Updated: York 9 FC to launch as official Canadian Premier League club

Updated May 8, 2018: The Canadian Premier League’s social media channels are starting to stoke excitement for the York 9 FC club announcement on Thursday. This morning, they posted a video welcoming York Region to the CPL, featuring shots of the Greenbelt and nine municipalities included in the region.

This isn’t really anything new to us, but it’s interesting to see the CPL drumming up hype like this. All the recent branding videos we’ve seen since the new logo reveal have been pretty slick.

Also, I just want to say that the kid in the video has some sick finishing ability.

It looks like we’ve finally got another confirmed Canadian Premier League club. According to a Twitter post from the budding York 9 FC supporters’ group, that club will be officially announced at an event on May 10 at Vaughan City Hall.

It appears that the event will be attended by both CPL president Paul Beirne and league commissioner David Clanachan, as well as the club’s apparent ownership group: Danish marketing executive Preben Ganzhorn, and former Toronto FC player Jim Brennan.

TFC fans may remember Ganzhorn from his stint as the MLS team’s Director of Marketing and Community, which he took on in 2011. TFC fans will absolutely remember Brennan, of course, as the first player and captain in team history. He had an incredible impact of Canadian soccer, coming from the English Premier League to make 93 appearances for the Reds, and 49 with the Canadian men’s national team.

It looks like York 9 FC will be the CPL’s GTA team, representing all nine municipalities of the York Region. The location of the announcement event, though, does suggest they’ll be based out of Vaughan, possible at an expanded facility near the Ontario Soccer Centre (where TFC II used to play).

A possible York 9 FC crest was trademarked by the CPL a couple weeks ago, which is also the only club branding we’ve seen so far.