Wolves raring to go
The Club Roma Wolves women’s team will play their first game in the L1O Women’s Premier Division Monday at North Mississauga. Photos by: G3 DESIGNS.
It’s been a hectic several weeks for the soccer brass at Club Roma.
Technical director Davide Massafra, men’s head coach Federico Turriziani, women’s lead assistant Luciano Ianiero and director of operations Carmine Provenzano have been working overtime with tryouts and selecting this year’s men’s and women’s teams.
“It’s a ton of work that nobody sees, but that’s good,” Provenzano said. “If we can make it look easy then we’re doing our job right but it’s been busy for the last few weeks for sure.”
The fruits of that labour will begin to be seen tonight when the Wolves begin their League1 Ontario men’s schedule with a game in Mississauga.
The women’s team, which will participate in the L1O Women’s Premier Division, visit the North Mississauga Soccer Club Monday for their inaugural game.
Provenzano said the men’s team have kept 25 players on their roster while the women’s team sits at 24 and the U21 team at 20.
“There were some tough decisions,” he said. “Last year was easier because we got an influx of like 100 players so it was easy to find the players that weren’t at the level and then knowing the players that were at the level, so then the in-between was kind of easier. This year, everything was kind of tighter so the bottom wasn’t distinctly bad so the decision making process was difficult.
“We really had to keep close eyes on everybody. That’s why we still have a few extra players in camp.”
On the men’s side, Provenzano reports the entire roster from last year have returned while the women’s team is expected to be a young, speedy squad made up of almost entirely local players.
“We’re real excited about the women’s team to get them out there,” Provenzano said. “We’ll have a lot of offensive punch. It could be trying because maybe they aren’t used to this level.”
The men’s team had a successful first season and hope to build on that this time around.
“We’d like to hopefully finish mid-table,” Provenzano said. “That would be a goal. Of course we want to compete all the time but we know we’re going to run into some tough games. That’s no reflection on anything other than we’re a young team and we’re always going to be a young team.
“I think we’re going in blind again because they are a lot more teams. There are a lot of older players on other teams so we’re being very tentative and walking gingerly on how we’re going to do.”
Provenzano said the biggest lesson learned last season was the importance of preparation.
“We were starting to understand that as the season ended,” he said. “You have to prep and be ready to go in these games. We found last year a few times we were down 1-0 15 minutes into the game. That’s the preparation part of it. That’s the biggest life lesson we learned last year.
“We felt so frustrated dropping points last year. We felt we could have won every game. We don’t want to be in that position this year. Games we should win, we want to win. Games that we know are going to be tough, we still want to win, but we understand.”
The men play their first five games on the road before their home opener Friday, May 20 versus the Woodbridge Strikers at 8:45 p.m.
The women have their first seven games on the road. Their home opener is Friday, June 3 versus Waterloo.
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