2023. We wanted to see how he would cope with a run of games, and he made it easy for us to keep him in because the team kept winning and we went through a spell of not conceding many goals.”

Critical now for Yesli is for him to continue to grow his game even further, especially now that his understudy days are done.

“I’ve never had questions about myself,” said Yesli. “But it would be different if I came into this year having only played one game. Last year allowed me to understand the level of the league and so now I don’t feel like I’m new to this.

“I watch every CPL game. I watch a lot of football every day. I study strikers and wingers before games and what their tendencies are and what the style of play is of certain teams. I’m passionate about football and I’m ready to do my part to help us win games.”

THE KEEPERS

Rayane Yesli

Ht: 6-7; Born: 3/16/2000

Nationality: Canadian

Jordan Tisseur

Ht: 6-2; Born: 7/21/2000

Nationality: Canadian

NOTABLE VALOUR FC KEEPER NUMBERS

44.4

Clean sheet percentage for Yesli, who had four shutouts in nine starts last year. That ranked second in the CPL last year for keepers with a minimum of five starts, behind only Kieran Basket of HFX Wanderers, who had five clean sheets in nine starts (55.6%).

9

Combined CPL regular season starts for the two Valour goalkeepers in 2023 — all nine of them by Yesli.

14

Career clean sheets for Jonathan Sirois in his two years with Valour FC, making him the club’s all-time leader. Yesli’s four career shutouts ties whim with Matthias Janssens, who had the same total in the club’s inaugural season of 2019.

NEXT: The Valour FC defenders