Canadian teams always do better than US ones in the CCL and right now only Toronto FC looks good out of all MLS sides and Canada takes the tournament seriously compared to the US and know how to prepare better. The Canadian Premier League is launching next year and they seem to be focusing on the CCL as part of their plan as well. Who thinks the CPL will win before MLS?
Absolutely not. You'd have to get a CanPL side past all the MLS Canadian sides first just to qualify for the CCL, and that's not gonna happen. No way Canada's best players and coaches favor the CPL over MLS.
The CanPL will be a better league than MLS because they're avoiding the mistakes MLS keeps making. People will choose CanPL as they see Canada as being better than the US to live and Canadian fans are more educated about soccer. Considering that Central America and Caribbean teams can be competitive against MLS then CanPL teams certainly can. You people overestimate the quality of MLS; it's not really much higher than Caribbean leagues and certain not clearly better than El Salvador as we saw yesterday. MLS should stop trying to close the gap with Liga MX when it should focus on being better than Central America first.
It could be hard to compare CPL to USL. CPL will start with 7 clubs and USL has 33. It's possible the best 7 USL clubs will be better than the 7 CPL clubs, but the CPL could still have the better average club. Regardless of which one is better, I think the CPL will be much worse than Liga MX and MLS for a long time, and the CPL won't come close to winning the CCL.
If you're looking for a way to connect through identifiable players, York 9 has named Jimmy Brennan (formerly of Toronto FC, Southampton, and Norwich City among others) as head coach. Pacific FC has Rob Friend (formerly LA Galaxy and teams in Germany, Netherlands and Norway) as CEO and Josh Simpson (formerly Millwall, Kaiserslautern, Young Boys among others) as President. The guy that owns Forge FC also owns the Hamilton Tiger-Cats in the CFL and recently the company he started in his wife's sewing closest was sold to IBM for $34B.
No chance in hell this pub league wins in ccl before a mls side...canpl have such crap.players in wont lasy 2-3 years
It's possible since the CPL will continue to grow and perhaps someday pass the MLS, MLS better get it's act together, though some clubs like Atlanta are improving and look quite good.
It's a feeder league. This league is a chance for young players to get actual playing time to show themselves and get contracts in MLS or Europe.
As the official sanctioned league of the Canadian Soccer Association, the CPL is obligated to participate in the CCL.
Anyone who thinks this league is going to be MLS like is on some serious drugs. Their best XI would be lucky to win 1 out of 100 games versus Orlando City or San Jose. (Please don’t quote this in 2 years when one of the CPL teams beats a C squad in pre-season. Thanks)
The CPL couldn't even convince Ottawa to leave the USL and make it an 8-team league. Yikes. The league may be solvent, maybe, but if you can't even get USL teams to join you... Not to mention the Canadian-centric rules will make every team a Canadian YNT proxy. I wouldn't think an American league of American YNT players would very good, and the Canadian youth teams are pretty awful by comparison.
Canadian MLS clubs should distance themselves from the MLS. I think Canada is more than capable of creating a large enough network of teams to establish a proper Canadian league.
I'd be down with that. I always thought the practice of having a Canadian team or two in an American sports league was weird. It makes sense in hockey because there's so much passion for it that many cities can support NHL teams, but not so much in basketball/baseball. I doubt TFC, Montreal, and Vancouver want to hitch themselves to the CPL and lose the far greater, guaranteed, resources of MLS. P.S. I'm doubtful that Canada can have a large stable league of entirely Canadian teams. They've got 3 MLS clubs, and I think that's roughly the ceiling. The rest of the teams are going to be USL-level. Certainly, I wouldn't expect TFC/MTL/VAN to grow after leaving MLS...
When will the Canadian Premier League close the gap with the MLS? After one season? After 3 seasons? After 5 seasons? When will this inevitable conclusion take place?