May 9, 2025...Preview: Pacific FC vs York United FC | CPL Match #22 (from canpl.ca)
PREVIEW: Pacific FC vs. York United FC | CPL Match #22
09/05/2025
Written by: Alexandre Gangue-Ruzic
2025 CPL Regular Season — Match #22
Pacific FC vs. York United FC
May 10 at 5 p.m. PT/8 p.m. ET
Starlight Stadium in Langford, British Columbia
Watch Live: OneSoccer //
For the first time since they met in the 2024 Canadian Premier League playoffs, Pacific FC and York United are getting set
to battle, as they prepare for a crucial regular-season clash at Starlight Stadium on Saturday.
It’ll be a tough game for both sides, who are coming off Canadian Championship matches in midweek, but it’s a crucial
meeting given that both teams enter this match tied for sixth in the CPL table with four points.
Both have been on identical starts to the 2025 campaign - they each won their first match in CPL play: Pacific vs. Valour,
York vs. Vancouver - but then followed up those wins with two losses, a week four draw, and then another loss in week five,
leaving them lower in the table than they’d like to be at this stage.
Where both teams have diverged, however, is in the preliminary round of the Canadian Championship, as York beat Ligue 1 Québec
side FC Laval 5-0 on Tuesday, whereas Pacific fell to Salish Sea Derby rivals Vancouver FC 4-2 on penalties (1-1 in regular
time) later that day. Because of that, it’ll be important that each side finds a way to find the proper emotional response
from those respective results - Pacific will need to regroup after their defeat, whereas York will want to stay grounded
after their lopsided win.
Sticking with Pacific, however, this feels like a pivotal moment in their season. Not only did they fall in Canadian
Championship action, but they saw three key players go down with injuries, too, further adding to their woes.
The last thing they’ll want now is to extend their winless run in CPL play to five games (and to six games in all competitions),
so look for them to dig deep and turn their fortunes around. It won’t be easy, but this is a side that also struggled
with injuries in 2024, so this won’t be anything they’re not familiar with.
“It's difficult,” Pacific’s head coach, James Merriman, offered. “Results are results, it doesn’t matter if we have good
moments or not, at the end of the day, if you don't, you don't win, and you’re not able to build confidence in what we're doing.”
“After the result (vs. Vancouver), we took a day off. With the injuries, it was a heavy night for us; we lost some key
players in our group and teammates for a while, so the guys needed to get away from it. It’s been tough mentally and physically.
There has been a lot of travel the last couple of weeks, so they were able to get away from it for a bit, and come back fresh
and ready to turn the page.”
As for York, they’ll be looking to tidy up little areas in their game, with little details being what’s hurt them most
in CPL play. Having led in four of their five games, they’ve done well to start matches strongly, but have sometimes
struggled to close matches out, something they’ll want to change.
In particular, they’ll want to be tighter at the back, having conceded nine goals, the joint-highest in the CPL. They know
how to score, as they’ve got eight goals, tied for the second-most, so they know that their success will come if they make
it harder for opponents to breach their net.
“It's something that we needed,” York’s head coach, Mauro Eustáquio, said of his team’s midweek win. “We know the way that
we've been playing, and the way that we've been suffering. It’s good to not only get some new goalscorers on the scoresheet,
but also to keep a clean sheet, as that’s been in the making, and that’s something that the team needed to push hard
at and continue to work on.”
Otherwise, in terms of player availability, Pacific will be without Sean Young, Ronan Kratt and Juan Quintana, who were
the three players who sustained injuries in midweek, while Daniel de Pauli remains a doubt. Meanwhile, York doesn’t appear
to have any absences to note, as they welcomed back Frank Sturing against Laval, and look set to have Elijah Adekugbe
available after he missed the last few games.
3 THINGS TO WATCH
Pacific remains in a battle for more consistency: Given Pacific’s run of form, it’ll be easy to suggest that they just need to hit
the reset button as a team and start to consider some new ideas. Yet, that wouldn’t be fair to the process they’ve gone through
as a team, as they’ve shown signs of being on the right track. For example, Pacific put in an excellent first-half performance
last weekend against Atlético Ottawa, but then weren’t able to sustain it, as they saw an early 1-0 lead turn into a 3-1 defeat.
