Pro soccer a possibility in Kelowna: Friend
Ryan Reynolds, meet Rob Friend.
Well, not yet.
“I’m trying. He’s not taking my calls. He’s very hard to get hold of,” Friend, the Kelowna-raised soccer legend, joked Wednesday when asked if he’d met the Vancouver-born Hollywood megastar.
But it’s not inconceivable the two B.C. boys will encounter one another in the near future, as they both own professional soccer teams.
Reynolds is a co-owner of Wrexham FC, the fast-rising Welsh club that’s the subject of the enormously popular Welcome to Wrexham series on Disney+, while Friend is a co-owner of both Pacific FC and Vancouver FC of the Canadian Premier League.
Friend, who played professional soccer in Europe and North America, was in Kelowna to promote a June 16 regular season match at the 2,400-seat Apple Bowl between one of those clubs, Vancouver FC, and Cavalry FC from Calgary.
If the game is deemed a success, Kelowna’s prospects of landing a CPL team in the future might increase. The league’s first season was in 2019 and it currently has eight teams playing in stadiums that average 6,000-seat capacity, with attendance said to be rising about 20 per cent annually.
The games are fast-paced and high-quality featuring some of Canada’s best young soccer players, says Friend, who also played for the Canadian men’s soccer team from 2003 to 2011.
“Our players are fully professional. They’re paid year-round. They make a good enough living to focus on the game,” Friend said. “And it’s not just about playing in the league. It’s an opportunity for some of them to move on, whether that’s moving onto bigger leagues in Europe or elsewhere.”
“The Canadian Premier League is really driving the growth of the pro level in this country,” he said. “There’s an upward trend in participation and investment and infrastructure. Really, I think this is just the start.”
A wag once said soccer is the future of sport in Canada - and it always will be. The somewhat jaundiced attitude reflects the fact that while the game has long been widely played among children, interest seems to peter out with age and several previous efforts to establish pro leagues and teams have not endured in the long-term.
But Canada’s men’s team qualified for the 2022 World Cup, the first time it was in the tournament since 1986, and Canada along with Mexico and the U.S. will host the 2026 World Cup. Seven games will be played in Vancouver.
Beyond the huge spike in soccer interest that tournament will undoubtedly deliver, on-the-ground efforts to establish more professional clubs in Canada will require considerable money and effort. Consider what was involved in the creation of Vancouver FC, which despite the name plays its games in Langley.
“We announced the team in November 2022. We had to build a 7,000 seat stadium in three months. I had to build a front office, I had to build a staff of soccer coaches and technical staff, and sign 25 players within six months. That was insanity, but it certainly can be done,” said Friend, who picked up a degree in marketing and business while playing college soccer in California after graduating from a Kelowna high school in 1999.
Vancouver FC began play in 2023 and it currently sits mid-table. For their part, Cavalry FC won the league last year.
Kelowna would seem to be long odds for a CPL franchise in terms of a population base. With a metro area of 225,000, the region would be the smallest market in a league that has teams in the Toronto area, Edmonton, Hamilton, Ottawa, and Winnipeg.
Asked if he thought Kelowna could be in line for a CPL franchise, Friend was optimistic but said a lot depends on how the city’s sports community responds to the June 16 match.
“I’m biased but I think Kelowna deserves it,” Friend said. “I think it could work here, but we have to test the market. This is a great opportunity to see if it works. We’ll tell from this game, what kind of buzz and support we get, and then go further.”