One resolution for each of Pacific FC's second-year players
Golden Boot races, MVP aspirations, and new captaincy expectations: how will Pacific's returning crop respond?
Sophomore seasons come rife with expectations. It’s not easy to live up to first impressions—or overcome poor ones. Ask any musical artist about the sophomore slump. One day, you’re a world-beater; the next, you’re just beat.
Pacific FC enter 2021 with a roster chock-full of second-year players. After a fourth-place showing at the 2020 Island Games, club management have, by and large, put their confidence in running things back. Marco Bustos, scoring dynamo, has returned; so has feisty centre-back Thomas Meilleur-Giguère. Alejandro Díaz is back for another season; ditto for newly-minted captain Jamar Dixon and Goalkeeper of the Year nominee Callum Irving.
Confidence is high among Pacific’s ranks that the club is ready to challenge for a title. Now, the returning crop will have to prove they’ve got what it takes to win. As a third Canadian Premier League season nears, here’s one resolution for each of Pacific’s second-year players.
Read more: One resolution for each of Pacific FC’s third-year players
DF - Abdou Samake (2020 CPL stats: 2 games played, 50% tackles won, 80.3% passes completed)
Resolution: Stay healthy. There isn’t much to point to from Samake’s 2020 season that invites opportunity for improvement. With just 89 minutes played across two matches, the sample size is too small. The Montreal Impact academy product saw 63 of those minutes in a 2-1 win over FC Edmonton. In that game, Samake led PFC in clearances (2) and interceptions (3), but he also failed to clean up Pacific’s corner kick lapse that saw Easton Ongaro get his club on the scoreboard.
Pacific have been notoriously thin at centre-back through two seasons—largely due to injury. If the Mali-born defender can spell any absences from Thomas Meilleur-Giguère and Lukas MacNaughton, while providing the form he showed as a 2019 All-Big Ten Tournament Team player with the University of Michigan Wolverines, it’ll be a successful 2021.
FW - Alejandro Díaz (2020 CPL stats: 10 games played, 3 goals, 2 assists, 42.1% shots on goal)
Resolution: Top three Golden Boot finisher. Díaz will have some steep competition across the CPL—not to mention his own club—for this award. In a condensed 2020 tournament, the Mexican striker finished three goals shy of Golden Boot winner and HFX Wanderers forward Akeem Garcia (6), and behind teammate Marco Bustos (5) and the Wanderers’ Joao Morelli (4). It took FC Edmonton’s Easton Ongaro just seven appearances to match Díaz’s scoring output across ten games, and Cavalry FC’s Joseph Di Chiara (then with York9 FC) needed only six outings to reach the three-goal mark.
Díaz showed he’s more than capable as a finisher at the Island Games, with a knack for putting himself into the right position for his teammates. Against Valour FC on August 25, the former Club América striker made good on a cross from Kadin Chung by sprinting to the far left post and poaching a botched clearance. Against Cavalry FC on August 30, Díaz was even more impressive, leaping to volley a well-placed cross from Victor Blasco.
It will be tough to crack the upper tier of the Golden Boot race, but it might be what Pacific needs from Díaz if the club has serious title aspirations. The Wanderers rode the wave of Akeem Garcia and Joao Morelli (ten goals combined) to the 2020 Finals. Having Díaz and Marco Bustos humming as a one-two punch could lift Pacific to similar heights.
GK - Callum Irving (2020 CPL stats: 6 games played, 1 clean sheet, 3.7 saves/90 mins, 1.3 goals conceded/90 mins)
Resolution: Corner kick composure. Irving has plenty of reasons to feel good about his 2020 performance. He was excellent in his Island Games debut against Valour FC (a 2-0, six-save effort, including a lunging block to deny Dylan Carreiro from the penalty spot). But his season wasn’t free of lapses—and when they came, they tended to come on the corner kick. Against FC Edmonton, Irving bobbled an in-swinger that ended up at Easton Ongaro’s feet. Against Atlético Ottawa, Irving and co. failed to prevent Viti Martínez from swooping in and poaching a botched clearance. More defensive cohesion on set pieces will help Irving notch more clean sheets in 2021.
MF - Jamar Dixon (2020 CPL stats: 9 games played, 1 goal, 79.9% passes completed, 38.9% tackles won)
Resolution: Set the tone for the club. At 31, Dixon is the lone thirty-something on Pacific—and probably the only one, save for Irving, to remember Daft Punk’s Discovery album when it released. This isn’t the #TrustTheKids crop of 19 and 20-year-olds that filled the locker room in 2019, but veteran voices are few and far between on this roster—and in assuming the captaincy, Dixon has a responsibility to set an example for his younger teammates.
For his part, the Ottawa native understands the torch he carries.
“I just want to be more vocal—the guy that’s going to link the team together,” Dixon told me. “The experience that I have, obviously with Marcel [de Jong] gone … someone has to help the younger boys, be the guy to chat to if there’s issues. And I said I would gladly take that on.”
