Valour spoil Martin Nash's Vancouver FC debut with clinical 3-1 win | MATCH ANALYSIS

Match in a minute or less

Valour FC have kicked off the second half of their campaign with a crucial victory, as they defeated Vancouver FC 3-1 at Willoughby Community Park on Friday.

They found the back of the net quite early in this one, too, as Kianz Froese snuck in behind Vancouver's defence and slotted home to make it 1-0 after just three minutes, but Vancouver did well to respond with an equalizer via Thierno Bah in the 29th minute.

Despite that Vancouver response, Valour did well to regain their lead in the 66th minute on a set-piece goal from Gianfranco Facchineri, and then sealed their win with a Kris Twardek goal in the 73rd minute, denying Vancouver a victory on the debut of their new interim manager, Martin Nash, who was brought in earlier this week to lead this side going forward.

Three Observations

Valour finally show ruthless edge at both ends of pitch:

Too often, Valour has left matches lamenting how they managed certain moments across the 90 minutes, which have cost them points even in good performances, hence their position near the bottom of the table.

Heck, they dealt with that familiar feeling of missed opportunity just a week prior, as they fell 2-1 to Cavalry despite putting in a solid performance against the 2024 North Star Cup winners, falling on a late goal on the day.

Ultimately, their struggles this season have been a story of concentration and consistency, which are crucial to maintain throughout a long season, as top teams will usually attest to.

In this game, Valour were made to work against a new-look Vancouver side, one that got on the ball a lot and pressed them defensively, but Valour did well to respond to that task and put in a clinical performance in the face of that. Despite holding just 31.9% of possession, Valour did well to defend their goal and were clinical with their opportunities at the other end, allowing them to pick up a crucial result.

To that point, sticking with the defensive side of their game, Valour kept Vancouver to 1.08 xG despite all of the defending that they had to do, as Vancouver were only able to generate around 0.07 xG per shot from 14 attempts, with none of their shots clocking in higher than 0.187. Given that Vancouver had 22 more final third entries and twice the number of touches in Valour's box (25-12), Valour kept them away from the areas where they could make them pay.

Then, when they got the ball, they punished them at the other end, as despite just generating 1.15 xG of their own on 12 shots, they turned three of their five best xG chances into goals - Vancouver, meanwhile, were only able to score their sixth-best xG chance, squandering their five best attempts towards goal.

On a day when shot quality was low for both teams, Valour made the most of their opportunities and made it hard for Vancouver to convert theirs. It's simple to write out, but it's been something that Valour have struggled to do regularly in 2025, so they'll be pleased to see it play out the way they did, given how important this victory was to them.

Now, the big challenge for Valour will be to build on this, as they have so far followed up each of their previous two league victories with losses - falling by a combined score of 7-0 in those matches. It won't be easy for them to change that in their next match, which comes against Cavalry, but that further highlights why they'll want to build on this game when considering the scale of that challenge.

"At the end of the first half, we were able to hold on when they were applying a lot of pressure," Froese said afterwards. "Then, once we were able to get to halftime, we came out (strong) in the second half and the goals came, so we had a positive outcome."

Nash's debut brings encouraging signs for Vancouver:

It's safe to say that Martin Nash's Vancouver FC coaching debut didn't start as planned. After just three minutes, a routine long ball over the top troubled his defence, leading them to concede a goal they'll have wanted back.

For a team at the bottom of the table, it was a nightmare start to a crucial six-point match against a rival, putting them on the back foot early as they dealt with an unfortunate 'déjà vú' error that they've seen too many times this year.

Despite that, however, they didn't let that get them down. Instead, they looked to find their feet and tried to show off what their coach promised they'd bring to the table going forward - an aggressive, front-footed approach.

To their credit, they stuck to that philosophy even after that early goal, too, as they hunted down Valour with their press and pushed up the pace offensively, believing that it was their best route to get back into the match.

Thanks to that, they were able to put together one of their best halves of the season, one that saw them respond with a goal and several dangerous chances. If anything, that goal undersold their attacking effort, too, as they missed two big chances and hit the woodwork twice amid their first-half flurry.

Then, anytime they were without the ball, they did well to win it back rather quickly. They weren't perfect, as Valour caught Vancouver out on a few moments where it was clear they were showing some teething issues, but they mostly kept those to a minimum early.

"I thought we had a very good first half, bar the first five minutes," Nash simply put it afterwards.

Unfortunately for Vancouver, their big challenge proved to be maintaining that fast start, as can often be the difficult thing to do when employing a tiring style of play. Especially for a team that was trying out this system for the first time, it was never going to be easy to keep the tempo high as the game went on.

As a result, those tired legs started to show up after an hour of play, which helps explain how Valour found goals in the 66th and 73rd minutes. By then, Vancouver showed signs of hitting survival mode, and that led to some sloppy mistakes, such as the ones they made on each goal, which both seemed to originate from moments of fatigue.

In a sense, though, Vancouver's hot start but quiet finish perfectly symbolizes the path ahead for Nash. The ideas he wants to put in place seem to be a natural fit for this group and could be what they need to push to another level, but they won't be assimilated overnight.

For example, a big challenge for Vancouver won't be the tactics, which they seemed to grasp quite quickly, but their fitness, as they'll need to prove that they can maintain this style of play over 90 minutes instead of lasting just an hour.

