Ballou Tabla’s late first-half goal from the penalty spot was enough to earn Atletico Ottawa a hard-fought, but deserved victory on the road against Pacific FC on Vancouver Island Saturday.
With the win, Ottawa maintains its position at the summit of the Canadian Premier League with a record of 6-3-1 (21 points) through 10 games. Cavalry FC (5-2–2), Halifax Wanderers (5-2-3), and Forge FC (4-5-0) are all tied for second place on 17 points, although Forge and Cavalry have played one less game.
Ottawa’s sole loss in all competitions in 2025 came away to Halifax, where the Wanderers completely suffocated Ottawa’s potent attack en route to a 2-0 win.
Despite the lone setback, one thing is clear: Head Coach Diego Mejia has revolutionized how Atletico Ottawa plays their football.
And this has manifested in Ottawa’s ability to generate offence and score goals in bunches. Atletico has a massive advantage in the goal difference category.
Through 10 games, Atletico scored 25 goals, 2.5 per match, the highest tally in the league.
The next best team, Cavalry, scored 18 goals (in 9 games), or 2.0 per match. The offensive metrics and the eye test both suggest that Ottawa is currently the best offensive team in the league.
In eight of their 10 matches, Ottawa has scored two or more goals. The only matches where Ottawa didn’t score two or more goals were their 1-0 win away at Pacific FC —a tough place to play— and their shutout loss to Halifax. In five of their 10 games, Ottawa scored at least three goals, an incredibly effective offensive output.
Despite some hiccups along the way, Mejia has transformed the mentality of this squad and has transformed Atletico into an offensive powerhouse with his creative, offensive-focused tactics.
In 2024, under the guidance of Carlos Gonzalez, Ottawa scored 42 goals in 28 matches. They scored two or more goals 11 times in 2024 and three or more goals on five occasions.
In 10 games this year, Atletico scored just shy of 60 percent of their total goals in 2024. Throughout his entire tenure in Ottawa, Gonzalez was very focused on defensive structure, possession, and control. He liked to control the flow of the game, possession, and ensure his players understood their roles, responsibilities, and every small tactical detail was accounted for.
He focused on playing an extremely detail-oriented, compact defensive style of football, where he focused on limiting the quality chances his opponents could create. He didn’t try to outscore his opponent, instead, he focused on playing mistake-free defense to control the game and force his opponents to make more crucial errors than this side.
Apart from an extended stretch in the 2023 season, where Gonzalez’s tactics constantly led to Ottawa squandering late leads or giving up match-winning goals in stoppage time, Gonzalez would be happy to score early and then control possession to see out a 1-0 or 2-1 lead or take a draw with the resolute defensive abilities of all 11 players on the pitch. The only reason he would push forward late to try to find a winning goal was because of their poor start in 2023, which, according to Gonzalez, forced his team to take risks and make sacrifices to catch up on points lost earlier in the campaign.
Mejia has had a vastly different philosophy. He believes that while it’s great to play stellar defense and control possession, that’s less of a concern if you can always outscore your opponents. So far, that ideology has paid off for Ottawa this season.
While Ottawa has conceded 15 goals in 2025, tied with York United for the fourth most in the CPL, they’ve still been able to earn positive results because of their dynamic offence, playmaking, and goal-scoring abilities.
Salter tops Atletico scoring chart
Striker Sam Salter leads the league with a whopping seven goals in 10 matches, and also tallied three assists. His ability to enter dangerous areas and capitalize on the chances he or a teammate creates has worked wonders for Ottawa. One of Mejia’s best moves was to bring in super-star forward David Rodriguez, who leads the league with four assists and also recorded five goals in nine games. His creativity, playmaking, and dribbling skills, combined with his clinical edge, have helped Ottawa immensely this season.
Rodriguez created 15 chances, recorded 11 shots on target, and has five goals and four assists. Salter created 33 chances, registered 18 on target, and has seven goals and three helpers.
That is a stark difference compared to Pacific’s best attackers, who’ve struggled to create quality scoring chances. Emmanuel Montejano created six chances, five shots on target, and only has one goal. Josh Heard has created six chances, three on target, but does not have a single goal contribution. Dario Zanata, the best of the bunch, has created seven chances, five on target, and has registered three goals but no assists.
While the players have not been the most clinical, which is problematic in a competitive league where quality chances can be hard to come by, Pacific FC is facing larger tactical problems, as they haven’t scored a league goal in over four full matches (360 minutes).
Meanwhile, Ottawa’s offence has been free-flowing, consistent, and dangerous. They are top of the league or in the top three in essentially all the important offensive statistics, such as shot attempts, shots on goal, final third entries, passes into the final third, dangerous chances created, and touches in the opponents’ final third and penalty box.
Ottawa leads the league in goals with 25, eight ahead of Cavalry’s 18; however, both sides have a +10 goal difference because Cavalry has only conceded eight goals (three of which against Ottawa). Atletico also leads the league in shots on target with 61, 20 more than second-place Valour; total scoring attempts (shots) with 119, 26 ahead of second-place Halifax; and dangerous chances created with 46.
But after Valour Atletico Ottawa went winless in three games. A draw against Forge FC was followed by a loss to Halifax Wanderers and another draw to Vancouver FC.
But the struggles creating quality chances offensively seemed to vanish against Pacific. Despite the close scoreline, Ottawa controlled the entire match and looked like the better side for 90 minutes. Ottawa moved the ball incredibly effectively, getting players into open areas to create chances, handily won the possession battle 54-46 percent, outshot Pacific 14-7 (4-2 on target), created five big chances to Pacific’s one, and dominated the xG battle 2.28 to 0.54.
If it weren’t for Salter missing the target in the 18th minute following a turnover at midfield by Manny Aparicio, which allowed Salter and Rodriguez to perform a give-and-go in transition, or a Rodriguez chance that was cleared off the line by a defender in the 38th minute, Ottawa could’ve easily won this match 3-0. This was Ottawa’s only win or draw with one goal in 2025.
What this tells us, though, is that when Ottawa’s offence is firing on all cylinders, they are nearly impossible to stop. They are on pace to set a record for most goals by any team in a single CPL season (Pacific scored 47 in 2021 and Forge scored 47 in 2022), and look poised to compete for the league title once again.
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Interestingly, both Pacific and Forge didn’t win the league in those seasons as the highest scorers. That may signal strong defenses win championships, which may be where Gonzalez’s ideology came from –Ottawa only scored 36 goals in their title-winning season in 2022.
That is my only worry with Mejia’s tactics. If teams start to figure out how to solve or limit Ottawa’s explosive offense, they won’t be able to mask any defensive errors they make as easily as they did when they were scoring goals in bunches for fun.
But after their gutsy, resilient 1-0 win away in Langford, BC, it appears Ottawa doesn’t need to score multiple goals in a game to win, they can win with resolute defending —including two elite goal line clearances by young defender Tyr Walker early in the second half— and excellent goalkeeping by Nate Ingham, who made multiple key saves to preserve all three points and Ottawa’s first clean sheet of the campaign. When teams can win in multiple ways, that is the DNA of champions, which is a positive omen for Atletico this season.
