Jacob Shaffelburg shook his mess of curly blonde hair and looked up from the ground in anger. The then-14-year-old saw the person he was hoping to impress turning away.
The winger had been playing competitively for Nova Scotia at provincial youth level for three years. But this was the lone day that a Canada youth national-team coach had come to the eastern fringes of the country to watch them play.
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“A half-assed look, just to check the boxes,” Shaffelburg said.
Shaffelburg, lightning-quick and arguably the best player in the smallish province, had what he admits was a “stinker” of a game that day. He worried his one opportunity to impress and progress to the youth national team may have quickly passed him by.
“That was unfair. If it’s a national team, and (if) it’s a huge country, everyone deserves a look. And that was never the case,” Shaffelburg says.
Nova Scotia is the seventh largest of Canada’s 10 provinces and three territories by population, with around a million residents. But across the nation’s Maritimes region, also including its fellow eastern provinces of New Brunswick and Prince Edward Island, the lack of soccer facilities, training standards and extensive player pool don’t help anyone with dreams as big as Shaffelburg’s.
Only one other player from the province, longtime Rapid Vienna left-back Ante Jazic, now 48, has ever played for Canada’s senior men’s national team. Shaffelburg, there in the middle of that pitch, realised something: “I had to get out of Nova Scotia.”
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A decade later, Shaffelburg has risen to heights he believes are “near impossible” for a player from his home province: He is a goalscorer for Canada, a favourite of the team’s new head coach Jesse Marsch and is nicknamed Maritime Messi.
Now, the Maritime Messi is likely to go up against the real thing, Argentina talisman Lionel, in the 2024 Copa America opener in Atlanta on Thursday (early Friday UK time).
Before that match, Shaffelburg wants his story to illustrate the disparity in opportunities for soccer players across Canada.
“I’m looking out for anyone coming up through Nova Scotia,” he says, “because I had it tough.”
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With just over 1,000 warm-hearted residents, Shaffelburg’s hometown of Port Williams is an agricultural centre, with long, flat fields interspersed with thick, deep forests; it’s a place someone might pass through en route to a beach or a hiking spot.
“Not a lot of people,” Shaffelburg says of his hometown. “Everyone knows each other by the car you’re driving.”
He grew up with now Ottawa Senators ice-hockey forward Drake Batherson as a neighbor. “As the crow flies, I would say 200ft from his house,” Shaffelburg says.
Shaffelburg is loyal to a hometown and a province that are culturally different from most Canadian cities.
Coming from a tiny Nova Scotian town turned him into the player he is today: scrappy, because he was never gift-wrapped the playing opportunities young players from bigger towns might get; bashful, owing to the fact the Maritimes are about as far from pretentiousness as you could find; and determined, because he had to be.
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“The development system simply is not very good,” admits Mike Hudson, technical director at Soccer Nova Scotia from 2003 to 2011.
The majority of Canada’s top players developed in or near one of Toronto, Montreal and Vancouver, which are more heavily populated and boast professional clubs’ academies. Just eight of Canada’s 26 players played their youth football outside those three cities, and even one of those — Alphonso Davies — moved to Vancouver at 16 to join the academy at its pro club, the Whitecaps.
Hockey is king in Nova Scotia. Two of the game’s best players, Sidney Crosby and Nathan MacKinnon, both products of the province, will tell you that.
Soccer can sometimes be forgotten out there in the east. The facilities for it aren’t as well-kept as those in towns and cities to the west. The sport is often treated as a summer activity for the province’s better hockey players, just to maintain decent cardio levels until they can get back on the ice. Visits by scouts from the three Canadian MLS clubs’ academies were just as infrequent as ones from national-team scouts. As a result, Shaffelburg never played for a youth national team, in contrast to most of his current Canada team-mates.
“Our players are isolated,” Hudson says. “The (youth national team’s) focus is on players from the three MLS academies.”
As Shaffelburg developed year after year, the speedy, tenacious but tiny winger was forced to play up an age group, with older players, to see a healthy level of competition. He remembers consistent pushback from parents, borne out of safety concerns about Shaffelburg’s size.
“In Nova Scotia, the level just isn’t good enough,” Hudson says. “To develop players, you have to play best versus best. We have a diluted structure here in the youth level. The best don’t tend to play the best very often.”
Nobody around Port Williams realized they might have the best soccer player in the province’s history on their hands.
“That’s always stayed with me, that fire to prove people wrong,” Shaffelburg said. “But it also makes me feel bad for younger players coming up through the (Nova Scotia) system. It’s hard to deal with that.”
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Which is why, with the help of Hudson and through connections he had, Shaffelburg enrolled in the Berkshire School, across the U.S. border in Massachusetts, at 15 to challenge himself and hopefully attract more eyeballs. The same school also developed longtime Leeds United and now Everton winger Jack Harrison.
“If Jacob had not gone to Berkshire, he would not be playing professionally right now,” Hudson says.
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Not surprisingly given Shaffelburg’s propensity to run for days with outlandish pace and produce chances, those eyeballs came. Shaffelburg received U.S. college scholarship offers but elected to sign with MLS side Toronto. In early viewings, Toronto loved how direct he was with the ball and how ruthless he was with his crossing and finishing ability. They saw an ingrained sense of grit.