On another day, they’ll have hoped to get a win for that performance, as they missed some chances to go up 2-0, which would’ve
given them a chance of finding a result, but instead they allowed Ottawa to stick around long enough to find their feet. On the
flipside, Pacific will feel that they started too slowly against Vancouver in midweek, which put them behind by halftime, forcing
them to find a second-half response. Now, their big challenge will be to come out strongly and maintain that level of play
throughout 90 minutes against York. Overall, Pacific’s start to the season hasn’t been bad on the balance of things, but they
continue to struggle to manage moments, which is why their big goal this weekend is to be consistent - they do that, and they
feel the rest will fall into place. “I think (we need to be) more consistent,” Merriman said. “When we're all together in our
press, we make it very difficult for teams, and I think we've been improving in our build-up play and taking care of the ball
in possession.”
Can anyone stop Altobelli? Every time Julian Altobelli takes the field for York, he seems to score, as he now has five goals
in five CPL games. The first player to score that many goals after the first five games of a CPL season, he’d love nothing more
now than to keep up that run of form, especially after scoring another big goal in midweek, with his goal against FC Laval proving
to be York’s winner in that match. As seen in that latest goal, too, which was very well taken, he’s a confident player right
now - only someone in that kind of form can take down the ball, turn and score the way he did. Clearly, he appears to be the
solution for York up front, which was a question they had heading into the year after the departure of Brian Wright - now that’s
been established, it’ll be up to York to continue and find ways to provide him service. Altobelli is showing an impressive amount
of variety in his goalscoring abilities, as he’s scored with his head, with his feet and from the penalty spot, so his teammates
know that as long as he gets the ball in the right areas of the field, he can produce more moments of magic. “He shows up every
day wanting to be better,” Eustáquio said of Altobelli. “He pushes his teammates, as well, and that’s why his success is what
it is.”
Will Pacific keep York’s wing backs at bay? While Altobelli has been the key leader of York’s attack, another big story has been
the proficiency of their wing backs, as Riley Ferrazzo has two goals in CPL action already, while Max Ferrarri has one goal
and one assist in all competitions. Along with the assist that Orlando Botello picked up while filling in for Ferrazzo vs. Laval,
it shows that York’s system prioritizes getting their wing backs as involved as possible, which is paying off in terms of goal
contributions. Now, however, it’ll be interesting to see what they can do in this game, as they make their first visit to the
notoriously narrow Starlight Stadium pitch, which can make it tough for wide players to get involved. For Pacific, they know
that it can be an advantage for them, especially against a team as aggressive in wide areas as York are. Because of that,
look for them to try and pin York’s wing backs deep in their half, while trying to create some chances in the spaces they
can leave behind them. Often when speaking about the difficulty of playing on the road, travel is a big factor, one that
York will have to deal with after making the long trek from Toronto to Vancouver Island, but details such as the size and
condition of a pitch can play a big one, and it looks like York might have to deal with a tactical adjustment in this one.
PROJECTED STARTING XIs
Pacific FC: Anchor; Chung, Machado, Ndom, Lajeunesse; Keshavarz, Browning Lagerfeldt; Bustos, Daniels, Zanatta; Heard
York United FC: Urtiaga; Singh, Sturing, Léon; Ferrarri, Yeates, Kibato, Ferrazzo; Reid, Ferrin; Altobelli
ALL-TIME SERIES
Pacific wins: 9 || York United wins: 8 || Draws: 7
Last meeting:
Oct. 23, 2024 — York United 2-0 Pacific FC
KEY QUOTES
"We need to use our pitch, we need to use our home field (advantage), when we're at our best, we're on the front foot,
and we're very good in our pressing and taking options away and attacking those (dangerous) spaces. So that's what
we need to do, we work on this (constantly), we’ll focus on that again today, and we'll be ready to come out tomorrow."
— Pacific FC head coach James Merriman
"We want to make sure that we don't turn off in certain moments of the game. We've been hurt at times due to a lack
of concentration on set pieces and throw-ins, and that's something that I say is an easy fix. We are a team that will
create chances, and we are a team that will bury them, but if we're good both on and off the ball, I think we're that
much closer to being a stronger team, so our focus is to do what we're doing on the ball, but then off the ball making
a couple of adjustments so that we can keep (more) clean sheets." — York United FC head coach Mauro Eustáquio
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