It began as locker room chatter, a pipedream that soccer players fantasized about between practices.
Today, that dream becomes reality when Vancouver Rise FC faces Calgary Wild FC in the inaugural game of the newly formed Canadian women’s soccer league – the Northern Super League (NSL).
For the first time, Canadian professional women’s soccer players will play for Canadian professional women’s teams on Canadian soil. And, if league founder Diana Matheson has her way, the country’s young talent will soon be part of a broader push to strengthen not only the league but the national team too.
“In the last five, six years, we saw how much investment was going (into women’s soccer) around the world,” Matheson said. “It was clear wherever countries — like Spain, like England — invested in their professional leagues, you just saw immediate impact at the national team level.”
When the Olympic bronze medalist, who played in the National Women’s Soccer League (NWSL) for eight years in the U.S., retired in 2021 after several seasons plagued by injury, she knew that the time to form a league was now. Wait any longer, and the global women’s soccer industry would grow too much and Canada wouldn’t be able to compete for talent and branding.
The problem: no one was…
