Having retained most of their squad from their title-winning campaign last season, Cavalry FC look confident to kick off the 2025 Canadian Premier League (CPL) season with a bang.
The Cavs begin their 2025 campaign with a trip to Hamilton, Ontario, to face arch-rivals Forge FC at Tim Hortons Field on April 5.
The teams last met in the 2024 CPL final, when the Calgary-based team won 2-1 to lift their first-ever North Star Cup—having been unsuccessful in their previous two attempts against the same foe.
The gritty win in front of their home crowd at the sold-out ATCO Field meant that the Cavs finished the postseason as champions for the first time in their history.
Klomp departs, Warschewski returns
Ten of the 11 starters from the 2024 final are back for the new season, providing head coach Tommy Wheeldon Jr. a solid foundation to build his 2025 season upon.
The only player missing is Dutch defender Daan Klomp – the two-time reigning ‘CPL Defender of the Year’ award winner – who decided to leave the club after four seasons following the expiration of his contract.
But while their defence will need to cope without Klomp in 2025, Cavalry FC’s attack looks just as potent as it was last season, with the club managing to retain the goal-scoring talents of Tobias Warschewski.
The German forward scored 15 goals in 31 matches in all competitions on his way to the 2024 CPL Golden Boot. And the 27-year-old has already opened his 2025 account with a goal in the Concacaf Champions Cup in February.
Is a coveted ‘double’ on the cards for Cavalry FC?
One of the advantages of retaining the same set of title-winning players in a new season is that the team is already familiar with the tactics and strategies of manager Tommy Wheeldon Jr. It’s now all about implementing and executing them to perfection.
“We can use what we have from last year as a base, then add tactical nuances. What I’ve learned is every year, every team and every coach adds something different, and the league is better,” said Wheeldon Jr. via a club statement.
- Read: Davies Drama: Bayern Munich threaten to sue Canada Soccer for ‘gross negligence’
- Photo gallery: Toronto FC and Vancouver Whitecaps draw in Major League Soccer
Perhaps some of those ‘tactical nuances’ can inspire Cavalry FC to achieve something no other CPL team has done before – winning the ‘double’ by lifting both the North Star Cup and the CPL Shield. It’s going to be very challenging, though, as Wheeldon Jr suggests.
“It’s more difficult to go from corner to corner of this big country and play everybody four times, I’ll always stand by that. Both are big trophies to lift, and worthy trophies to win, but no club has won both.”
But the Cavs have the potential to pull off such an unprecedented feat. Especially because they’ve had a solid start to 2025 by already bagging a “first-ever-to-do-so” stat.
Cavalry FC season began in February
In February, the club became the first CPL team to defeat a Mexican side, beating Liga MX’s Pumas UNAM in the Concacaf Champions Cup first leg match.
And if that wasn’t enough, they have momentum on their side.
This season marks the first time in Cavalry FC’s history that they begin a new season having won the final match of the previous season.
The Cavs came close last season to lifting the CPL Shield, the regular season champion’s trophy, losing out by just two points to Forge FC. But this time around it might just be a different story.
