Brampton’s Soji Olatoye Selected by York United

On Thursday, January 21st, the Canadian Premier League’s 3rd annual U-Sports draft was held and Brampton’s Soji Olatoye was selected for an opportunity to earn a development contract with York United for the 2023 Canadian Premier League season.

With their fifth selection in Round 2, CPL’s York United chose 22-year-old winger Soji Olatoye.

Brampton’s Soji Olatoye is currently enrolled at and playing for the York University Lions varsity soccer team. Olatoye started 7 games, scoring 5 goals and contributing to 4 others with assists. 3 of Olatoye’s goals were game-winners seeing him granted a place in the U SPORTS All Canadian Second-Team.

“…Olatoye will now be invited to York United’s preseason training with the hopes of securing a 2022 U SPORTS Development Contract for the upcoming season that allows a student-athlete with one to four years of U SPORTS eligibility remaining to sign with a CPL Club, while preserving their eligibility before returning to U SPORTS competition.”

York United website

There were other players representing Brampton soccer available in the draft, none of which were chosen this year. Not a worry however as Parmpreet Johal and Rachaun Palmer, the other two eligible Bramptonians, are still eligible for future CPL U-Sports Drafts or could also simply be picked up by CPL clubs for full contracts.

Brampton soccer players in the CPL is commonplace, which should be expected from a soccer community so full of talent. Soji Olatoye will be joining fellow Brampton native Lowell Wright at York United and many of you who’ve played in BAS over the years will remember Lowell from when he’d run onto the pitch at half-time with his brother while his father was officiating your games. Wright is one of the CPL’s rising stars and led the line for York United last season after supplanting higher profile international strikers for the starting role. Lowell helped York United make their first foray into the CPL playoffs.

Another notable Brampton soccer contributor in the CPL would be Chris Nanco, who was one of the first players signed to the CPL during it’s inaugural season. Nanco has been with Forge for three seasons contributing some key goals and a potentially title winning assist in the first ever championship match.

Keven Aléman joined FC Edmonton during the Island Games (CPL’s second season) but moved to Winnipeg’s Valor FC the following year where he became a key aspect of their 8 match unbeaten run to start the season off. Were it not for Aléman’s mid-season injuries there’s every chance Valor FC would have crossed the line ahead of York United to qualify for their first play offs. Years before the CPL however, Aléman was in Brampton playing as a Jr. at St. Edmund Campion alongside Jonathan Osorio, a senior at the time. Quite a few current BAS players will have played alongside or against Aléman.

There’s also Shaan Hundal, who spent 2021 in PEI with Valour FC for the CPL’s Island Games season.

The potential list of Brampton soccer players in the CPL is, well, long and only going to get longer… …so we won’t attempt to cover them all here.