PREVIEW: Valour FC vs. Cavalry FC — 2024 Match #111

2024 CPL Regular Season — Match #111Valour FC vs. Cavalry FCOctober 19, 2024 at 3 p.m. CT/2 p.m. MTPrincess Auto Stadium in Winnipeg, ManitobaWatch Live: YouTube & OneSoccer.ca // Tickets available here

On Oct. 19, all four CPL matches in The Outcome! presented by TonyBet will be played simultaneously at 4 p.m. ET/1 p.m. PT, and will each be available to watch for free at YouTube.com/OneSoccer.

Cavalry FC and Valour FC conclude their 2024 Canadian Premier League regular seasons in Winnipeg on Saturday afternoon while in the running for two separate but nonetheless meaningful races.

The hosts Valour will be desperate to secure a victory, with three points providing their only possible path to a first-ever club playoff appearance. Even if they can win, they will need some help in the form of both Pacific FC losing to Forge FC and Vancouver FC failing to beat Atlético Ottawa on Saturday.

For the first time ever, all four matches on the final day of the Canadian Premier League season will be played concurrently as part of The Outcome! presented by TonyBet. Matches can be found live on the OneSoccer YouTube channel, with a special hour-long pre and post-game show available for OneSoccer subscribers.

RELATED: The Outcome! presented by TonyBet: All you need to know about the CPL’s regular season grand finale

Cavalry, meanwhile, are the frontrunners in the race for second place, knowing that a win would clinch the coveted position. Should they fail to win on Saturday, they need Atlético Ottawa to draw or lose against Vancouver FC to stay in second.

“I think it’s going to be good for the fans, I think it’s an exciting matchup because I feel like there’s always a rivalry between both clubs, two teams that respect each other very much and also the fact that you know both teams are playing for something,” said Valour FC head coach Phil Dos Santos.

Should the Cavs finish second, they will travel to Hamilton on Sunday, Oct. 27 to take on Forge FC in the qualifying semifinal. The winner of that advances to, and hosts, the 2024 CPL final. The loser of the qualifying semifinal gets a second opportunity to reach the final as they play, and host, the semifinal against the winner of a match between third vs. the victor of the opening round fourth vs. fifth matchup.

As a result, finishing second would significantly improve Cavalry’s odds of returning to a third CPL Final, and their ultimate goal of lifting the North Star Cup for the first time. It is worth noting that Forge, the team who beat them in last year’s final did finish second in the regular season and ended up parlaying that into hosting and winning the North Star Cup.

A victory for Cavalry would also mean they finish the year with the league’s best away record. They are currently on 22 points away from home, the same amount they collected last season when they topped the CPL table by 13 points.

Valour FC, meanwhile, have never won on the final day of a season in club history, with three losses and two draws. Since the two sides last met on August 30, a 2-2 draw, the Winnipeg club have recorded just one victory in six matches. They have also, however, lost just once, with four of those matches, including this past weekend against Vancouver FC, ending in a 1-1 draw.

Cavalry and Valour also drew at ATCO Field back on May 26, with their other meeting this campaign, and only in Winnipeg, ending in a 1-0 Cavalry victory courtesy of a goal from Fraser Aird.

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Cavalry will be without Tom Field for this match as the extent of his ankle injury suffered in the first half against Halifax last week is still being assessed. However, winger Nicolas Wähling and striker Malcolm Shaw have returned to training and will be available for selection.

Valour go into this match without any changes to their availability. It is worth noting, however, that they still require 76 minutes from U-21 domestic players in order to be playoff-eligible. Incidentally, both of their U-21 minutes leaders in 2024, midfielder Juan Pablo Sánchez and striker Abdul Binate, have scored against Cavalry this season.

All CPL and Canadian Championship matches will be broadcast live on OneSoccer, available as a linear channel on Telus’ Optik TV (Channel 980) as well as online at OneSoccer.ca, through the OneSoccer app and on the fuboTV Canada platform.

3 THINGS TO WATCH

• Cavalry FC get another ‘playoff-like’ test: Cavalry FC have played a fairly significant role in the race for the fifth and final playoff spot in recent weeks. They wrapped up playoff qualification weeks ago, and can finish no lower than third regardless of the results elsewhere this weekend. However, they have also spent the past four matchdays playing against teams in the Canadian Premier League’s bottom four, all of whom have been desperate for wins crucial to making the playoffs. Last weekend, they faced a Halifax side in a must-win match for the Wanderers to keep their postseason hopes alive and defeated them 2-1, the week prior it was a 4-1 victory over Pacific after a 0-0 draw with Vancouver FC. Again, on Saturday they will take on a Valour team who are in desperation must-win mode. All of this has made for some pretty ideal playoff preparation, for when Cavalry will find themselves in do-or-die situations.

• Valour FC’s Hundal, Cavalry’s Warschewski two of the most in-form strikers in the league: Matches of this magnitude require difference-makers, and both Valour and Cavalry have proven they have those in their ranks in recent weeks. In fact, the clubs deploy two of the most lethal strikers in the league of late. For Cavalry, Tobias Warschewski has three goals in his past two matches, and 10 on the season tied for the second most in the league. The German will not only be motivated to get a victory for his side on Saturday, but also to see if he can catch Atlético Ottawa’s Rubén del Campo in the league’s Golden Boot race. For Valour, meanwhile, Shaan Hundal has scored four times, and added a big assist, in the team’s past eight matches. “You need all your best players to be at their best in a game like this,” said Dos Santos. “Sean is a player that we value and that we hope is going to come into the game hungry to provide and help the team win.”

• How Valour plan to approach ‘scoreboard watching’: No team in the CPL needs more to go right for them during The Outcome! than Valour. Not only do they need to win their own match on Saturday, but also to have the results of Pacific FC and Forge at Starlight Stadium and Atlético Ottawa versus Vancouver FC in the nation’s capital go their way. While Valour fans will surely be locked in on all the action, will the team itself be scoreboard-watching? Not so much, says their coach. Their focus will be exclusively on the one result during the season finale that they can control.  “I’ll make sure we don’t have our phones,” said Dos Santos. “It could play one way or the other in the emotions. It is what it is, we have to do our part. We’ll look to win the match, and then we’ll pick up our phones to do the math.”

PROJECTED STARTING XIs

Valour FC: Viscosi; Alarcón, Mourdoukoutas, Facchineri, Antonoglou; Campbell, Sánchez; Kwemi, Ressurreição, Faria; Hundal

Cavalry FC: Carducci; Aird, Klomp, Montgomery, Kamdem; Gutiérrez, Shome; Herdman, Camargo, Musse; Warschewski

ALL-TIME SERIES

Valour FC wins: 3 || Cavalry FC wins: 12 || Draws: 6

Last meeting:

August 30, 2024 — Cavalry FC 2-2 Valour FC 

KEY QUOTES

“We need to get on the field as if we were down in the score, 1-0, right from the beginning… I think that needs to be something that happens from minute one, there’s no holding back. There’s no other way to get it. It’s going to be one of those matches where we need to go in and search for the win and we need to push for it very early.” — Valour FC head coach Phil Dos Santos

“That’s the beauty of having a league table that rewards your positioning in the league. We’re excited now that things are in our hands, but we’re also playing against an opponent that [needs to win]. That makes for a really exciting game.” — Cavalry FC head coach Tommy Wheeldon Jr.