Atletico players work the phones and call fans
With Friday’s announcement that the Canadian Premier League will postpone the opening of its soccer season — April 11 was supposed to be the first game — Atletico Ottawa players were trying to divert attention from the COVID-19 pandemic.
Atletico players, who returned early from a training camp in Spain on Monday, have been in self-isolation, but that hasn’t stopped them from making phone calls to people who are on a list of 550 account holders who made an initial deposit to hold season tickets. Atletico Ottawa is going into its first season in the CPL.
First, the news of the day: In announcing the postponement of the start of the regular season, CPL commissioner David Clanachan said, “We have made this decision in support of the announcement by Canada Soccer on March 13 banning all sanctioned soccer activities in Canada, and the directive by our respective governments and health officials to ban all public gatherings.
“We will continue to work with all of those authorities in order to make a decision on when to begin our 2020 season when it is declared safe by the relevant health and government agencies, including our governing body, Canada Soccer. Sport in our country has long been a rallying point for our nation both from a leadership and entertainment perspective, and will continue to do so.”
“It’s the appropriate response,” said Atletico strategic partner Jeff Hunt (he aligned himself with Atletico Madrid). “Nobody knows how this is going to evolve so this is prudent by the league and we totally support it.”
As for Atletico, the team enlisted its players — the roster still hasn’t been fully announced — to start making calls to fans Thursday.
“Not to be overly philosophical, but we are getting enough bad news on a daily basis,” Hunt said. “I’ve always believed sports represents a lot of things in society, sometimes it represents a distraction. It can be the thing that brings people back to normal.
“I remember when Nathan Cirillo was shot (in 2014) in Ottawa, all eyes were on the Redblacks game, it was the first sporting event after the shooting. I was doing interviews nationally about the significance of that game. The game gave us a feeling of being back to normal. Listen, we’re not going to change what’s going on around Ottawa, or Canada, but this is a reminder that we will get back to normal. This is something for our players to do. Among other things, we’re battling boredom.
“The reaction from fans has been unbelievable. They’re happy to get out of the coronavirus fog and talk about games and how’s the team looking. It’s meant to be casual. It’s not a call to action, there’s no, ‘Hey, can I get your credit card number?’ or anything like that. It’s been a fun conversation for people to have. It’s safe to say the players are enjoying making these calls as much as the people who are receiving them. It’s a welcome distraction from the monotony of sitting in isolation. There’s only so much Netflix or video games you can tolerate. Reminding people that this will pass and we’ll be sitting at TD Place sometime this summer watching, among other things, Atletico
Ottawa soccer, is important.”
Despite a brief training camp in Madrid — the team returned home early because of COVID-19 — Atletico has not announced its full roster, promising to reveal more names in the coming days and weeks. Known to be on the roster are: Ben Fisk, Antoine Coupland, Malyk Hamilton, Ajay Khabra, Michel Djaozandry, Ricky Gomes and Kunle Dade-Luke.
Atletico Ottawa was in Spain for less than a week. Initially, the team was supposed be at the Atletico Madrid practice facility until April 7. But a decision was made to leave while flights to Canada were still available. Once the players got to Ottawa, they went into self-isolation.
“I believe the risk we were exposed to was minimal, but we can’t treat ourselves any differently than if we’d lived our whole lives in Spain and got to Ottawa last week,” Hunt said.
“We’re very fortunate right now that the biggest issue we’re experiencing is passing time. They’re in houses, they’re separated and they’re practising all the protocols. When you have a team that’s unable to do what a team normally would be doing — athletes are used to a normal routine — that’s probably our biggest challenge, but we’re fortunate that’s our biggest challenge.” tbaines@postmedia.com
It’s safe to say the players are enjoying making these calls as much as the people who are receiving them. It’s a welcome distraction from the monotony of sitting in isolation.