Introduction

This is the Northern 90 Podcast with Pat Sweet, Episode 6.

Welcome to the Northern 90 Canadian Premier League Podcast, covering the beautiful game in the great white north. For more Canadian Premier League content, head over to Northern90.ca. That’s Northern Nine Zero dot ca.

Welcome

Hello Canada, and welcome to another episode of the Northern 90 Podcast. I’m your host, Pat Sweet.

Today, we’re going to talk about the various leagues and competitions that Canadian Premier League teams are going to be part of this year, what they’ll be like, and why they’re important.

Before we get to that; however, let’s take a minute to go through the week’s CPL news:

CanPL News

  • Pacific FC signs Marcel de Jong
  • Quebec committee to study PSLQ
  • Diego Forlan has had serious talks to join CanPL.
  • CSB signs a 10-year official media partnership agreement with Mediapro to give the global soccer giant. This gives them global and domestic rights to the CPL, the Canadian Championship, Canadian Men’s and Women’s national team home games, and League 1 Ontario games. I’ll be going through this in detail next episode, and as you’ll learn, I think this is great news.

Main Content

In today’s episode, I’ll talk about all the different hardware that Canadian teams will be competing for throughout the year.

Canadian Championship

  • What:
    • The top competition among Canadian teams from all professional leagues
  • Who: All Canadian MLS teams, Canadian Premier League teams, USL’s Ottawa Fury, and the champion from Ontario League 1 (Vaughn Azzuri) and the Premiere Ligue de Soccer du Quebec’s champion (AS Blainville).
  • Format
    • Three home and away qualifying rounds.
    • Winner on aggregate moves on
  • Schedule:
    • First games are on May 15 and the final match is on September 25.
  • Trophy: Voyageurs cup, named for the Voyageurs supporter’s group who created the tournament in 2008.
  • Historic winners:
    • TFC – 7x
    • Impact de Montreal: 3x
    • Vancouver Whitecaps FC: 1x
  • What’s new?
    • New format with several more teams than before: all the CanPL teams are new, other than FCE.
  • What’s interesting
    • The fact that CanPL teams are in this year is interesting
    • There’s a great deal of controversy over the seeding. Valour FC, FCE, and Forge FC all got buys into the second qualifying round by virtue of having signed up for the league first. Very strange.
    • CanCon: Each team needs to field at least three Canadian starters.
  • Why is this important
    • Hardware
    • The winner gets a birth in the CONCACAF Champions League – one of two ways to get in.

CONCACAF League

  • What
    • Launched in 2017
    • The top club competition for clubs from the Carribean and Central America
    • Until now…
  • Who
    • 22 Clubs from Belize, Canada, Carribean, Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, and Panama.
  • Format
    • A preliminary round will be played amongst 12 teams, including one team from the Canadian Premier League
    • The preliminary round will be home and away
    • The six winners will then compete against the top nine Central American clubs, and the runner up in the Carribean Club Championship. This is the round of 16
    • Then, it’s home and away up to and including the final.
    • Video from CONCACAF explaining the format.
  • Schedule
    • Preliminary round begins in July
    • Final is played in November
  • Historic Winners
    • Olimpia (Honduras) x1
    • Herediano (Costa Rica) x1
  • What’s new
    • The inclusion of a Canadian Premier League Team
    • Expanded to 22 teams
    • The top six teams are given births into the CONCACAF Champion’s League for 2020 – not just the champion
  • What’s interesting
    • Controversy over the Canadian team that gets to go. It will be determined by the best home and away record between Forge FC, FCE, and Valour FC. Again, there’s been quite a bit of weeping and gnashing of teeth on this.
    • It’s another chance to sneak into CONCACAF Champions League for Canadian Premier League teams.
    • It gives us a chance to compare ourselves to international competition
    • It gives us the chance to see teams we wouldn’t normally.
    • It’s weird that Canadian teams will be part of a league designed for Central American and Carribean teams.
    • Travel will be a major factor
  • Why it’s important
    • More meaningful matches
    • A chance to get into Champions League
    • Exciting to be able to compare ourselves to others.

League Championship

  • What
    • The Canadian Premier League Championship
  • Who
    • The seven CPL teams
  • Format
    • We have no idea
    • Commish Clanachan has said the format will be unique to North America, but used elsewhere in the world.
    • Duane Rollins reported that everything he’s hearing is that the league will adopt an Apertura and Clausura system, with a possible SuperCup at the end, which would pit the winners of each of the two season’s halves.
  • Schedule
    • We already know this – late April to the end of October

Other Competitions

  • For whatever team wins the Canadian Championship, they get to go to the CONCACAF Champions League
  • There may be other minor trophies that could be won. I could see supporters’ groups creating cups for the Ontario and Alberta derbies.

What do you think?

  • Tell me: which competitions are you most interested in?
  • What will offer the best competition?
  • What do you expect?
  • Leave your comments in the comments section at the bottom.

 

Mailbag

  • First and foremost – thank you to Febrian and Dan who both left comments on the last post to correct my mistake. I said that York 9 FC, Forge FC, and FC Edmonton were going to have the chance to go to CONCACAF league – that was wrong. It’s not York 9 FC, it’s Valour FC.
  • There was some really interesting conversation on Reddit about the last episode and my proposed promotion/ relegation scheme. Reddit user Feb914 had some really interesting ideas, so thanks for that!

If you have something to say, and I know you do, write to me @NorthernNinety on Twitter, or leave a comment at the bottom of the show notes at Northern90.ca/episode6.

You could also try joining the Northern 90 Supporters’ group, where we have a private Facebook group to talk about the league. It’s totally free, and it’s easy to sign up. Just head over to northern90.ca/join.

Credits

Featured Image

Stocksnap.io: calendar

Intro music

Move Like This by spinningmerkaba (c) copyright 2011 Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution (3.0) license. Ft: Texas Radio Fish, Alex Beroza, and Snowflake

Main Content Intro Music

260809 Funky Nurykabe by spinningmerkaba (c) copyright 2010 Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution (3.0) license.

Mailbag Music

I dunno by grapes (c) copyright 2008 Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution (3.0) license. Ft: J Lang, Morusque

Outro music

Urbana-Metronica (wooh-yeah mix) by spinningmerkaba (c) copyright 2011 Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution (3.0) license. Ft: Morusque, Jeris, CSoul, Alex Beroza