July 1, 2018. Just under 10 months before the Canadian Premier League’s first match, five of its founding clubs had officially been unveiled, with a further two locations confirmed. At the time, few had any idea what this league might really be like, and absolutely nobody knew how the next five years would go. Now, though, the CPL celebrates its fifth Canada Day since kicking off in 2019. In that time, 322 Canadian soccer players have had the chance to play professionally in their own domestic league. More than 100,000 minutes of professional playing time have been given to under-21 Canadians, across over 400 regular season matches — not to mention high-pressure playoff and Canadian Championship contests. “It’s an easy answer,” Forge FC head coach Bobby Smyrniotis said this week when asked about the CPL’s importance these past few years. “Rewind and go back to 2018 and there’s not eight professional teams. There’s not coaches like myself coaching in the professional game. “You don’t develop players to their maximum without a domestic league. End, stop, whichever way you want to put that down. That’s the reality of it. I worked in the development game for 15 years before this and we were always looking for a landing spot for Cyle Larin, for Richie Laryea, for Kwame Awuah, Emery Welshman, Kyle Bekker; you were constantly searching somewhere else. You were having to ask people outside of this country to look at Canadians. Now, Canadians have an ability to start their process here in their own backyard, in their own cities, in their own province. That allows the game to grow.” Smyrniotis, of course, would know; he’s seen so many young players come through the youth ranks in Canada before having to go abroad to try and make it in the professional game — whether that’s to Europe or to an American university. With players now having more options to stay closer to home and still find their way into the professional game, the number of pro-level players in this country has expanded. Fewer players are slipping through the cracks, or giving up on soccer due to a lack of opportunity to progress. What’s perhaps most important is that the CPL, despite its value in that sense, is not strictly a development league. It’s a fully professional senior men’s league, which allows young players to mix and test themselves against veterans or international talents who may bring different perspectives and experiences — all of which raises the quality of play and helps develop more well-rounded professionals than a youth league would. In pretty much every major footballing nation in the world, all the best players — including the bulk of their national teams — will have learned how to be professionals in their domestic league. Plus, the opportunities for genuine, tangible victories are there; two genuine professional trophies, with the regular season and playoff championships, also now offer clubs the chance to play high-level, competitive continental games in the Concacaf Champions Cup. Every year, CPL teams get to test themselves against MLS opposition in the Canadian Championship. Again, these are all real, competitive challenges that can be formative in a young career.
The success stories abound. Recently, the greatest buzz has surrounded 16-year-old TJ Tahid’s emergence on the pro stage with Vancouver FC; he nearly went abroad to continue chasing his dream, until a local club appeared to give him the opportunity he needed without going far from home. If all goes well, Tahid seems poised to be just the latest young Canadian player to launch a successful career in the domestic league. The list continues to grow: Diyaeddine Abzi, Victor Loturi, Lukas MacNaughton, Marco Bustos, Aribim Pepple… in fact, at this point there are too many names to list all the players who earned moves up to a higher level after impressing in Canada. “We’re talking about so many players under 23 playing,” said Valour FC coach Phillip Dos Santos, who himself has seen Sean Rea and Jonathan Sirois become MLS regulars after playing under him on loan. “There’s no doubt in my head that the platform these players are getting now has made a big difference. It’s early to tell, it’s a very young league, but I think you’ll see the real significance of the results and what this means in the further future. But I look even at players in League1 across the country having something to play for. They’re not necessarily looking at major leagues or big leagues in Europe yet because that could be too much of a mountain to climb, but they look at a CPL and they say, ‘You know what, there’s hope; I’m there, I can be there’.” Over the years, so many other young players have found their start in the CPL and used it as a stepping-stone to the greater footballing world. Joel Waterman was the first; the now-CF Montréal defender had been playing university-level soccer with Trinity Western, without much hope of a real career in the sport, before Cavalry FC came calling via the CPL-U SPORTS Draft in 2019. Because Waterman had that chance in the CPL, he’s now a regular starter in MLS, and he was part of Canada’s squad at the World Cup in Qatar. Tommy Wheeldon Jr., Cavalry’s manager who gave Waterman that start, has perhaps seen more of his players push on to greater things than any other CPL gaffer. Since Waterman, we’ve seen Aribim Pepple and Victor Loturi get sold to European clubs (the latter earning national team call-ups recently); Mo Farsi has become a regular MLS contributor in Columbus. Dominick Zator, another who first became a full-time professional under Wheeldon at Cavalry, is now a defensive star in the Polish top-flight after four seasons in the CPL with the Cavs and York United. On Tuesday of this past week, he became the first ever former CPL player to play for Canada’s senior national team in a competitive match when he entered the Gold Cup game against Guadeloupe. “When I was coming through there were three teams in Canada, it was tough,” said York United coach — and former national team regular — Martin Nash, who was Zator’s manager his last two years in the CPL. “I had to kind of go away to make it, so to have the CPL and players being able to cut their teeth — and late bloomers to get a chance — you look at a guy like [Zator], who just keeps working and eventually gets called up to the national team. I think without it you’d miss out on a lot of players; without this league Zats might be in the workforce somewhere and not playing football.”
