Valour FC won’t run away from the reality that is last place finishes over the last two years. It’s simply the narrative that hangs over Winnipeg’s Canadian Premier League squad, still seeking its first playoff appearance after six seasons.

Yet, as the club sifts through the wreckage that was the ’24 campaign it did find some gems — two of which were re-signed this week in veteran goalkeeper Jonathan Viscosi and promising centre back Frankie Facchineri. Those two returnees, along with gritty midfielder Raphael Ohin — whose return was confirmed on Thursday — are part of the club’s rebuild.

And both Viscosi and Facchineri bring a unique perspective to Valour, having just finished their first seasons in the club’s colours and seeing the promise with 2025 on the horizon. That comes from the team’s solid second half which saw it win four matches and draw six more against four losses — a far cry from the 3-1-10 start, including five straight losses to open the season.

“The first part of last season, from a club and team standpoint and even a fan standpoint, we just want to put a line through that,” said Viscosi in a conversation with valourfootball.club this week. “But I actually think in retrospect it was a really important period for us. There were a lot of things that were done that didn’t equate with results, but we were learning together, and that adversity had the compounding effect of allowing us to become stronger as the season went along.

“That shift in the second half of the season really stemmed from identifying our biggest weaknesses — what was the cause of us dropping results. It was really the fragility of the team. When we conceded a goal the importance of winning the game was threatened and we’d collapse, we would break. From there we tried to disassociate from the results and the emphasis of making the playoffs because it was only July and there was so much to go. So, we had to start by at least not breaking every time we conceded a goal.

“Our goal was to become a solid team, to become competitive and try to be the best team we could given the circumstances, and we did that all the way until the end of the season. Our foundation came from the struggles we experienced at the beginning of the season that ultimately made us the team we became by overcoming that adversity. We became a stronger, more united and resilient group.”

Nobody in the Valour dressing room has a better big-picture take on things than the club’s veteran keeper, a man who has earned a master’s degree in Sports Pyschology and just this week had his thesis –‘It’s a MuSt Win: The Effects of Self-Talk to Enhance Passing Performance Under Pressure in Elite Football Players’ — published in The Sports Psychologist.

He and his wife Julia, who is Finnish and landed a job locally in the tech industry, have embraced Winnipeg fully. Viscosi sees opportunity in his field here for now and life after his playing career and now wants to be part of helping Valour become a CPL contender.

“The project aspect of this is motivating,” he said. “There’s something about this city that resonated with me right away. This is a sports city. This is a city of grinders. I see that all around me. I see it in the Blue Bombers. And that’s what is also appealing about this project, in a way. This is a team that has finished last two seasons in a row and that makes it the perfect underdog story for us to turn this around and become a successful club. For me to be a part of this at my age and with my background, this is the perfect club for me to be at.

“We want to build a club that has an edge and that when teams come to Winnipeg to face us, they’ll be facing a tough and resilient team with a fan base that is behind the squad and supports it. It’s just like what the Blue Bombers have displayed as they’ve become a successful sports organization.

“Phil (Dos Santos, GM and head coach) actually said it best when we were going through this shift. He said, ‘You know what the best club in the world is? It’s this club, because this is the club that pays us and allows us to come together and go out and play the game we love. We’re doing it to represent the city and the club’s name and what it stands for.’ That’s meaningful. People can get behind that.

“The narrative has been so negative around Valour. We have to accept that and then flip it. We’re not going to finish last again because the tide is turning.”

Those words mirrored what Facchineri said this week, too, in a conversation after his return for 2025 was confirmed.

“It was a pretty easy decision to come back,” said Facchineri, who is back home in Windsor for the offseason and working on a degree in history. “The goal when I got there was to make the team, help the team and then as I progressed get some minutes. Once I recognized I had a place within the team my goal was to get re-signed and continue with this project with Valour. It was really a no-brainer to get back myself back in and I’m incredibly thankful that Coach Phil and the club helped me the way they did.

“They gave me a chance to start a career in the game I love.”

Critical now for Viscosi and Facchineri — along with Ohin and all the other players already committed to a return in 2025 — is to work to change this team’s fortune.

“There’s always going to be negativity and noise and any team that hasn’t succeeded or met the expectations of fans,” he said. “What we can do is recognize there is that narrative and now we continue to work to turn things around.

“We had a very, very bad start to the year. But we found what works for us and were able to create an identity. We became a very difficult team to beat in the second half of the year. The next step is to win more games, to put more games to bed when we have the chance. There are some positive things to look forward to and I hope Valour fans will allow themselves to be hopeful. We believe good things are going to happen with the foundation we’ve built.

“We had a belief in our locker room in the second half of the year. We need to re-ignite the connection with the fans by starting better and figure our problems considerably quicker next year. That foundation is the cornerstone to that.”