Ever since it launched in 2019, the Canadian Premier League has shuffled along earnestly on the margins of the more established professional sports in this country, trying to break through by generating a slice of soccer magic that might make non-fans take notice.
Last Sunday, the gods finally smiled on the league, dumping a record snowfall on the National Capital Region and turning TD Place, home of this year’s CPL final, into a sparkling snow globe that made for wild TV.
When David Rodríguez, a striker with Atlético Ottawa, executed a stunning bicycle kick in the 40th minute of the game against Cavalry FC amid what seemed like blizzard conditions, the moment rocketed across social media, landing on millions of screens around the world and instantly giving the CPL an iconic calling card.
Behind the scenes, as interviews this week with key figures revealed, the action was chaotic and fraught, with a frozen broadcast booth, a screaming match in the tunnel between players and league personnel, and cold-blooded opportunism behind the push to keep playing even as on-field conditions deteriorated.
Here, for the first time, is an oral history of the CPL Snowball final, Canada’s newest Heritage Moment come to life.
One week before the game, a small team at CPL HQ in Toronto began to draw up a comprehensive weather contingency plan. By Wednesday, they’d enlisted two snowplows, up to 30 shovellers, four staff equipped with leaf blowers for lighter snow and a meteorologist on standby.
When the Canadian streaming service OneSoccer went live at 4 p.m. on Sunday with its pregame show, the first shot from inside the stadium was of someone clearing a line on the field with a leaf blower. “Mother Nature has come out to play,” declared host Andi Petrillo.
Atlético Ottawa's goalkeeper Nathan Ingham carries a snow shovel during a break in play as officials work to clean soccer pitch lines during the first half of the CPL final.Spencer Colby/The Canadian Press
Nate Ingham, Atlético Ottawa goalkeeper: You get nervous coming into these games. This was a big one. But when I got out there for warm-up and in those conditions, I felt zero pressure. I was like: ‘This is just chaos. It’s like we’re playing at recess.’ It’s almost like, people will be shocked if a goalie doesn’t make a mistake today. So that was, like, ‘Oh, I don’t have to be perfect today. I just got to keep the ball out of the net.’
Adam Jenkins, lead play-by-play announcer for OneSoccer: I was in the broadcast suite up on the fourth floor. For whatever reason, they had the in-house cameras for the stadium video board and all of our wireless microphones and the transmission technologies all connected [by cables into the stands], so all of the windows in the booth were wide open.
Kickoff was delayed until 5:20 p.m. because snowplowing ran longer than expected. Officials opted to use an orange game ball, for better visibility.
Jenkins: The winds were very unkind to us and they were definitely blowing a lot of snow in the room and into our eyes. We have monitors, they were under snow the whole game. When we were able to dig them out and wipe them off with a glove or a towel – well, now there were wet streaks on them.
Ingham: It was just this recipe for ‘Can’t take your eyes off the TV’: It’s comical, it’s interesting, it’s engaging. In the stadium, it was unlike anything I’ve ever experienced, because the conditions almost made it impossible to be on your phone. It just felt like everyone was locked in on every moment.
Cavalry FC scored first, on a penalty kick by Fraser Aird in the 33rd minute. Seven minutes later, a chaotic jumble off a corner kick found Rodriguez in the box for a balletic bicycle kick that sent a bullet into the top-right corner of the net.
Jenkins: I was trying to stay away from calling names. I didn’t know who scored the goal. In a moment with that gravity, if you’re wrong, you get stuck with it. So you stay generic, and once you see who they’re mobbing and we get the monitors dug out of the snow and Jon [Conway, the colour analyst] had a few seconds to watch the replays roll, he’s able to pick up right away that it was Rodriguez, and we just kind of go from there.
Laura Armstrong, senior director of communications, CPL: I don’t know we knew in the moment how good a goal it was. Once you saw the broadcast and the replay – and then we also got a really phenomenal shot of it on one of our internal cameras, the content team shot something – that was when we kind of realized, Oh, this is an incredible piece of skill.
OneSoccer says the snowy Nov. 9 CPL final between Atlético Ottawa and Calgary has topped a billion views, powered by David Rodríguez’s viral 'icicle kick.'
The Canadian Press
Officials stopped the game twice in the first half to shovel out the lines. The pauses in play gave the league’s social-media team more time to pump out clips of the bicycle kick, sending DMs to big soccer and sports social-media accounts.
Costa Smyrniotis, executive vice-president of soccer, CPL: The snow really started to intensify around the 65th to 70th minute. I remember saying, ‘Guys, we just need to get through the next 20 minutes.’ We just had to improvise.
The maintenance crew began to blow and sweep the field wherever the play wasn’t taking place, like the NBA does. But continuing the play in those conditions held some real risks.
Jenkins: If somebody got hurt sliding in snow, planting in the wings where all the snow would be blown and busted something, or got seriously hurt – I even said to some of my bosses after the fact that I felt a little bit like we were betting the goodwill and reputation that we have built for seven years on this working out. I trusted the people who made the decision to do it, and obviously the coaches and players had a voice, but I said this could go really poorly. We’re fortunate that it went the opposite way.
Cavalry FC's Mihail Gherasimencov is issued a yellow card during second half.Spencer Colby/The Canadian Press
Officials paused the game three times in the second half to shovel out lines. The game was tied 1-1 after 90 minutes. The league elected to pause for an hour to fully plow the field.
Smyrniotis: There was this little ad hoc, almost black-ops team that were working the social-media channels in the tunnel, and in the second half they started realizing that everybody’s paying attention to this game – globally, not just in Canada. And the lights went on and it was like, ‘Okay, we have something there.’ All of a sudden you’re looking at it from a league perspective. Of course: player safety, the integrity of the game [were important]. But at the same time, you’re looking at it and you’re like, ‘Could this be the opportunity for us to reach a lot more people, tell the stories of our players and our final and our personalities and our stars?’
Some of the players were not pleased.
Atlético Ottawa fans brave the cold and snow to support their team in the CPL final.Spencer Colby/The Canadian Press
Ingham: When we found out how long the break was going to be, myself and one of the older guys, we were pretty pissed off. We were like, ‘You’ve got all these fans here, don’t make them wait an hour!’ So I’m kind of screaming at Costa in the tunnel. Like, ‘Just send it to pens [penalty kicks]! Just give the fans a show!’
Smyrniotis: There was heat in the corridor. Imagine all these – call them warriors – on the field, who are giving everything they can for a final. The passion and the adrenalin and the determination of these guys. So, I think Nate was just being Nate. I just stood there and I just let him go. And when he finished, I kind of gave him a nod.
Extra time kicked off at 8:31 p.m. ET. The snow had all but stopped. The teams traded a handful of frantic goal-line chances until Rodriguez stuck a dagger in Cavalry with a slick chip-in in the 107th minute, giving Atlético its first North Star Cup.
On Thursday, OneSoccer said clips had generated one billion views online.
Smyrniotis: I’m at a World Leagues Association forum this week, which is a collection of 50-plus global leagues, along with members of FIFA, and every time I got introduced to somebody new here, the reaction was, ‘You’re with the league from that game’ – and everybody wanted to talk about it. That’s never happened before. I’ve always had to start the conversation off: ‘CPL, Canadian Premier League’ – Who we are, what we do.’ They’d say, ‘Everybody in our country knows all about this game. Tell us how you play all your games in the snow and ice.’ So you have to explain that’s not the fact. But you know what? For one time, the typical Canadian stereotype kind of worked.