When Atlético Ottawa goalkeeper Nathan Ingham takes to the pitch this weekend in the club’s first game of the 2025 Canadian Premier League season, he will be kicking off the tenth year of his career as a professional footballer.

Ingham admitted in a recent interview with CanPL.ca that he didn’t think he’d make it to 10 years as a pro when he was just starting out. Part of the reason for that was the lack of a domestic professional league in Canada when he was growing up.

Now he is going into his seventh season in the CPL, and fourth in the nation’s capital. He has become one of the club’s strongest leaders, sometimes wearing the captain’s armband and always a vocal commander from his net.

“I remember what it was like when I was signing my first contract and I saw guys in the locker room that were in their late 20s and early 30s and thinking, ‘They’re just so old’, you know? And then you blink, and now I’m that guy in there,” he said with a smile. “[It’s a] completely different dynamic to when I started things, different responsibilities in the locker room, but it’s fun, man, it’s fun going into a season and knowing what to expect in the season.

“Nothing’s easy in this career, and you come in thinking you know what to expect and what’s going to happen, and you know you’ll get hit with different challenges, and you know you’re asked to do different things, and it’s fun. It’s fun in a way where you never know what to expect, and you have to be ready for everything, and it’s difficult, and it’s challenging, and it’s super rewarding. It’s been a wild ride, it’s pretty cool that I get to say I’ve done it for a decade.”

Still, 10 years after first signing a professional deal with FC Edmonton, then of the NASL, Ingham admits he’s still learning things every day.

This off-season, learning and growth have been major themes, both personally and as a club. Ingham spent time training with players from the Tampa Bay Rowdies, including former Atlético Ottawa teammate Ollie Bassett, during the off-season, meeting up with them and a former coach of his in Florida. He also trained with MLS expansion team San Diego FC as their fourth goalkeeper during their preseason, helping to push the club’s goalkeepers while he himself was ramping up his training to return to Ottawa.

Collectively, the club is adapting to a new coaching staff in 2025, as well as a collection of new players. After letting the CPL Shield slip away from them in the latter stages of last year and being eliminated from the playoffs in the semi-finals, Carlos Gonzalez and his staff parted ways with the club, replaced by new boss Diego Mejía.

Mejía joined the club in January from Mexican side Juárez, where he worked his way up from coaching in the club’s academy to the top job with the first team. He and his staff are tasked with getting the club to the heights many thought they would reach last year with the assembled ‘super team’.

“It’s honestly been a pleasure,” Ingham said of working with Mejía. “[The new coaches] as a group, them individually, has been a lot of fun to work with, I feel like the guys have been learning a ton.

“Being a pro for 10 years, you think you got the game figured out, but I’ve learned more in this pre-season than I have in years so it’s been exciting. They’re fully bought in, they’re fully committed, they love the project. It seems like they really appreciate the players and the level that we have, which feels great, and I think everyone’s just trying to live up to their standards and use their guidance to get us to where we’ve wanted to be for a while.”

Another objective for Mejía is instilling an attacking brand of football that fans of the club have been waiting for. Gonzalez, especially in his 2022 Coach of the Year-winning campaign, found ways to get results with more conservative tactics, but it wasn’t particularly exciting football, and left the team prone to losing the leads they did get or struggling to overturn deficits.

This year, fans can expect a totally different approach from Mejía and his side.

“I think the two teams, despite having a lot of familiar faces, will be unrecognizable across the board in a positive way,” Ingham said. “We’re going to be a team that dominates with the ball, we’re going to be a team that is the aggressor, a team that dictates play, a team that teams are going to have to really focus on in the week leading up to our game, on how they’re going to deal with us.

“I think it’s a team that’s going to score a lot of goals, have a lot of fun.”

While Ingham looks to the future rather than dwell on the past, he does take some motivation from last year’s playoffs, especially the dramatic shootout win over Ontario rivals York United at TD Place. He is also one of just two players alongside Ballou Tabla who was with the club in 2022 when they won the CPL Shield and hosted the CPL Final, losing to Forge FC.

Playing in those big games, and earning the Concacaf Champions Cup berth that comes along with it, are sources of motivation for them.

“That was a lot of fun the way it happened,” Ingham said of the shootout win over York. “It was a Hollywood-type game – late equalizer, some extra time, goals, and then a shootout. It was dramatic, it was fun, the celebrations were a lot of fun with the home fans, and something that anyone that was here for would just die to do again. You can only imagine what it would be like winning a championship on your home field, so that’s the ultimate goal.

“A few of us know what it’s like to get to the final and be that close … I still have that in me. I’m still motivated to win on home soil, and just try and bring that back for the city. It does serve as a motivator, one hundred per cent it’s that, alongside a long list of other things, that will motivate us to do the right things now that’ll lead us to success later.”

If Ottawa can get off to the kind of start they did last year, picking up points home and away and at the top of the table heading into the summer months, they could be in position to hang on this time and add to their trophy cabinet.

“I think we have the group to start out hot here and take control of the league and not let it go. So that’s the goal,” said Ingham. “We’ve got all the skill in the world. Obviously our first match isn’t going to be our best match of the year, but we’ve been pretty good in the past at getting things together and getting a result on opening day.

“That’ll be the goal again, and then just building on that and keep stacking up points early and often.”