Cyle Larin got off to a dream start with Southampton, while Olivia Smith inflicted a rare loss on Manchester City and Junior Hoilett showed his quality in his Swindon Town debut. Here’s a look at Canadians in Europe this past weekend.
Cyle Larin, Southampton
On paper, Cyle Larin’s loan move to Southampton from Mallorca seems like a perfect fit in which both parties get something each desperately needs. For Larin, it’s a fresh start in the Championship where the 30-year-old Brampton, Ont. native can get game time as his hold on a spot on Jesse Marsch’s World Cup squad grows more and more tenuous. The move follows what was largely an unproductive loan to Feyenoord for the first half of the season.
As for Saints, a return to the Premier League after only a one-year stop in England’s second tier remains a possibility, but one that’s far from certain. Tonda Eckert’s side is currently on the periphery of the playoff places and will need a run of good form down the stretch in oder to keep in the picture. What they’re going to need is goals because this season’s leading scorer, Adam Armstrong with 11, was sold to Wolves ahead of the transfer window closing.
The first look at Larin in a Southampton shirt came on Saturday and the early returns were good. With the game at a 0-0 stalemate, Eckert introduced Larin in the 67th in place of Ross Stewart, who had two glorious chances in the first half to open the scoring that went for naught. Larin’s impact would be immediate.
From a James Bree corner in the 70th, Larin shook off his marker and met the ball with a powerful diving header to beat Egil Selvik and give the home team a 1-0 lead. It was Larin’s first touch of the match. The goal would be the match’s only marker and Saints picked up a key 1-0 victory.
“I don’t think it could have gone any better for Cyle, scoring with his first touch,” Eckert said after the match. “And that’s what we need. There will be many games where you bring to a certain moment and they can go in both directions and that’s where we just need power from the bench. We had that today and, yeah, I think we deserved three points.”
Asked if it was a dream start, Larin said it was the product of hard work.
“I don’t know how I imagined [it would be], but I think you put in the work during the week and the staff and the players have been helping me get used to how it is here, so I think all of that helped me out a lot and it just made me more comfortable on the pitch,” Larin said.
The victory gave Saints 43 points on the season, putting them in 14th in the table. They trail Wrexham for the final playoff spot by four points, but there are seven other clubs in between them. Next up for Southampton is a double dip against Leicester. They visit the Foxes on Tuesday in league play before hosting them at St. Mary’s on Saturday in the fourth round of the FA Cup.
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Olivia Smith, Arsenal
Manchester City’s drive for a first Women’s Super League title in 11 years is still going strong, but three-time champions Arsenal gave them - and the rest of the league - something to think about on Sunday at the Emirates in front of nearly 40,000 people.
City entered Sunday’s match looking to make history. The league leaders were out for a 14th consecutive victory to equal the all-time record. Andree Jeglertz’s side had not lost since a season-opening 2-1 defeat to Chelsea on Sept. 5. Standing in their way was a Gunners side looking to keep pace in the Champions League race, currently on the outside looking in. Arsenal were coming off of a midweek 3-2 win over Corinthians to crown the first-ever FIFA Women’s Champions Cup victors with Caitlin Foord scoring the winner in the 104th minute.
The game’s only goal came in the 17th minute and it came from women’s football’s first-ever £1 million signing in Toronto’s Olivia Smith. Mariona Caldentey sent in a through ball from just inside her own half for Smith to latch on to if she were able to get there. The 21-year-old former Liverpool forward muscled past Rebecca Knaak, darted into the area and around Ayaka Yamashita to tuck home into an empty net to make it 1-0. The goal was Smith’s fourth league goal of the season and third in her past four matches.
“It was a great result today,” Smith said after the match. “Obviously, City have been on a great run of games and we knew we had to be at our best today and that’s exactly what we did.”
Smith said she had no problem slotting in as a central forward, a position she hasn’t played regularly.
“It’s different but I’m happy to play wherever [manager] Renée [Slegers] needs me,” Smith said. “I know we had that conversation that she might need me in that role and I was happy to play it.”
The win moved Arsenal to 29 points and kept pace with second-place Manchester United and third-place Chelsea, both of whom were victors on the weekend. Arsenal trails United by two points and Chelsea by one, but has a game in hand on both. Even with the loss, City still enjoys a commanding eight-point lead atop the table.
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David “Junior” Hoilett, Swindon Town
While much of the focus in Canada was on Cyle Larin’s move to Southampton, there was another transfer of significance just before the window closed last week. Veteran winger Junior Hoilett joined League Two side Swindon Town from Hibernian on a deal that takes the 35-year-old Brampton, Ont. native through the rest of the season. Hoilett has played a majority of his 18-year pro career in England, but this marks his first time back since 2023.
“I’m really excited to be joining Swindon Town,” Hoilett said last week. “The club has a clear ambition, and I’m looking forward to contributing on and off the pitch. I can’t wait to get started, meet the lads, and play in front of the fans at the County Ground.”
Hoilett is not the only member of the Canadian contingent with the Robins. He joins Montreal’s Jamie Knight-Lebel, who is on loan from Bristol City, on the squad.
Robins fans got their first look at Hoilett on Saturday as they hosted Oldham Athletic. Hoilett came on in the 61st for fellow debutant James Scanlon, who joined Swindon on loan from Manchester United and scored the opening goal of the match in the 23rd minute.
After Fletcher Holman, who also came on in the 61st, made it 2-0 in the 73rd, Hoilett helped round out the scoring in stoppage time with a slick bit of skill.
Following a bad turnover near midfield, Hoilett broke down the right into the area. Drawing a pair of defenders towards him, Hoilett could have taken a shot at Matthew Hudson’s goal, but he chose to play provider. Hoilett deftly slid the ball to the far post with a trivela for the trailing Aaron Drinan to make it 3-0.
Manager Ian Holloway gushed about his new signing after the match.
“What I had to do was bring in skill sets that we haven’t got, but I could only get really young ones or really old ones, and that is no disrespect to Junior,” the veteran gaffer said of his transfer deadline strategy. “As I told my chairman, ‘You wouldn’t have seen a player as good as him since you have owned Swindon.’ Swindon have had some class acts in the past, I was with two of them the other night in Don Rogers and John Trollope, Charlie Austin did really well at this club. Junior, with his skill set, if we can get it to him and he settles in, he will create for us, and I thought he was the difference. Now that the lads have seen what Junior can do in a position like that, oh my goodness, that is going to lift every single person on the planet.”
Holloway, who is in his second season at the helm of the Robins after previous stints at Crystal Palace, Leicester City, QPR and Millwall among others in a management career now in its fourth decade, said that Hoilett’s desire to play at his summer’s World Cup can only benefit his team.
“I don’t know if fans or owners value that enough these days. ‘How old is he?’ That is the first thing everybody says. ‘How good is he? Has he looked after himself? Is he on a different level?’” Holloway said. “That man out there walked onto that pitch and made it look like a doddle, because he knows where everybody is and where he is going. It is wonderful to see. That boy wants to play for Canada, so he has got drive like you would not believe, and that is what I believe will rub off on everybody.”
The victory was an important one for the Robins with everybody around them in the table also winning. The win took Swindon to 55 points and kept them third in the table, two points behind second-place Notts County and seven back of leaders Bromley.