DF - Jordan Haynes (2020 CPL stats: 8 games played, 61.5% tackles won, 69.6% aerial duels won, 70.1% passes completed)
Resolution: Lock down the starting left-back spot. Haynes can’t compete with the résumé Marcel de Jong brought to the role (11 years between the Bundesliga and the Netherlands’ Eerste Divisie), but this much should be said: the Peterborough-born fullback looked every bit like he belonged on a CPL pitch at the Island Games. In his eight appearances, Haynes posted a respectable success rate on his tackles (61.5%) and won more aerial duels (16) than any PFC player not named Lukas MacNaughton.1
Of greater concern for Haynes: no player on Pacific failed more passes in their own half (37) than him. Only Terran Campbell posted a lower pass completion rate (65%) than Haynes (70.1%) on the Langford-based side. The 25-year-old Whitecaps academy product needs only to look across the pitch at his fullback counterpart, Kadin Chung (81.7% passes completed), for a target to strive towards. The more Pacific can hold onto possession in their own half and eliminate costly mistakes, the better-prepared they’ll be for a run at the North Star Shield.
MF - Josh Heard (2020 CPL stats: 5 games played, 1 goal, 1 assist, 71.7% passes completed)
Resolution: Confidence, baby, confidence. Next to Samake and Noah Verhoeven, Heard saw the fewest minutes (218) under Pa-Modou Kah at the 2020 Island Games.2 With a healthy Victor Blasco in the left midfield, it’s a tough rotation to crack. Heard’s task for 2021 will be proving he’s worth a shot.
The Welsh-Canadian’s best performance of the tournament might well have been Pacific’s last against HFX Wanderers FC on September 15th. Against a Wanderers club resting more than a few of its key players,3 Heard broke through with five crosses, two chances created, two shots inside the box, and a beautiful assist to Bustos.
If Heard can carry that confidence into the new season, that keeps the midfield discussion much more interesting.
MF - Marco Bustos (2020 CPL stats: 10 games played, 5 goals, 3 assists, Player of the Year nomination)
Resolution: Create more for others. Bustos can conjure scoring opportunities the way Neil Buchanan creates Big Art Attacks: from a seeming pile of scraps, a masterpiece emerges.
But the Winnipeg-born forward has a tendency to call his own number. In 2020, Bustos led all CPL players in touches in the attacking third (251) and in the opponent’s box (43).
To Bustos’ credit, he’s a gifted distributor—and it’s not as if he isn’t already creating for his teammates. In 2020 alone, he led the league in assists (3), passes completed in the attacking third (114), and key passes (13), as per Opta and Centre Circle Data. But there’s room for more. Defenders know he’s a scoring threat, and he draws them in by sheer gravity alone—which leaves opportunity for his teammates to find space. If Bustos’ assist tally can keep pace with his goal count, he’ll be hard to vote against for Player of the Year.
MF - Sean Young (2020 CPL stats: 9 games played, 81.9% passes completed, 58.3% tackles won)
Resolution: Earn a Best Canadian U-21 Player nomination. Blame CanPL.ca’s Charlie O’Connor-Clarke for setting the expectations here. Young came into 2020 as a homegrown 19-year-old—and a relatively unknown quantity outside of Vancouver Island. A former Victoria Highlander and a member of the VISL’s 2019 Jackson Cup-winning Westcastle United squad, Young was tabbed as a “strong box-to-box midfielder” by associate head coach James Merriman, but you’d be hard-pressed to find an Island Games preview that foresaw his emergence as a fixture in Pacific’s rotation.
In Prince Edward Island, the Victoria native played 462 minutes over nine games, and was among the youngest talents—no pun intended—to break out at the Island Games. (Only Valour FC’s Julian Dunn-Johnson, on loan from Toronto FC, saw more minutes among players 19 and under.)
“I think he took a massive, massive step last year, because nothing was given to him—at all,” Dixon told me. “It’s just a matter of him believing in himself and pushing further … if he continues to play like this and take that next step, he has a bright future.”
At 6’2”, Young has the potential to pose a threat on set pieces—but it’s an area the second-year midfielder still has room to improve. He won just 46.7% of his aerial duels in 2020, and when he managed to get a header on-target—as he did against York9 FC on August 18th—it wasn’t quite powerful or well-placed enough to challenge Nathan Ingham. Adding to his offensive arsenal—and perhaps adding the muscle to compete on those balls in the air—will help Young continue to grow in 2021.
DF - Thomas Meilleur-Giguère (2020 CPL stats: 10 games played, 60% tackles won, 51.9% aerial duels won, 86.3% passes completed)
Resolution: No more penalties conceded. Next to Lukas MacNaughton, Meilleur-Giguère needs to carry Pacific’s defensive responsibility. He’s shown the will to lead on the back line, and his strong 2020 performance caught the eye of Canada’s U-23 coach Mauro Biello. But as good an individual season as the Repentigny, Quebec native had, something’s got to give when your side concedes six penalties in ten games. Meilleur-Giguère’s first task in 2021 will be ensuring that doesn’t happen again.
Expectations are high for the Montreal Impact academy product this season. Count Pacific FC CEO and co-owner Rob Friend among Meilleur-Giguère’s believers.
“I think Thomas is one of the top players in this league, all-around,” said Friend. “I actually think [Canada’s Olympic qualifying team] really missed him [and] his leadership on and off the field.”
If Meilleur-Giguère can tighten the gaps in Pacific’s back line and churn out another season like his last, there’s a good chance he’ll be hearing from Team Canada again.
Haynes: 16 of 23 duels (69.5%); MacNaughton: 21 of 30 duels (70%).
Samake: 89 minutes played; Verhoeven: 173 minutes played.
No Golden Boot winner Akeem Garcia, nor starting ‘keeper Christian Oxner.
This is an excellent round-up of these players. Nice work, Martin.
I wonder if Victory and Chris Lee will sign deals.