‘Shouldn’t Have Been Allowed’: Musse Sounds Off On Snowstorm Final

The 2025 Canadian Premier League Final was a snow-laden spectacle that has produced moments generating over one billion views thus far, but some athletes are feeling left in the cold about what happened.

The grand final of Canada’s top flight went ahead despite the arrival of a November snowstorm that had been anticipated for days ahead of the match. While the league said it tried to ‘walk a fine line’ between needing to play the final and making sure everyone was safe and happy, not everyone believes such a line was walked.

Cavalry forward Ali Musse, for instance, believes that the match should not have gone forward at all in the weather conditions that saw 11.7cm of snow land in Ottawa – the capital’s snowiest November 9 since records began in 1872.

“It was very unprofessional and a discredit to the game and effort we put in all year making it to the final,” says the forward, who describes the conditions as ridiculous.

Musse, who has played in the league in six of its seven seasons, feels that playing in such conditions was dangerous for both sides, with one of his teammates needing medical treatment for their hand after slipping and landing awkwardly on the snow-laden pitch.

“People think I am salty towards Ottawa winning. Not at all, congrats to them,” says Musse, who says he would feel the same about playing in those conditions even if Cavalry had hoisted the cup following the final whistle.

The league had a contingency plan for the weather that included an orange game ball, extra corner flags planted along the sidelines to improve visibility, and routine pauses in play for pitch crews to manually remove snow from select areas of the field. Later on, like the NBA, they cleared snow when play was in the opposite end.

When extra time beckoned, a forty minute delay took place to allow for the pitch to be plowed. Musse says getting those plows in helped return some normalcy to the match, but the move came far too late in the game.

“It was just not the right conditions for a football match, let alone a final.”

With OSEG starting renovations to the stadium, postponing the game would mean a different venue would be required – and with an international break looming, there was no certainty on when such a match could even take place. With Ottawa Rapid occupying the stadium the day before, the league was left with its back against the proverbial wall and was incentivize to play the match on the night, though some argue scheduling kickoff earlier in the day might have helped some – if the confines of television slots would allow.

“Ultimately, it’s a matter of protecting the integrity of the competition while also understanding that it was a final and there wasn’t going to be another opportunity to play that game,” said a league official. “So we wanted to sort of walk that fine line of making sure that everybody was safe and everybody was happy on the field.”

“It is a bit of a shame, because I think it would have been a top class final,” reflect Nathan Ingham from the winner’s side. “Instead, it was something that didn’t resemble anything we did all season long. I feel for Calgary, I wish they got to put their best foot forward and play a regular match.”

Ingham says the elephant in the room is certainly should the league have played a final in those conditions, and says they took a gamble and won in terms of exposure – albeit, he admits, at the expense of the players.

The league has since reported that scenes from the snowy final have tallied over one billion views.

OneSoccer commentator Adam Jenkins told The Globe and Mail that he felt that they were ‘betting the goodwill and reputation that we have built for seven years on this working out’, but he trusted the decision made by senior officials

At the end of the day, it comes down to what you consider was right: the snow final produced spectacle that thrust a bigger light on the players and the league than any amount of marketing could do, but the odds of showing them at their best were slim – if not for an iconic David Rodriguez ‘icicle kick’, it might have gone viral for all the wrong reasons, or even faded into snowy obscurity.

As we know now, it went viral for an amazing goal in what can only be described as, under global fervor, completely stereotypical Canadian weather. Of course, it’s not really like that on the pitch normally, with one snowy spectacle of a CPL Final being the exception.

Athletes of the Canadian Premier League are represented by a league-recognized union, for which Cavalry’s own Marco Carducci is the President. Musse wants to see them push harder for player protections.

A few weeks before the final, a playoff match between York United and the Halifax Wanderers saw a lightning delay decision get surprisingly reversed, with players returning to the pitch before shortly being asked to evacuate it once more.

Certainly, the 2025 CPL playoffs have had some bold decisions when it comes to weather decisions.

“Some people baffled, and some talking about it how cool it was, but don’t know the experience and how ridiculous it actually was, all that with a trophy and Concacaf Champions League [sic] spot on the line,” says Musse, who sums up his feelings with one last word.

“Madness.”

Header Image Photo Credit: John Jacques