Otherwise, they seemed to embrace their new identity quite quickly, which isn't always easy to do, so they've got the hard part seemingly down pat early on.

Of course, it's worth noting that it's just one game, and it's not unfamiliar for teams to experience a new coach bounce. The challenge for coaches in this situation isn't to get a response, but to keep it going down the road.

Therefore, while Nash will be pleased that his group showed that response in his debut, he'll now turn his focus to the path ahead, as he takes what his team showed and builds on it ahead of their next few matches - the goal going forward will be to show that they're willing and able to keep building an identity around this new style of play going forward.

"You can't win a game off 30, 40 minutes, right?" Bah said after the match. "The game is 90 minutes, so if you're doing well for less than half the game, that's not going to be good, right? It's a learning point, and we'll see again next match how we can do, maybe the guys will have a bit more in their legs to go for maybe 70 minutes; (certainly), I'll challenge some of the guys this week to go for that 70 minutes full press, and we'll build off that."

Variety in attack key to Valour's goals:

It's been a good stretch for Valour offensively, who have now found the net in five straight matches across all competitions, scoring eight goals - safe to say it's been an improvement on the five games before that, where they scored just three goals and were shut out in four of those games (the other was a three-goal outburst against this same Vancouver side).

Of course, it's easy to point out that the three goals they scored in this game came against a Vancouver side that has struggled with consistency at the back, now up to 33 goals conceded in 16 games, but they'll be pleased with the manner of the goals much more than the opponent they came against and anything else of the sort.

In particular, the first and third goals stand out, as they came from two things they said afterwards that they want to do more of.

On the first goal, they did well to drag Vancouver out of position with some quick combination play before playing a probing long ball, doing well to open up space. That's key, as Valour have felt that sometimes they've been guilty of being too slow to recognize moments where they can play quickly to unsettle an opposing defensive line, making them predictable to defend.

Then, on the second marker, they did well to load the box with numbers and create an overload at the back post, which increased their odds of getting on the end of a cross. Instead of whipping the ball in and hoping someone got the end of it, they sent it to an area where they had a numerical advantage, and that allowed them to generate a good chance.

You combine that they also added a set-piece goal, and that'll give them three different markers to look back on and analyze when they review the film of this game, which they won't mind doing.

Certainly, for a team that has scored just 16 goals in 15 games, with six of them coming in their three matches against Vancouver, they'll hope this recent stretch is a sign that they're turning the corner offensively.

They've been able to deploy a bit of a different look in attack now that they've integrated Kianz Froese as an attacking midfielder, as he's building chemistry with the likes of Kris Twardek and Myles Morgan out wide, which has then allowed them to feed their strikers (Jevontae Layne in this game and Kian Williams in others) more regularly, while also helping create more chances for themselves.

Because of that, if they can keep generating these chances and perhaps build on what they showed defensively in this game, that's huge, as it'll help them find the balance they've sometimes lacked in their game. Certainly, with how they attacked and defended in this game, that balance was there in this one, and that led to the victory, one that was sparked by the work they did up front.

"When you pass a message and the players respond to that, they see that and go, hey, wait a second, we were able to get our goals out of things that have been brought to our attention," Valour FC head coach, Philip Dos Santos, said afterwards of his team's offensive play. "It also gives a bit of reason and purpose to what we do, and the players start believing in that."

What They Said

"I'm still gonna look back and see moments where we needed to have dealt with this better and manage that better, there are moments where we still looked a little bit fragile in conceding opportunities out of nothing, but again, it's better to work on those situations when you still get three points and you get a bit of a boost in confidence, especially when you know you won't have a lot of time to work because the next game is right around the corner." -- Valour FC head coach Philip Dos Santos

"We've been building over the last few weeks. Last weekend, we were unlucky, but we carried that enthusiasm and that performance to finally get the three points that we wanted, so now we're happy. I think we're gonna enjoy the three points and take it day by day (from here), that's most important." -- Valour FC attacker Kianz Froese.

"If we can play 90 minutes well, we'll be in a good place. I thought we played 60 minutes well today, and if you only play 60 minutes, well, your chances of winning are slim. So we've quite a bit of work to do. But I like the spirit of the group, they're good guys, they're gonna work hard, they're gonna keep fighting, so we're just gonna get after it this week in training to help us improve" -- Vancouver FC interim head coach Martin Nash.

CanPL.ca Player of the Match

Kianz Froese, Valour FC

Froese opened the scoring in this game and then kept going from there, as he finished with three shots, one chance created, four touches in Vancouver's box, one dribble, three passes into the final third, four recoveries, two fouls won and three out of eight successful duels in a lively performance.

What’s next?

Vancouver will head out on the road for their next league match, as they'll travel across the country to take on the Halifax Wanderers at Wanderers Grounds on Monday, August 4th (12:00 p.m. PT/4:00 p.m. AT). Meanwhile, Valour will return home for a midweek clash vs. Cavalry FC at Princess Auto Stadium on Tuesday, July 29th (6:00 p.m. MT/7:00 p.m. CT), before heading out for a clash against Forge FC at Hamilton Stadium on Saturday, August 2nd (6:00 p.m. CT/7:00 p.m. ET), as they tackle a busy week of CPL action.

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