A 2020 Canadian Premier League season that seemed to come and go in the blink of an eye was even shorter for Amer Didic.
An ankle sprain suffered in his opening match of The Island Games, which saw the entire spring and fall schedules condensed by COVID-19 into one month-long tournament in a bubble at the University of P.E.I., limited the FC Edmonton defender to just three appearances last year .
“2020 was a cap,” Didic tweeted on Jan. 1, summing things up in a fittingly short and sweet manner for an FC Edmonton side that was unable to earn a win last year.
But there are plenty of chances for Didic to make up for lost time in 2021.
On Thursday, the six-foot-four, 195-pound Edmonton product re-signed with his hometown club for the upcoming CPL season, at the same time the Canadian national team announced he was being called back to the big stage.
“Amer is a modern-day centre back with all the tools to be at the top of the game in this country,” FC Edmonton head coach Alan Koch said in a press release from the club. “He missed a lot of the abridged 2020 season through injury, but we look forward to working with him to get him back on the pitch and to elevate his play to even higher levels.
“We expect him to be a big part of improving our defensive fortunes as a club this coming season.”
In the meantime, the Bosnia-born 26-year-old, has joined Team Canada at their training camp in Bradenton, Fla. Running until Jan. 24 in preparation for their 2022 World Cup qualifying campaign set to kick off in March, the camp is being held outside of the FIFA international calendar, meaning it is made up mostly of off-season Major League Soccer players.
And prior to his re-signing with Edmonton, there were rumblings of more MLS interest in Didic, who had been invited to a trial with the Vancouver Whitecaps following the CPL’s inaugural season in 2019. Didic played 51 minutes in one pre-season tournament game before eventually returning to Edmonton.
On the national scene that year, Didic became just the second player in CPL history to earn a call-up, named to the roster for a Concacaf Nations League match against the U.S. in October 2019.
But he had to wait until last January to make his debut, making history as the first CPL player to start for Canada and also the first to score in a 4-1 win over Barbados in a friendly. He played again in a 1-0 loss to Iceland.
Currently ranked seventh among Concacaf nations, Canada is set to host Bermuda on March 25, before travelling to play against Cayman Islands on March 28.
Heading into its third season, the CPL has yet to announce a schedule for 2021.
E-mail: [email protected]
On Twitter: @GerryModdejonge
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