Fury FC kicks off training camp with high hopes
We’ve heard it here before — a coach promising an attacking style, an offence-first style of soccer that entertains the home fans.
It didn’t work so well for Paul Dalglish, who “stepped away” from Ottawa Fury FC last August after a year and a half full of too many disappointments.
It’s now up to Fury FC’s new coach Nikola Popovic, who’s coming off a United Soccer League Western Conference championship as coach of Swope Park (he was also an assistant for former Fury FC coach Marc Dos Santos there in 2016), to put the pieces of the puzzle together and get this team back on track. Going down that road involves what Fury FC GM Julian de Guzman calls developing a “strong culture.”
“Any successful team has a strong culture,” said de Guzman. “We want success — start winning games at home, win games on the road. That winning mentality is something we’ve been missing for quite some time.
“Something we need to focus on is how we create a positive culture that will bring us success. Culture is the way the dressing room is set. We want leaders. Teams have maybe one or two captains, we want to have 25 captains. Everyone’s a leader in his own way, everyone has a history in who they are and what they bring to the table. Everyone’s here to fight for one another. You create that type of support in the locker-room and you become unstoppable.”
Establishing that culture begins with the coach. And he got his message out on Day 1 of training camp at the RA Centre dome on Monday.
“Today, he made it very clear that in all the competitions we go in, he’s given us plenty of goals,” said defender Colin Falvey. “First, we want to get a home quarter-final — which we know we have to finish in the Top 4 to get. Even when we go on the road, he said ‘I’m not going to be sitting in trying to get a scrappy 0-0 point.’ He wants a good team that doesn’t care where it goes in North America that it’s going to play our brand of football.”
“This first stage is very important for us to understand what we have,” said Popovic, who wants his team to “unbalance opponents and create holes.” Finding ways to score goals, he explained, isn’t all on the strikers.
Asked how his style of play compared to the one used by Dalglish, Popovic said: “I can speak only about myself. What I would like to say to the fans is we would like to play a style that will give pleasure to our players to play and whoever is in the stands. This is not easy, it’s very demanding. It’s a game based on possession. When you want to play like this, you have to have a certain quality of players. That’s why these first two weeks will be very, very important.”
Asked if he would rather win a game 1-0 or 4-3, he said: “I don’t like to concede three goals, but believe me, our intention is to create a style of play that will be fun to watch.”
A year ago, Fury FC won eight times and had 14 draws in 32 games.
Said de Guzman, who took over for Dalglish as both GM and coach for the remainder of the 2017 season: “What went wrong? A lot of things. Expectations weren’t met and people, myself included, were disappointed.”
So far, there are only 16 players listed on the team’s roster. More will soon be on the way.
“We brought in some quality players that can help the team this season,” said de Guzman. “We’ve got a close eye on how we slot maybe one or two trialists in. There will definitely be another couple of signings that we’ll look at in the upcoming week or so. Don’t forget the Montreal players who will eventually join us at some point in the pre-season — that will complete the squad that will range from 24-25 players.”
FALVEY HAPPY TO BE BACK: Colin Falvey said he had several options on the table when he agreed to return to Ottawa, where he helped Fury FC win a Fall Season championship in 2015.
But coming back to Ottawa just made so much sense for the hard-nosed Irish defender.
“I don’t think it would have been possible without (GM) Julian de Guzman,” Falvey said Monday on the team’s first day of training camp at the RA Centre. “He played a huge part in starting the conversation and getting me to think this was the right move. Now that I’m here and I’ve seen the players the club has brought in, I think it’s definitely heading in the right direction. We want to get back to being a successful football club.
“I’m not going to go into names, but there were 4-5 options for me on the table. The big thing was Julian convinced me. And I spoke with (former Fury FC coach) Marc Dos Santos about Nikola (Popovic). This was honestly the most exciting prospect.”
Falvey spent the past two seasons in Indianapolis where he captained Indy Eleven to an undefeated record en route to the 2016 Spring Season Championship, reaching the Soccer Bowl for a second straight year. Falvey led the league in blocked shots in 2017.
“Falvey, to me, has been outstanding in a Fury jersey,” Popovic said. “He carried himself professionally as a leader throughout his tine with Indy and he’s a guy who wants to be here. That’s exactly what we want as part of this organization.”