With a successful national team and many high-profile talented players in the world, Canada is one of the best most interesting countries in women’s soccer. However, it remained very strange that there was no domestic professional league in Canada to facilitate the growth of the sport. Until now. Project 8 announced yesterday that Canada is getting a professional soccer league in 2025.
Canada’s professional league
Starting in 2025, Canada will have a professional league. The league will consist of eight teams who will compete against each other over the course of a season. The eight teams will be divided into two conferences of four teams. As of now, two teams have been confirmed for the inaugural season 2023. This answers the domestic and international call for professional soccer in Canada and offers pathways for talents into elite soccer.
Canada’s driving forces
Driving forces behind the introduction of the new league are (former) Canadian soccer stars Diana Matheson and Christine Sinclair. Stephanie Labbé will also be involved in the development of the league
“I think it’s just genuinely a good news story. We’re going to build women’s professional sport in Canada,” Matheson said to TSN. “I think it’s the strength of this project that we get to build from scratch. We get to learn from a lot of the lessons that sport and women’s sport has made to hopefully make this as strong a foundation as we can for sport in Canada.”
Teams
Two of the eight teams have already committed to being in the newly formed league: Vancouver Whitecaps and Calgary Foothills. The rest of the teams will be announced in 2023 and will complete the total of teams.
