Canada Soccer officially approves four Canadian Premier League cities

Canada Soccer announced today that at their Annual Meeting of the Members, this year in Yellowknife, NWT, the organization officially approved four Canadian cities for professional club membership. This means that Halifax, Calgary, York Region and Port City (apparently a Vancouver suburb) will officially have teams in the Canadian Premier League when it kicks off next spring.

Those four locations will join Hamilton and Winnipeg as the locations we know will have founding CPL teams. Edmonton and Ottawa, both of which already had pro teams and likely don’t need new approval from Canada Soccer, will probably round out the league’s original eight teams.

We know a good bit already about some of these teams. FC Edmonton and the Ottawa Fury are both rumoured to be joining the league directly; Edmonton ceased operations as a pro club recently, and the Edmonton Sun reported that FCE expects to join the league. York 9 FC will reportedly be based in Vaughan, representing all nine municipalities of the region in the northern GTA.

Port City seems to be a club in suburban Vancouver, which may be similar in market to the York team — just far enough from the big city to have its own identity, but close enough to capitalize on the large market. The team is apparently being referred to by its branding name for now, because a stadium location hasn’t yet been decided (likely Surrey, though).

York 9 FC will likely be the first CPL club officially revealed, with an announcement event scheduled for next Thursday, May 10. Waking the Red has heard that further clubs will be announced, one at a time, every week after that.

Also worth noting from Canada Soccer’s AMM is that Nick Bontis was re-elected vice president of the organization.