Atlético Ottawa and the Halifax Wanderers kick off the second half of their 2025 Canadian Premier League campaigns this weekend, as Ottawa hosts the Wanderers at TD Place on Friday.
A battle of first and third in the CPL table, this game could have big implications on the CPL Shield race, too, which remains tightly contested at this halfway stage.
There was almost a big movement at the top of the table last week, but each of the four teams in the race, which also includes second-place Forge and fourth-place Cavalry, all dropped points. In particular, the Wanderers will rue the chance they missed, as they already knew that Ottawa and Forge had dropped points by the time they took on Pacific, but fell 3-2 in a match against their rivals from the opposite coast of Canada.
In hindsight, that meant Ottawa’s draw against Forge in the first game of last matchday has proven to age quite well. Given that they trailed for most of that game, only securing a 1-1 draw after Ballou Tabla converted a penalty in the third minute of second-half stoppage time, that draw will now feel like a point gained after how the rest of the weekend went down, instead of a point lost.
Make no mistake, Ottawa will have wanted to get more than a draw, as their lead in first place remains at just one point ahead of that Forge team, but it’s better to leave with something rather than nothing from some games, especially in a six-point game against a team just below you in the standings.
What that shows, however, is that Ottawa will want to come out strongly in this one, as they look to maintain their advantage atop the table.
“It’s a great opportunity for us to start the second part of the season with a good result,” Ottawa head coach, Diego Mejía, said this week. “It’s very important for us the way that we play, the new patterns that we have.”
“We’ve looked at the past matches, and other teams have tried to defend us differently, more in a low block, so for us it’s really important in these second-round matches to try and apply new patterns and to create new behaviours for the team.”
As for the Wanderers, they’ll feel like the team that lost the most in the top-four race following that Pacific loss. Granted, it isn’t like they lost a whole lot, but they could’ve narrowed the gap between them and Ottawa to two points, which could’ve given them a chance to leapfrog into first place with a victory in this game.
Instead, the best the Wanderers can do this weekend is to jump within two points of Ottawa, but they’d also need Forge to drop points if they were to cut the lead to anything lower than four points.
At the same time, they won’t be too worried about those points - instead, they’ll just want to get back on track and return to their identity as a team, one that has allowed them to remain in a CPL Shield race at this stage. With 14 games to go, and plenty more head-to-head clashes on the docket, there will be lots of chances late on to jostle for league position. At this stage, it’s important to stick to the process and make sure the performances don’t dip, while ensuring that you stay consistent from match to match, and the Wanderers know that - that’s been their secret formula for success this year.
“We can't look at this game any differently,” Wanderers’ head coach, Patrice Gheisar, said this week. “Because if you start to say it’s bigger than it is, or smaller than it is, then your emotions play a factor into it.”
“I think the best thing we've done is take one game at a time, one half at a time, and focus on every game bringing a different opportunity for us. That’s the energy that we've had that's made us successful, and (hopefully) it can be a big part of this game.”
In terms of player availability, both teams noted no new absences from their last match, with the lone change set to come off the field, as Mejia will be unable to roam the touchline as he serves the first of a two-game suspension he earned for yellow card accumulation.
3 THINGS TO WATCH
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Ottawa wants to keep offensive momentum going: It’s remarkable to see it written out, but Ottawa has remained on a torrid offensive pace to begin 2025, as they’ve now scored 31 goals in 14 league games, averaging more than two a match. For context, three teams didn’t even score 31 goals in the entire 2024 regular season, and they remain seven goals ahead of second-place Forge in the goalscoring chart in 2025. Now, of course, the challenge will be to maintain that rate, as they’ve started to slow down a bit lately. To be fair, it’s not as if they’ve come down to earth, say, as they’ve only been held off the scoreboard twice all year, but after scoring three or more goals in five of their first six games, they’ve scored three goals just once in the eight games they’ve played since. Granted, a big reason for that is their improved defensive success, as they haven’t needed to be as dangerous offensively to pick out wins, but this team seems to be at its best when they’re overwhelming teams with their offensive numbers. Because of that, look for them to return to usual offensive service, with the play of David Rodríguez one to watch, in particular - the early CPL MVP frontrunner hasn’t scored since May, generating just one assist in his last five games. Getting him back to the form that saw him find the net six times and assist four others in his first eight games will be a priority for Ottawa as they kick off the second half of the campaign.
