The 1way forward

When you are down about Canadian football, think about League1 Canada and smile...

I first met League1 Canada President Dino Rossi in a car park beside BMO Field in the fall of 2007. It was the day before Canada was to play Costa Rica in a friendly. Those that have come to follow the national team in the years that have passed will be surprised to learn that the game was the first that was to be held in Toronto in more than a decade.

That’s right, at the time of BMO Field’s opening, the largest city in the country had not hosted a game since the ‘90s. The result was a national team that was all but ignored in the major Canadian sports media, and a fan base in Toronto that was desperate to finally see the team in person again.

That desperation made what Rossi (and others) were asking that day an especially difficult request: You see, the context of how I met him was that I was there to pick up a black t-shirt with “Sack the CSA” emblazoned on its front. The instruction was that fans were to wear the t-shirt to the friendly, as a way to demand that the federation reform and better support the national teams.

It was our first game in a decade and we had to go in funeral black. Big ask.

However, no one was being asked to stay home, or even not to cheer. The only request was to wear black. And demand change.

Full disclosure: I was also involved in planning the protest. In fact, the genesis of it was a post I had made to The Voyageurs discussion board. I then served as an ad hoc communications director for the protest, handling media requests (and we got a lot of them. It was reported on in the New York Times! Stephen Brunt, then the most well known sports columnist in Canada, covered it!!). It was a wild ride.

So, I, and others, had a role, but Dino was the man who brought it to life.

Did the protest work? Yeah, I think it did. It capitalized on the growing interest in the sport that TFC’s entry in MLS had generated and showed that there were, in fact, a lot more people out there that cared than any of us thought there were.

The biggest thing it did, however, was launch Rossi into the Canadian soccer universe. He’s never looked back.

By printing those t-shirts, Rossi started a journey that has taken him from an outsider standing in a parking lot with a pylon on top of his car (seriously, there was a pylon on top of the car, so people could find him) to one of the most powerful leaders in the sport in Canada today.

Importantly, he got there not by politicking, but rather by building. Specifically, he’s built the third tier of the Canadian pyramid from nothing. Literally.

Rossi wasn’t just yelling at the clouds in 2007. He had a vision and he used the contacts he made from that day to bring his vision into reality. Talk about putting your money where your mouth is.

That vision of a standards-based, semi-pro level of the pyramid is one of the most important developments in Canadian soccer this century. It’s right up there with MLS coming. And I don’t think the CanPL happens at all, without League1 starting first.

All of this is why yesterday’s announcement that the League1 model is being taken to Western Canada in time for 2025 is very exciting. With thriving leagues in Ontario, Quebec and BC already, the addition of a league for Alberta, Saskatchewan and Manitoba will come close to completing Rossi’s full vision of a coast-to-coast of leagues, with a national championship tournament uniting them (and they are working on Atlantic Canada too).

The positives from this are hard to overstate. Having a development pathway that is independent of the federation is vital to the success of the sport. It reduces the damage that mistakes at the CSA level have on the game. There are a lot of great footballing nations out there with federations that are, um, challenged. They are successful because the country’s clubs produce talent.

That’s what League1 does. Importantly, they do it for both genders too (aside: Project 8 should really be working with L1C). Expanding the L1 level to all parts of the country will mean it will do even more of that.

This is not to say that we shouldn’t work to fix the issues at the CSA, but if you have a healthy pyramid then issues at the federation level are mostly just noise.

There’s still lots of work to do here, but there’s a proof of concept already and a man in Rossi that has proven time and time again that he can get the job done.

That’s great news for anyone who wants to see this sport thrive in Canada.

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