CSL PLAYERS SEE ACTION ABROAD

PICTURE: Former FC Vorkuta player Fadi Salback (left) during recent game in Ukraine.  Photo: New Canadian Media

While there is a new season upcoming in the Canadian Soccer League with a kickoff expected  during the last two weeks of May,  there is still considerable activity taking place overseas where several CSL players have been in action during the winter months.

Fadi Salback continues to attract attention in Ukraine where the former FC Vorkuta forward has played 10 games with six goals for FC Podillava Khmelnytskyi, a performance that brings increasing media coverage while the  FC Vorkuta find from Bowmanville, Ontario is the only foreign player on the Ukrainian team’s line-up. A front page story in New Canadian Media, a publication subtitled The Pulse of Immigrant Canada, details Fadi Salback coming to Canada with his family from Haifa, Israel, his success in the CSL with FC Vorkuta and the club’s part ‘in making the connection’ with FC Podillava Khmelnytskyi, bringing to reality and fulfilling as the publication says those early years of ‘dreaming of one day becoming a professional player’.

FC Podillava Khmelnytskyi has won four of its last five games for third spot of 13 teams in the Ukrainian league and bidding for the league title, and Salback has played an important part in this.

There’s not a single day that he wakes up and doesn’t want to play, Salback told New Canadian Media over a Zoom interview. 

Clayton Brown, a promising midfielder, is another Canadian that FC Vorkuta has placed in Ukraine for trials. He was impressive when scoring a hat-trick there in a game on March 6.

Brown, former player at the University of Wisconsin and a junior at Florida Atlantic University, was attached to the Thornhill Soccer Club being transferred to Vorkuta when the CSL club recommended the overseas opportunity. A Ukraine signing is expected.

 Meanwhile, goalkeeper John Trye who signed for Serbian White Eagles from Scarborough recently and was selected by Sierra Leone to join that country’s national team in Africa, has not seen action yet since the African Nations Cup qualifier with Benin scheduled for Tuesday, April 6, was postponed after five Benin players were tested positive of COVID-19. No Sierra Leone players are affected.