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Wanderers' midfield continues to shine: Naturally, a lot of the attention on this Wanderers team has been on their defensive group, who have made some big improvements this year, helping fuel the Wanderers CPL Shield push. Given the brashness with which they’ve defended, that’s not surprising to see them earn most of the attention, but it’s worth noting that there’s another key element fuelling their success - their midfield pivot. As he’s typically done since arriving in the league in 2023, Lorenzo Callegari has led the way in that regard, putting in some excellent performances in midfield, but he’s had support that he’s maybe not had in other years in the form of Isaiah Johnston, who has proven to be a perfect fit alongside him. Both are strong ball-dominant midfielders who do a lot of their best work in possession, but they remain key cogs in the Wanderers’ defensive system, too, tasked with breaking up play and slowing down opponents. Typically, good teams have strong midfield units, and this duo are doing a lot of work to fuel this early Wanderers run on both sides of the ball, often doing the work of three or four players, which helps their team put more numbers on either end of the pitch to support them, a formula that has worked pretty well for all involved.
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Will Wanderers build off last Ottawa performance? Through 14 games, Ottawa has retained a pretty impressive record, as they don’t just sit in first, but have just lost one of those games. Interestingly, however, that one defeat came against none other than these Wanderers, who picked up a massive 2-0 win at home on May 24th off the back of goals from Thomas Meilleur-Giguère and Tiago Coimbra. Of course, heading into this game, that past result doesn’t matter, and might actually fuel Ottawa, but it does give the Wanderers a big psychological lift - it helps to head into a matchup against the first-place team knowing that you’ve been the only team to fully stop them this year. Because of that, look for them to use that victory as a reason to believe they can do it again - and on the flipside, look for Ottawa to use it as fuel for them to get their first victory over the Wanderers, who, along with Forge, are the only two teams Ottawa hasn’t yet beaten this year.
PROJECTED STARTING XIs
Atlético Ottawa: Ingham; Cloutier, Abatneh, Kozlovskiy; Antinoro, Aparicio, Castro, dos Santos; Rodríguez, Tabla; Salter
Halifax Wanderers: Yesli; Pearlman, Meilleur-Giguère, Sow, Timóteo; Callegari, Johnston; Bahamboula, Probo, Rea; Coimbra
ALL-TIME SERIES
Atlético Ottawa wins: 8 || Halifax Wanderers wins: 7 || Draws: 7
Last meeting:
May 24, 2025 — Halifax Wanderers 2-0 Atlético Ottawa
KEY QUOTES
“For sure. If someone told me when I took this opportunity at the beginning of the season that, entering the second half, we were top of the league and playing in the semi-finals of the Canadian Championship, for sure, I would’ve taken that. We are in the place that we want to be in, that we’ve dreamed of in the past. Now, we need to take (advantage of this) opportunity, and try to consolidate the project, because I’ve always said that this team should be fighting for everything.” – Atlético Ottawa head coach Diego Mejía
“We are where I would have assumed we are, we are mentally strong, we’ve built a lot of resiliency. Look at every time we've had a loss or a game that hasn't gone our way, we've been able to bounce back and fix those errors. I’d rather make the mistakes that we make, individually or collectively, now, as that gives us a chance to fix them. (...) We’ll take those learnings and we'll move forward. I do think in the table, maybe we’re a bit higher than expected, because generally for us in the last two years, we've been quite strong at the back end of the table (instead of the start). For this strong start to the season, we worked hard, and it was a great thing to do, but now we want to match our back 14 games from the previous two seasons to compete and see where we can finish by the last game.” – Halifax Wanderers head coach Patrice Gheisar