Since the CPL kicked off, nine players have earned Canadian national team call-ups after or during their time in the league: Zator, Loturi, Waterman, Lukas MacNaughton, James Pantemis, Tristan Borges, Marco Bustos, Marco Carducci and Amer Didić. Pretty soon, that list is sure to grow; Rea and Sirois seem like the next candidates, as does Farsi. “This league has been built through a pandemic, and the owners, that are Canadian, have invested in this league to make sure that it exists and there’s opportunity there,” Wheeldon said. “We’re taking players out of U SPORTS — Canada’s university system — and created such a unique way they can play and return, or play and stay. I got on the bus today with Eryk Kobza and Gareth Smith-Doyle, both kids coming out of the University of Calgary. I think it just means so much to Canadian male players to have a pathway, and it’s only going to get stronger. You see that now with the supporters’ groups — look at the supporters’ groups growing and growing, I know our attendance is growing. It shows that we are doing the right thing for the game in this country.” Canada has always been a country full of soccer fans and players. Indeed, Canada Soccer estimates there are about a million players, from youth to recreational to professional, across the country, and that number may even be low when you account for the pick-up games and playground kickabouts that are so ubiquitous in parks and schools now. What’s important about the CPL, though, is that it provides a focus for that love for the game — a domestic pinnacle to rally communities and give players something to aim for. “It’s the best opportunity this country’s ever had at being a true footballing nation,” said Pacific FC head coach James Merriman. “It’s helped the success of the national team, it’s helped the success of players getting bigger moves, it’s created more interest, more awareness of the game across the country. We feel it here at Starlight Stadium when we play, you can see the interest is genuinely growing, and that’s what this league was created for. You also see young players coming in, young Canadians getting opportunities that never existed before, that could’ve fallen out of the game. Now they’re pushing and they’re the future of our game.” Halifax Wanderers boss Patrice Gheisar, who himself has shepherded so many players through the ranks to the national team — Kamal Miller, Dayne St. Clair, Alistair Johnston — during his time in League1 Ontario with Vaughan, likewise pointed out how crucial it is to keep growing this sport among fans and communities as well. “Obviously with the World Cup coming here and being hosts, it’s imperative,” Gheisar said. “Where we are with the sport and all the kids participating in that, I’m crazy enough to say that it could become the country’s number one sport. Many will think I’m crazy with what we have with basketball and hockey, but look at all the participants. Both my kids play, all my friends, every kid plays. “I look at my own son, and his love for Cristiano Ronaldo; now, he’s started to become more aware of the CPL, he’s grown that affection toward players that are playing in our stadiums. It’s great to see our young Canadian players feel that connection to our current generation rather than going across the world.” As Gheisar points out, the FIFA World Cup will be played in Canada in just a few years. Having a domestic league was, of course, a major part of the United bid that ultimately won the hosting rights, and by the time that tournament kicks off, the CPL may well be bigger and better than it is now. There have been growing pains, no doubt; anybody who’s followed Canadian soccer over the past few decades will know that it’s rarely easy to continue pushing the game forward in this country. But to start a league from scratch, and have it produce this number of quality players in just five years, truly is remarkable. “Canadian soccer has never been at a better high, and we just need to keep on going,” Smyrniotis said. “We can’t get caught up in other things but really focus on the game, focus on the players, because we see it each and every week in this league that we’ve got players that can not only compete but can play at higher levels than our league. I think we’ll continue to see that.” As the CPL’s fifth season continues to unfold in dizzying, electrifying fashion, the future of our top-flight domestic league has never been more exciting. Happy Canada Day, CPL fans.
