CSA boss Victor Montagliani has always been driven by passion for soccer
Montagliani’s passion for soccer is driving his bid to make Canada a bigger global player
Victor Montagliani wears his passion for soccer from the international boardrooms where he pushes Canadian soccer interests in any one of four languages, to the East Vancouver gym where he mixes it up Friday mornings with many of the same hardcore soccer bruisers he’s been playing with for a quarter-century.
“Those guys, they’re like brothers,” said Montagliani, acknowledging that brotherhood sometimes comes with trash talk and an elbow to the chin.
The 49-year-old president of the Canadian Soccer Association seems headed for a big win this summer as the FIFA Women’s World Cup in Canada sets attendance records even before the July 5 final.
The tournament took some bruises itself early on with news of alleged corruption among officials of the international soccer body FIFA breaking just before play started.
Montagliani acknowledges some frustration that, after four years of planning, the tournament’s launch came just after “the crap hit,” when U.S. and Swiss authorities charged senior FIFA officials with corruption offences.
None of those charges involved the event or Canadian officials and Montagliani said fans seem to have shrugged off the news.
“If you just look at it from our tournament, it’s like (the corruption scandal) hasn’t happened,” said Montagliani, who spent much of June jetting between the six Canadian host cities. Close to 1.3 million tickets had been sold before this weekend. (The previous Women’s World Cup attendance high was 1.2 million for the 1999 tournament in the U.S.)
When Montagliani talks about the game, the word “passion” always comes up. He played at elite levels as a teen in Vancouver’s Grandview Legion squad and later with the adult Columbus team. “Victor’s got a quiet intensity,” said former Columbus teammate Danny Lenarduzzi, now director of soccer development with the Whitecaps, who also joins in those Friday five-a-side games at the Hastings Community Centre. “It’s pretty high level,” he said. “Certainly, the losing group does not go away happy. There’s definitely the odd elbow and the odd knocking off the ball, a bit more aggressive than maybe it should be.”
It’s been that way since the Lenarduzzis and the Montaglianis were growing up in East Vancouver, where their fathers were friends.
Montagliani had to learn English in elementary school despite being born in Canada. He spoke Italian at home with his mother and father, a mechanic who eventually owned his own business.
The oldest of two brothers, Montagliani went on to attend Simon Fraser University, where he picked up Spanish and French.
He played soccer internationally, but gave up the elite game at 28 when he landed badly during a match and needed reconstructive surgery on his ankle.
He got into insurance and now runs a nationwide group of companies with two partners. He’s married with two daughters, aged 14 and 17.
Montagliani came back to soccer 14 years ago, becoming vice-president and then president of B.C. Soccer before moving to the game’s national governing body, where he’s been president for three years.
Whitecaps president Bob Lenarduzzi, Danny’s older brother, credits Montagliani for streamlining player development at B.C. Soccer.
“At the time, the Whitecaps, B.C. Soccer and the CSA were running elite player programs,” Lenarduzzi said.
“We sat down and said this is crazy, why don’t we figure out who should be doing what? Victor was the one we started the dialogue with ... Now there’s a better working relationship between the pro clubs and the CSA.”
Lenarduzzi chuckled when he recalled watching his brother Danny and Montagliani play for Columbus more than 25 years ago.
“Victor was big then,” Bob said. “Very skilful, good passer of the ball. He’s a big guy so he didn’t run around a lot, but he was very efficient with his passing.”
Montagliani brought that efficiency to his volunteer role as the CSA’s president, bringing what he called a “more corporate style” as he and CSA general secretary Peter Montopoli worked to bring the Women’s World Cup to Canada.
“The whole tournament, you can look at it as an asset, but it’s also a risk. You have to manage that.”
Montagliani said he wants to boost the CSA’s budget from $25 million to $40 million over the next four years to improve coach and player development and to gather data nationally to track promising players from their early teens. Also imminent is the process to pick the host country for the 2026 men’s World Cup, which was stalled when FIFA president Sepp Blatter stepped down this month following the arrests within the organization.
Montagliani wants to see Canada in the running for soccer’s big show in 2026. Questions remain over improprieties in the awarding of the 2018 World Cup to Russia and the 2022 tournament to Qatar.
“I have the sense the game has changed and I think it will change for the good — but not in the short term because there’s a lot of debris removal that has to happen,” Montagliani said.
“Right now they’re all allegations ... you don’t want that to be true. You’re always that 12-year-old kid going crazy for the game. If you keep that in you, it’ll serve you well. So when stuff like that happens, you feel betrayed.”