A Supra Day

Can it succeed?

Photo by Harry Spink on Unsplash

In the eighteen years that I’ve been writing about soccer in this country, I’ve found that there is nothing straightforward about the sport in Quebec. It can be a confusing environment to understand from the outside, particularly if you don’t speak French. I mostly don’t — if by mostly you mean “I can understand about 20% of it, maybe read about 10% more, and can’t speak any of it a recognizable way.” It makes me pretty typical among most non-Franco, non-Quebec-based Canadians (Maybe even a bit above average — Merci, Duolingo), but still far from being able to truly understand the nuance of the place.

So, dear Quebec reader, understand that I know that I can’t fully know you.

What I do understand, however, is football. That’s a language I am fluent in. It’s also the language I am thinking in as I absorb the news that the CanPL is finally coming to Quebec. The Laval-based FC Supra (spectacular name. No notes) will take to the pitch in 2026. It’s the first expansion in the CanPL since Vancouver FC joined the league in 2023.

It’s the league’s ninth team and the announcement this week hopefully marks the end of the league’s non-announcement expansion announcements that they favoured under previous leadership. I’ve made my position on those quite clear — they are harmful and unfair to the fans in the cities used mentioned. Saskatchewan is likely further from having a team now than before they made their plea for a stadium deal, under the guise of an expansion announcement. As for Windsor, your guess is as good as mine. There’s no noise there, at all.

Based on my limited understanding of Quebec, it would have been a really bad idea to pull that kind of stunt this week. Thankfully, they did not. The team is real and they are playing in a real stadium, Stade Boreale.

There is no doubt that this is a good thing for the league. It needed a French presence. It can truly promote itself as a Canadian league now, whereas it was hard to say it had full coverage before.

The question is, will it work? Will Montreal support a second men’s pro team?

It’s here where my lack of Quebec fluency may come into play. Let’s dip into my football IQ and look at it, though.

As with the other MLS market teams, York and Vancouver FC, it might come down to a question of geography. Will the stadium location attract the type of young fan who is currently going to MLS games instead?

Getting to Laval seems easier to me than getting to York does from anywhere in Toronto that isn’t the far west corner of the city — you truly cannot understand what a chore it is to get up there, if you aren’t from Toronto — but it still isn’t what you’d call central. As for Langley, it’s so far from downtown Vancouver that it probably should re-brand itself.

As for attracting new fans that aren’t already going to games in those markets, it’s hard to see that as a winning strategy. Typically, the roadblock North American teams face is a resistance by self-proclaimed sophisticated fans of big European teams to “slum it” by watching the local team.

So, if they aren’t going to MLS games because they don’t think the level is worthy of them, then they aren’t going to suddenly get turned on by an even smaller league (especially one that doesn’t have Messi come to town every once and a while). It’s a zero-sum game, really.

That leaves the family crowd, which is a puzzle Canadian sports teams have been trying to solve for generations, to mixed success.

Ils ont du travail à faire.

That’s not to say they won’t do that work and can’t be successful. The one thing I think I do understand about Quebecers and Montrealers is that they passionately support their own. It’s likely a product of being an island of French in North America that makes them hypervigilant about it, but it hardly matters why. If Supra can demonstrate that it belongs to Quebec and Montreal then it has a real chance — certainly to outshine the other two MLS markets in this regard.

It needs to embrace that, though. Be the Athletic Bilbao of the CanPL. Go all in on being Team Quebec.

It’s not only a winning strategy on a marketing level, it’s also not a bad way to build a winning team. Keep in mind that CF Montreal has essentially given up on putting a proper development team on the pitch — the only MLS team not to be involved in MLS Next Pro. Supra should be in the ear of every top prospect in the province, telling them that they are the quickest way to a pro contract, not Joey’s distraction from his “real” team in Italy.

So wrap yourself in the fleur-de-lis. It’s your best chance at success.

In this dumb, Anglo’s opinion, anyway.