FOOTBALL FEVER
Vaughan City Hall erupts in cheers as new soccer league reveals York as its first team in Canada,
The Canadian Premier League (CPL) officially unveiled its first team on Thursday evening, the York 9 Football Club.
Hooting, hollering and chanting rang through Vaughan City Hall as the new club was announced, its name drawn from York Region’s nine municipalities.
Aurora, East Gwilimbury, Georgina, King, Markham, Newmarket, Richmond Hill, Vaughan and WhitchurchStouffville are each represented by a bar on the team’s crest, which was unveiled at the event. The franchise’s colours — electric green, charcoal grey and black on black — are a nod to York Region’s forests and the club’s sustainability goals, as well as to Black Creek River, which flows from Vaughan to Humber River in Toronto.
At its core, York 9 is a community club, said the club’s vicepresident of soccer operations Jimmy Brennan, a former Toronto FC player. Brennan grew up in Newmarket and returned there to live after his professional career. The other members of the ownership group also live in the area and are look to put a staff together from York Region.
“I have spent my whole life in here. The time is right for York Region to develop its own identity,” Brennan said. “This is a booming area that is diverse, youthful and passionate about football. It is our goal to ensure that when York 9 FC steps on to the pitch, it will reflect what our community is all about.”
York 9 will be one of eight to10 teams to play in the CPL when it debuts next spring. The CPL is a national domestic men’s soccer league a level below Major League Soccer (MLS). The other teams in it have yet to be announced. Calgary, Halifax, Winnipeg and Hamilton are among the cities expected to participate. The key idea behind the league, said CPL Commissioner David Clanachan, is to make sure kids don’t lose sight of their soccer-playing dreams at 16 or 17 years old, as advancing to play in a league, such as MLS or somewhere in Europe, may not seem as though it’s an option.
A premier professional soccer league in Canada is something the country’s never really had from coast to coast, Clanachan said. Yet soccer is the fastest growing sport in Canada and more than 10 per cent of Canadians play the game at least once a week.
“It’s unconscionable to think a country the size of Canada, the 10th largest economy in the world, does not have a premier league,” Clanachan said. “And we’re the only country in the top 10 that does not have a premier league.”
York 9 and York University struck a partnership that will see the team play home games and practise at the university for the next couple of years. But the club is also looking to build a 12,000- to 15,000-seat stadium devoted to soccer in the region. The aim is to create an atmosphere akin to what a fan would experience in Europe, said president Preben Ganzhorn.
“We’ve already had a bunch of meetings with different parties in the region. We’ve looked at some fantastic places where we can build stadiums, but it’s a work in progress right now to figure out where we want to build, what the infrastructure is like in the area,” he said.
It’s not clear who will pay for the facility. The financing model is still to be determined, Ganzhorn said.
“There’s a lot of different options, and, really, it’s not hard for us to get the financing for the stadium,” he said. ‘We’ve been touring, really, with our vision and so many people buy into it and want to help. It really is about finding the ideal location at this time.”
Clanachan said the stadium could be built within two years of the team’s first kick.
“I’ve seen the designs,” he said. “Very impressed. I like what I’ve seen ... The people of York will be extremely impressed. It just takes time to put it together.”