After weeks of speculation in the capital, Atlético Ottawa finally have a head coach to lead them into the 2025 Canadian Premier League season.
The club announced Wednesday that Mexican gaffer Diego Mejía will be commanding the technical area at TD Place this year, joining the CPL side after his most recent stint at the helm of Liga MX outfit FC Juárez.
Mejía, 41, becomes the third head coach in Ottawa’s history, taking over from predecessor Carlos González as he vies to lead Atleti toward some silverware in 2025.
“It’s a great opportunity for me,” Mejía told CanPL.ca this week. “[The CPL] is a great and very competitive competition, and I have no doubt that it will improve myself as a coach. Why Atlético? I think it’s a great team that has been doing things very well; it’s a team with a lot of identity and connection with its fans, and that’s very inspiring for me.”
The change comes at an important moment for Atlético Ottawa, who finished third in 2024 and went as far as the playoff semi-final, nearly knocking off Forge FC. Despite that, they entered the winter feeling somewhat disappointed after a splashy off-season in early 2024 saw them bring in a star-studded cast of CPL veterans like Manny Aparicio, Amer Didic and Matteo de Brienne.
Already, 12 players have moved on from Atleti this winter, including former CPL Player of the Year Ollie Bassett, leading scorer Rubén del Campo, and 2024 additions de Brienne and Kris Twardek. However, with a formidable core remaining in the capital, from Didic to Aparicio to Ballou Tabla, bringing in the right coach was the first major order of business for the club’s new CEO Manuel Vega.
By all accounts, Ottawa have found their man in Mejía, whose 15-year career as a player in Mexico and experience managing at a high level in Liga MX have given him a strong foundation for the footballing philosophy he intends to bring to the CPL.
Having watched Atleti in 2024, Mejía said he felt the team played well, but that he intends to add his own flair to the kind of football they play in 2025.
“I’m a coach who likes to be a protagonist with the ball, building a game that allows us a lot of opportunities to score,” Mejía said. “We have the ball, and try to recover it as soon as possible. I want my team to be aggressive.”
Asked about his personal coaching inspirations, Mejía does not wax lyrical about Jurgen Klopp’s gegenpressing or Pep Guardiola’s inverted fullbacks; in fact, he doesn’t even limit himself to just football. Instead, Mejía first mentions legendary Chicago Bulls coach Phil Jackson, and the way he managed his players. He says he admires Sir Alex Ferguson’s leadership, and his knack for delegating to his staff.
Above all, though, Mejía has one major hero: Liga MX icon Ricardo ‘Tuca’ Ferretti. One of the most legendary managers in the Mexican game, having helmed Chivas, Tigres, Pumas and Cruz Azul as well as the national team three times, Ferretti was Mejía’s boss from 2021-22, when the former was in charge of Juárez and Mejía was an assistant coach.
“He’s like my father,” Mejía quipped. “His ability to get the best out of his players is amazing.”
Having learned from one of the greats in his early days as an assistant coach, Mejía will now look to likewise lean on his own assistants in Ottawa. The club also announced Wednesday a whole new cast of technical staff; former Puebla youth coach Diego Campos has joined as an assistant, and ex-CF Montréal goalkeeper coach Romuald Peiser has come on board to lead Atleti’s netminders. Meanwhile, Ottawa have also brought on Alex Baró as strength and conditioning coach, as well as American-Brazilian physical therapist Mitchell Rangel as director of sports science.
Mejía will soon arrive in Canada to officially begin his work, with the 2025 roster coming together and several new player signings expected to be announced in the coming weeks.
Although he’s never been to Ottawa before — his only experience with Canada being in Vancouver — Mejía is excited for the new adventure, having done plenty of research on the Canadian capital.
“It’s a city with a lot of history and culturally rich, with a caring and respectful community that makes Ottawa a great city to live in,” he said. “This is something new for me; it’s another country, another language, but I’m very excited and so is my family, to be able to enjoy this journey in Canada and Ottawa.”
With preseason just around the corner, it won’t be long before Mejía’s new brand of football makes its debut on the pitch at TD Place.
