FC Edmonton coach Colin Miller feels this has been the most promising off-season in the club’s history.

Last November, after he’d wrapped up his NCAA season as the No. 1 shot stopped at Florida Gulf Coast University, the Canadian keeper got a call from FC Edmonton goalkeeping coach Darren Woloshen. Ingham learned that the NASL club had a lot of interest in signing the him — but the team had to know ASAP if the feeling was mutual. The Eddies wanted to get their roster sorted sooner rather than later.

Nik Ledgerwood felt the time was right to come back home.

So, it feels like Calgary Foothills, which began PDL play last season, is swimming against the tide, at least when it comes to developmental soccer in Canada.

Soccer officials in the United States are moving to ban heading of the ball in youth soccer. Similar measures have been debated in Canada — but we’ve decided to go with an approach that stresses education over regulation. But, is there hard, peer-reviewed evidence out there that supports the notion that heading the ball leads to brain injuries?

On Monday, NASL announced that Atlanta — which was funded by owners in 2015 — would not return in 2016. Had the owners opted to fund the Silverbacks for another year, the burden would have been especially tough on the Ottawa Fury and FC Edmonton. The Canadian dollar is currently worth just a little over 70 cents US, so the exchange rate on funding an American team would have been brutal.

The Canadian dollar is trading well below 72 cents US. Canadian clubs in MLS and NASL take in most of their revenue in domestic currency, but pay out a lot of expenses in U.S. dollars. But, for NASL teams, the currency gap is widened because they pay out contracts in Canadian dollars. How is our weakening currency changing the soccer landscape?

On Friday, when the Canadian Soccer Association announced the schedule for the 2016 Amway Canadian Championship, there was no mention of network television coverage.

A preseason trip to Europe in no way suggests that Fath is doing anything more but increasing his investment in a team he and his brother, Dave Fath, have lost money on since day one. But, with the dollar slumping to less than 73 cents US on Friday, and it likely to drop even further as the oil price continues to sag, the fact remains that a trip to America has become increasingly expensive, and will likely be even more pricey in the spring of 2016.

“I’ve been with the team for three years. And, through my career I have remained loyal to the people who have been good to me. Colin and FC Edmonton have been good to me, and I want to make the playoffs with FC Edmonton. We haven’t done that in the time I’ve been here, and that’s one of my ambitions."