The Canadian Premier League announced on Friday that Halifax Wanderers midfielder Lorenzo Callegari has been nominated for the CPL’s Player of the Year award.
Callegari, 25, took no time to adjust to a new league after signing with the Wanderers in January 2023. A product of Paris Saint Germain’s youth system, Callegari quickly showed his quality, bossing the middle of the field for the Wanderers in a season that would see the side set franchise records in wins, points, goals scored, goal differential, goals conceded and total passes, and finish third in the CPL standings.
Going forward, Callegari led the league with 1,949 passes and 2,344 touches, picking up six assists from where he sat in front of Halifax’s defence. That assist total is a single-season Wanderers record and matches the club record for career assists. He won possession a league-high 224 times and finished among the league leaders with 42 tackles won and 34 interceptions. Callegari earned seven Gatorade CPL Team of the Week nods in 2023.
🚨GOAL⚓️⚓️
What a ball from Lorenzo Callegari🔥
He finds Jordan Perruzza with a perfect pass over the top, and he makes no mistake on the premium service to make it 2-1 for @HFXWanderersFC over Ottawa
🔴https://t.co/7JFAUhgjL6 pic.twitter.com/chOcqNxV4Z
— OneSoccer (@onesoccer) September 18, 2023
The other nominees for the award are Manny Aparicio (Pacific FC), Forge FC’s Kyle Bekker (Forge FC), Daan Klomp (Cavalry FC) and Ali Musse (Cavalry FC).
The winner will be decided through voting by CPL club technical leadership and select media members representing local and national outlets who consistently covered the 2023 CPL regular season. The winner will be revealed at an in-person ceremony in Hamilton, Ont. on Thursday, Oct. 26, as part of the CPL Final weekend festivities.
The winner of the Player of the Year award will receive a unique piece of Inuit soapstone art, carved by artist Pitseolak Qimirpik. The Nikisuittuq statue is a type of inukshuk, a stone landmark built to lead a traveller home. Its top stone points toward the North Star, making it an important landmark in navigation.
The 2023 CPL Awards ceremony will be broadcast live on dedicated soccer channel OneSoccer, available as a linear channel on Optik TV (Ch. 980), the pay-TV service operated by Telus, one of Canada’s “big three” telecoms companies, as well as on streaming service fuboTV Canada. OneSoccer is also offered as an affordable streaming service through the OneSoccer.ca website, via Roku, Chromecast and Apple TV devices and with the OneSoccer app for iOS and Android devices.