No more excuses: A Canadian women's league now

There is no excuse. Those behind the Canadian Premier League and Canadian Soccer Business must give us a plan on the professional women's game.

Photo by Jeffrey F Lin on Unsplash

I’ve written this column before.

More than once. And, that’s a problem.

Since I have written this column a few times before I can also anticipate the negative reaction to it. Although it will be a minority of people reacting negatively, it will also be a problem.

So, it must be written again. Let’s start by plainly stating things:

There must be a Canadian women’s top flight league created with a clear start date given. Not tomorrow, not “when things are better financially,” and not when we are sunbathing in Winnipeg in February.

Now. We all understand the challenges. The CanPL shows us that they are no joke and a reasonable person should be flexible about the format and length of the league. But, it’s not reasonable to shut out opportunity for half the population simply because they were born with female sex organs.

That there isn’t a league is especially infuriating when we start to consider the Canadian Soccer Business deal. In it, CSB benefits from an association with the CanWNT in the same way that it does with the men’s team. This was negotiated without the player’s input and, unlike on the men’s side of the game, there is no clear benefit for the women.

This is money that goes to support the men’s league. There are ways to justify the deal if it is what allows the pro league to grow and eventually thrive. Those justifications go out the window when that league is only for the men.

It’s that simple.

If you want to be cynical about it, coming forward with a plan and a start date for a Canadian league (how about right after next year’s World Cup?) that is bankrolled by the CSB would go a long way to changing public opinion about the CSA and CSB in the current dispute with the men’s players too.

As stated, there would be very real business challenges to starting a women’s league (and I will expolre those in a later post), but that’s irrelevant now that we know what the CSB deal is. The CSA has a mandate to support both sides of the game and by entering into the agreement that they did with CSB they could be seen to have neglected that mandate.

The time to fix that is now.

Period.

Support this space and my podcasting projects through Patreon