reports Joshua Healey of Halifax Football Post<\/a>. <\/p>\nAbatneh has been one of the top defenders in the CPL for the past few years, and a move to a higher level for the 21-year-old has seemed inevitable for a while now. Ottawa has an established relationship with top flight side GAIS \u2014 selling left back Matteo de Brienne and forward Sam Salter to the club over the past two years \u2014 so it is a bit surprising to see one of Canada\u2019s top defensive prospects make a move to the second tier instead. <\/p>\n
Former Halifax Wanderers striker Tiago Coimbra also moved to the top flight with IFK G\u00f6teborg, while Marco Bustos spent time at IFK V\u00e4rnamo in between stints at Pacific FC. <\/p>\n
Abatneh broke into the CPL with York United (now Inter Toronto) before making the switch to the club in the city he grew up in ahead of the 2025 season. Part of the reason for that seemed to be Ottawa\u2019s connections in Europe, with Abatneh previously training with Spain\u2019s Real Zaragoza. He was previously in the youth setups at Roma and Lazio in Italy, among other clubs, before returning to Canada.<\/p>\n
He was nominated for the CPL\u2019s Best Under 21 Canadian Player of the Year award in both 2024 and 2025, but did not win it before aging out. The 2025 winner was Coimbra.<\/p>\n
He has caught the eye of Jesse Marsch, coming off the bench in Canada\u2019s friendly against Guatemala in January \u2014 what ended up being a \u201cB\u201d friendly. He doesn\u2019t seem to be too far off a jump to the senior national team, and a move to Europe should boost his chances, especially if Helsingborgs get promoted. They are eight points off the top of the table after 14 matches.<\/p>\n
CanMNT legend Atiba Hutchinson played for the club from 2004 to 2006 before making a move to FC Copenhagen.<\/p>\n
More to come.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The pipeline of Canadian Premier League players moving to Sweden continues. Atl\u00e9tico Ottawa defender Noah Abatneh is in…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":807294,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[194295],"tags":[236131,49,48,184210,44,283565,20739,9011],"class_list":["post-807293","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-ottawa","tag-atletico-ottawa","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-canmnt","tag-news","tag-noah-abatneh","tag-ottawa","tag-transfer"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/807293","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=807293"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/807293\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/807294"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=807293"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=807293"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=807293"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}