“You naturally give priority to those within your own club and sometimes can be blind to those outside,” says Corey Wray, then Toronto’s assistant general manager. “But you need to have eyes on both paths and be curious to the outside player pool. Their experiences may be potentially less impactful in certain areas but we cannot dismiss the growth possibility in other areas that players experience by not being at the ‘best academies’.”
Some of Toronto’s physical testing tracked Shaffelburg as quite literally the fastest player in the club’s history. They understood that with a November birthday and no formal academy background, he might have been behind in his development compared to players in his age group. “But you find with (Shaffelburg), he was ahead in many other areas like his work rate, dedication and desire,” Wray says.
Once he began playing more for Toronto’s second team, the club started getting calls from United States youth national-team coaches. ‘Who was this kid?’, they asked. And, given he had been playing Stateside and had never appeared for any youth national team, was he eligible to represent the USMNT?
“I’ve been overlooked my whole life. Being from Nova Scotia, it sometimes feels like it’s not even part of Canada,” Shaffelburg says.
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He provided a spark with nearly every appearance through three seasons for Toronto’s first team. Yet the club’s insistence on spending heavily meant fewer appearances for their young players than at many other MLS sides. Every season, a new left-winger was brought in and Shaffelburg again had to force his way back up the depth chart through his work rate.
No worries though, according to Shaffelburg. The same work ethic he developed while being overlooked back in Nova Scotia came in handy.
With then-head coach Bob Bradley unable to find a consistent spot for Shaffelburg in his line-ups, the young winger was loaned to Nashville for the final months of the 2022 MLS season. From day one, Nashville assistant coach and former England international winger Steve Guppy subjected Shaffelburg to consistent video sessions to find areas for improvement, and then extra time before every training session to implement those desired changes.
“He gave me a c**p-ton of confidence. I’ve never had that from a coach,” Shaffelburg says.
Finally, Shaffelburg earned his break. That it came about as far away from Nova Scotia as possible — at least when looking at a map of the 29 MLS teams — speaks to how preconceived notions can stick with a player.
The results speak for themselves.
Shaffelburg scored on his debut, and Nashville made the transfer permanent at the end of the season. In 2023, Shaffelburg logged more club playing time than ever. He was called up to Canada’s Gold Cup squad for the first time last June and scored an extra-time goal that gave them the lead against the United States in the quarterfinals. His next Canada goal came in his next appearance, sealing their Copa America qualification with a ruthless shot in a play-off against Trinidad and Tobago this March.
GOAL 🇨🇦🇨🇦
JACOB SHAFFELBURG, THE PRIDE OF NOVA SCOTIA, MAKES IT 2-0 FOR THE #CANMNT AND WE ARE (pretty much) GOING TO THE 2024 COPA AMERICA 😎 pic.twitter.com/4jOY0ecYdD
— OneSoccer (@onesoccer) March 23, 2024
If that finish looked familiar to his fans in Nashville, it’s because it was: days earlier, Shaffelburg scored two goals that were, to that point, the biggest of his career. His strike from just inside the box, and his quality across the pitch, against Lionel Messi and Inter Miami in a CONCACAF Champions Cup game, caused a new nickname to spread like wildfire across social media. It’s one he’ll likely keep with him for the rest of his career: the Maritime Messi.
SHAFFELBURG AGAIN! 👏
He bags his brace and doubles @NashvilleSC's lead! 😤 pic.twitter.com/NAoa0WNNhT
— FOX Soccer (@FOXSoccer) March 8, 2024
“We don’t play even close to each other,” Shaffelburg insists of him and Messi.
And yet that nickname has helped bring Shaffelburg’s story into the limelight.
He insists he’s seen players he grew up with get labelled, for example, the Halifax Messi. The place he comes from is so much more than a village listed on his passport.
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After Shaffelburg left Nova Scotia for school in New England, the Canadian Premier League began play in 2019. HFX Wanderers, based in the provincial capital Halifax, draw consistently fervent crowds and also provide a smoother potential pathway for the next Shaffelburg.
Perhaps his rise is a reminder that there are players with potential in Canada beyond its biggest cities, particularly in a region not always associated with soccer.
Shaffelburg still returns in the offseason to meet the area’s young players. His message is the same: if he can push forward to the national team, so can they. “Whatever I can do for Nova Scotia,” he says.
Developing in Nova Scotia means Shaffelburg is not a classically-trained player who is overtly technically proficient. He is fearless on and off the ball. If he gets caught out of position, he will always work to recover with that same aggression. That intensity makes him tailor-made for the game Marsch likes his teams to play.
If Shaffelburg can contribute at Copa America this summer, very quickly the legacy he will leave will be greater than any soccer player from the region.
Millions of Argentinians are rightly proud of Messi. If Shaffelburg has his way, the Maritime Messi is going to do his home region just as proud.
“(Shaffelburg) is well-followed in Nova Scotia,” Hudson says with evident joy. “Everyone is proud that we’re going to have a player playing against Messi.”
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(Top photo: Matthew Ashton/AMA via Getty Images)
