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Boulevard Saint-Laurent is one of Montréal’s great arteries, a throughway for gourmands coveting smoked meat sandwiches or proper pizza at one of a dozen different joints in Little Italy. It’s also home to Evangelista Sports, a shop that has doubled as a shrine to the city’s soccer-obsessed for more than 40 years and is every bit a part of Montréal’s cultural fabric as poutine or lamenting the cold.
It’s also where FC Supra du Québec opted to announce their first-ever signings last week. The Canadian Premier League (CPL) expansion team is looking to become part of the city and province’s cultural identity, hoping their commitment to recruiting a full roster of Québec-born or raised players, inspired by European clubs like Athletic Bilbao, will go a long way in helping to build a pathway which has so often seen talent slip through the cracks.
“We needed it, the players needed it, the youth in this province needed it,” says club president and co-founder Rocco Placentino. “We needed to have a CPL team. I know I sound biased because I’m from here but we have a lot of talent in Québec, a lot of talent.”
Québec is Canada’s second largest province in terms of population, home to around nine million people. Both the Canadian men’s and women’s national teams are loaded with Québec-born players and many – be it Moïse Bombito, Ismaël Koné, Nathan Saliba, Maxime Crépeau or Mathieu Choinière – will probably be in head coach Jesse Marsch’s squad for the Fifa World Cup this coming summer.
But there hasn’t always been a clear pathway for that talent as CF Montréal, now of MLS, were long the only professional club in the province. Bombito, who Marsch categorized as emblematic of the country’s development system, struggled to find a way to make the jump from the amateur ranks until getting his break outside Québec, with the Colorado Rapids.
Placentino says FC Supra will help bridge that gap by providing opportunities for players between Ligue1 Québec, the province’s pro-am league, and MLS. The CPL is also a division one league.
“Who’s the next Moïse Bombito? Who’s the next Ismaël Koné? Now, we have a real platform for them,” he says. “We want people to come and watch players born in clubs here that played in Québec or that moved from a different country and played amateur soccer here and now they’re playing pro.”
Sean Rea is one of FC Supra’s first signings, announced alongside fellow CPL veterans David Choinière (brother to Los Angeles FC’s Mathieu) and Loïc Kwemi last week. Rea, 23, came up as part of CF Montréal’s academy but the club’s lack of a MLS Next Pro team meant he had to leave home to pursue professional minutes. He went on to spend two years in the CPL on loan before making his debut for Montréal. He then went on trial at the Portland Timbers before signing in Spain and then returning to Canada with the Halifax Wanderers. Now, he’s back home getting ready to play in front of friends and family for the first time since leaving MLS.
FC Supra, he says, could provide opportunities he wished he had as a young player coming up in CF Montréal’s academy.
“Previously, there was only Montréal’s academy and to get there, you had to go to specific schools.” Rea says. “Talent fell through the cracks because they wouldn’t go to these schools so they couldn’t go to the academy but they’re such talented players you might only hear about them later on … With a team like Supra here, you sign at 18 years old [for CF Montréal] and you can go on loan here and get those minutes. It gives you the opportunity to play. I have no doubt that’s going to be the case going forward, they’re is going to be a lot of loaned players.”
Placentino confirms there’s already a good relationship between CF Montréal and FC Supra, adding they’ll take players on loan that meet their criteria. But a larger aspect of their project is providing a platform for young players not in the academy to showcase themselves, with FC Supra having visited eight clubs across the province for open trials. He says there’s lots of room on the roster to give first-time professionals a chance they might not have gotten otherwise. Nearly 400 players have trialed in the last few weeks.
“There are so many amazing clubs in our province and Supra wants to help them accomplish [their goals] and build up young stars,” says Placentino.
FC Supra’s pre-season will begin in January with trialists buoyed by more experienced players like Rea and Choinière, a former CF Montréaler who filled a trophy cabinet as a member of the Hamilton-based Forge FC. Things will only ramp up as the club announces more signings, sponsorships and unveils their kits in the coming weeks leading up to kickoff.
There’s already the feeling, Rea notes, that FC Supra are quickly ingraining themselves into the fabric of the city. Little things like honouring the legacy of the original Supra, who played in the former Canadian Professional Soccer League (CPSL) from 1988 to 1992, go a long way in creating a cultural connection.
“Everybody knows about the club. Now, it’s our job as players to perform and get even more people on board. There’s people that want to watch soccer here. There’s a big hype in the city, we can already feel it,” says Rea.
The hype shouldn’t be surprising given soccer is the sport of choice in the province, with about 170,000 people participating in Soccer Québec programs in 2023. Youth participation nearly doubled that of hockey (139,000 to 75,840) in the same year. And with the additions of the Northern Super League’s Montréal Roses, and now FC Supra, there’s never been more of an appetite – or opportunities – for professional soccer in the city.
“When we say it’s un club d’ici, pour ici, it’s not only about soccer. It’s for everything around soccer,” says Placentino. “We can’t wait to start.”
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Josh Healey is a Canadian soccer journalist based in Lunenburg, Nova Scotia. His work appears in various publications, including The Athletic, OneSoccer, DARBY Magazine and others.
