Tucked into Portugal’s Silver Coast is the picturesque seaside fishing town of Nazaré. A perfect ring of sand creates a buffer between the occasionally wave-filled blue water of the Atlantic Ocean and hundreds of white buildings with roofs of various shades of red. Against this breathtaking backdrop, Canadian Premier League side York United have spent the past week preparing for the 2025 season. The location carries a particular significance for the club’s 32-year-old first-year head coach Mauro Eustáquio. Nazaré is where he was born, where he grew up playing for local club Nazarenos, and now where he is spending part of his first pre-season as a professional head coach. “It means a lot,” Eustáquio told CanPL.ca, “coming here for pre-season. Things aligned and it’s meaningful to bring my first professional team [I’ve coached] into my hometown.” While hosting pre-season in Nazaré wasn’t actually York United’s first-choice location, it does seem a bit like destiny. That’s because just about everything the club has done this off-season has been about homecoming. Over the course of the off-season, the Nine Stripes have recruited a significant number of players from throughout the CPL who call Toronto home. Nine of the club’s signings this off-season are from the Toronto area — creating a distinctly local feel for the club’s 2025 roster. This has been a clear goal for the club ever since new owners Game Plan Sports Group took over ahead of last season. “We want to create something for our people,” said Eustáquio. “I feel like I’m part of Toronto now. The ownership obviously feels like they’re part of Toronto now. And we want to make sure that we continue to give opportunities to not only Canadian players, but to Canadian players that are in the Toronto area. Because at the end of the day, we are Toronto. “We want to be close to the community, and there’s no better way than to get all the talented players with us, and continue to provide a good game, a good team, a good atmosphere for the people that are watching us.”
It will be a very different York United team this season. Only nine players have returned from last year’s squad, and gone are 2024 Players’ Player of the Year Brian Wright, club captain Mo Babouli, and 2024 Goalkeeper of the Year nominee Thomas Vincensini. With so many new faces rounding out their squad, not to mention Eustáquio’s first year at the helm, this pre-season becomes vital to creating chemistry and the foundation for their 2025 season. As players spend 24 hours a day together in Nazaré, those bonds are quickly forming. “The first couple of days here in Portugal, I feel like the team’s been together for 10 years,” said Eustáquio. He says the group is immediately clicking off the field. The group greatly enjoyed the time-honoured footballing tradition of making all of the new players sing in front of the team, and there have been a lot of good laughs during down time. The sun and weather have both been helping the players’ moods, and there has been a lot of time spent on the beach between sessions or following dinner. Eustáquio’s intimate knowledge of the area provides opportunity for some special team outings as well — although he would not reveal exactly what those were as they remain a surprise for his players. But even in the scenic location, nobody has lost sight of the fact that what they do on the pitch in Nazaré remains the focus. The Portuguese town is providing several advantages when it comes to those pre-season goals. “Being in Europe, we’re going into a climate that allows us to train two times a day,” says Eustáquio. “The conditions out here, in particular, with the grass fields, with the turf fields, is second to none… and then the competition, we’re playing against teams that are in season already.” As part of the trip, the Nine Stripes will play a friendly against Liga Portugal 2 side Sport Clube União Torreense on Wednesday, March 5. The club is where Eustáquio’s brother Stephen, now a star for the Canadian men’s national team and FC Porto, first broke through into the Portuguese professional ranks back in 2015. “I spent a lot of time there watching my brother’s games,” said Eustáquio. “They’re a club that has been going up in the rankings here the past couple of years. It’ll be a good opposition. “We’re also able to prep that game as a, I call it a real game, with a little bit of scouting, as they’ve been in season. So it’s a good idea of who you’re playing against, and what you can do against them, and it makes it more realistic when it comes to the actual game day with the players.”
York United are coming off a historic 2024 season, where they hosted, and won, a playoff match for the first time in club history. They set a club high in points, with 39, and conceded the fewest goals in a full CPL regular season in club history (36). Asked what his goals are for the coming season, Eustáquio said it is just about building on that momentum. “Just continue to push,” said Eustáquio. “Obviously, we have our internal goals and we want to continue to push for those goals. I’m not someone just to want to be here and walk through things, I want to have an impact. I want these players to have an impact… we want to have a good season, and then that playoff run after that we’ll see what happens.” York United are in Nazaré until Friday, March 7, when they return to Toronto for the final phase of pre-season. That includes multiple behind-closed-doors friendlies, including against Ligue1 Québec side AS Laval, League1 Ontario’s Simcoe County Rovers, and Valour FC. They kick off the 2025 Canadian Premier League season on Sunday, April 6 against Vancouver FC in Langley.