After leading both of Electric City League1 Ontario’s men’s and women’s teams for two seasons, Randy Ribeiro has joined Guelph United FC’s women’s team as its new head coach.
GUFC’s women’s club, formerly known as Guelph Union, named Ribeiro its head coach earlier this month, about a month and a half after he was quietly let go by Peterborough-based Electric City.
“I'm looking forward to working with a new group of players, working within a new environment and a new coaching staff and people that are like-minded and really hungry and committed to bringing success to the club,” Ribeiro said in a video chat. “I'm all for that and that's something that I truly value and so getting to meet the players that played a big part in getting Guelph into the Premier Division, getting to meet them and hopefully provide them with the coaching experience that they're really going to enjoy and a way of playing that we're going to be a team that's going to be difficult to play against and being able to bring some of my experience over and seeing how competitive we can be in 2024.”
GUFC purchased the former Union squad from Guelph Soccer early this year after it looked like the team would fold. With Ivan Joseph at the helm, the team finished 12th in the 19-team league with a 7-8-3 record after compiling a 7-9-3 record the previous season. Joseph stepped down from the head-coaching position for personal reasons, but is to remain with the club.
The performances both seasons gave the United FC women a spot in L1O’s Premier Division for the 2024 season as the league adopts a new promotion-and-relegation structure between three tiers. The Premier Division will be the top division and consist of 10 teams that qualified through their records the past two seasons.
For the Guelph women, staying in the top division will be the first goal.
“It has to be. That's definitely a must,” Ribeiro said. “That being said, we don't want to be playing and fighting just to stay up. That's not going to be our intention. We want to be competitive and we want to push the envelope and continue to get better game to game. We're going to set small targets and goals for ourselves and if we hit those targets along the way, hopefully by the end of the road we're competing for the top of the table and a regular-season championship.”
For Ribeiro, this season might be a little easier coaching for him as he’ll have a single team to concentrate on after being head coach of both the Electric City’s men’s and women’s team for most of the last two years. He was head coach of the women’s teams both seasons, but took over that position with the men’s team five games into the 2022 campaign.
“I don't know if easier is the right word, but I think it's going to be an opportunity to allocate the time to one group which I'm really excited about,” he said. “From the preparation, I guess if you split the work down the middle, it's half the workload per se, but I'm super invested. I want to help this program succeed and build off what's been here. All credit to Ivan and the group that was here the past two years to fight and grind and scrape and finish in a Premier Division spot is something that I tip my hat off to them because that's not easy and they found a way. Now it's about building on that and being better in 2024.”
GUFC women hope to continue a close relationship with the University of Guelph Gryphons program. Gryphon head coach Shayne Campbell was the original head coach when Guelph Union was formed in 2020 and the squad has always had several current and former Gryphons on its roster.
“The Gryphons program has done exceptionally well,” said Ribeiro who was Trent University Excalibur’s head coach this year. His future with Trent is in the negotiating stage. “I'm familiar with some players in that program at the League1 level and I have full intention of getting to know Shayne and I'm excited to chat with him and introduce myself and where I see the women's program going and how he sees the Gryphons women's program going and how can we align the two for the sake of the players and ultimately, can we help both programs be successful. That's going to be the goal.”
Ribeiro hopes to be able to soak up as much soccer knowledge as possible from both Campbell and Gryphons men’s head coach Keith Mason who is GUFC’s director of soccer operations.
“I'm so excited for that and that's something that I haven't had the opportunity to do over the past two years,” Ribeiro said. “We didn't have multiple teams and we didn't have multiple coaches. I was the head coach of both programs which was an experience that I thoroughly enjoyed and was able to learn so much from, but with two coaches like Shayne and Keith with so much experience, I don't know if they'll be upset with me saying this, but maybe they've seen it all already. I want to pick their brains and I want to learn from them. I'm going to continue to be a sponge.”
Ribeiro is also hoping for an increase of high-level women’s soccer in the country, especially at the professional level.
“It's something that I know that Project Eight is striving and working so hard to get it going,” he said. “We've seen the inception of the CPL (Canadian Premier League) on the men's side and it continues to grow and it's still young. I think giving the female players this opportunity to play professionally within Canada, we're going to see a lot of top players stay. We see a lot of the top Canadians now playing abroad and overseas, which is amazing.
“I've had the opportunity to work with players over the past few years that have now gone on and played pro and just to think that if there was the opportunity here in Canada, would those players stay? It's not something that's easily created and we've seen the challenges and difficulties on the men's side with the CPL, but they're finding ways to get it done. I think we need to do better and continue to push the envelope for professional football for women here in our country. That's something that attracted me to the Guelph project as Guelph also wants to push the envelope and play its part in doing that and I'm happy to play my role within that as well.”
On the local front, GUFC operated its women’s program as a single squad this year, mainly due to the lack of time to add more teams before the start of the regular season. They completed the purchase of the Union squad midway through January, just over three months before their season opener.
For 2024, GUFC is to field three women’s teams with the addition of a reserve squad and an under-19 team.
