OT: Valour FC: Winnipeg's new professional soccer team

Holden Caulfield

Eternal Skeptic
Feb 15, 2006
22,807
5,400
Winnipeg
Actually, Calgary FC will play out of the Spruce Meadows equestrian complex. The capacity is currently 25,000 but planned renovations will result in a new soccer-specific stadium with an additional 5,000 seats and a world-class grass pitch. Perhaps they have a goal of eventually seeking membership in MLS which would require a stadium of that size.

:jets

Well what I read is that if Calgary Next finally and at long last gets Flames approval (which is should considering it's one the most business friendly deals proposed in a while) that they will play out of the 30K stadium that will be built around with the new arena for the Flames. I could be wrong on that though.

But playing out of a 25K stadium actually makes the exact same point. Hamilton, Calgary, Winnipeg, and maybe Edmonton will be playing at 25K+ stadiums hoping to attract 5K+ crowds, so probably half the teams in the league will be playing in vastly oversized stadiums.
 

csk

Registered User
Nov 5, 2015
2,682
269
Winnipeg, MB
Well what I read is that if Calgary Next finally and at long last gets Flames approval (which is should considering it's one the most business friendly deals proposed in a while) that they will play out of the 30K stadium that will be built around with the new arena for the Flames. I could be wrong on that though.

But playing out of a 25K stadium actually makes the exact same point. Hamilton, Calgary, Winnipeg, and maybe Edmonton will be playing at 25K+ stadiums hoping to attract 5K+ crowds, so probably half the teams in the league will be playing in vastly oversized stadiums.

Calgary's stadium at spruce Meadows will have a total seating capacity of ~5000, as will Clarke stadium in Edmonton. Only Winnipeg and Hamilton are expected to have 10k+ stadiums.
 

LucianoBorsato

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Mar 3, 2015
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Winnipeg
Hard to believe Winnipeg now has 5 pro sport teams :thumbu:

Bring back the Winnipeg Thunder and let's make it 6

KA-BOOM+Front.jpg
 

Holden Caulfield

Eternal Skeptic
Feb 15, 2006
22,807
5,400
Winnipeg
Calgary's stadium at spruce Meadows will have a total seating capacity of ~5000, as will Clarke stadium in Edmonton. Only Winnipeg and Hamilton are expected to have 10k+ stadiums.

It's pretty sad if Edmonton plans to play out of Clarke Stadium. Clarke Stadium is a shit heap. It's worse than the old Bisons stadium at the U of M, Clarke stadium is literally falling apart. I really hope they play our of Commonwealth, even though it's oversized. At least there the teams can have a real dressing room, at Clarke it's just a hole in the wall at best. Clarke Stadium was worse than most high school football stadiums in Edmonton.
 

cheswick

Non-registered User
Mar 17, 2010
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South Kildonan
Can't say I follow soccer at all, but I'd be interested in a comparison of this league to say Major League Soccer in Canada and the USA? If you could use hockey equivalents that would be helpful.

This league would be considered a tier 1 league, which is equivalent to MLS. USL (and the former NASL) were tier 2 leagues.

I would say it's closer to a CFL vs NFL comparison but the disparity is probably not as big. The MLS itself has a pretty big disparity in talent. You'll have the superstars from Europe coming over commanding $5+ million salaries playing along side guys making $60k. I would hazard to guess that the lower end talent of the MLS might be along the lines of what you see in this league. It's positioning itself to be superior to the old CSL.

In terms of hockey if the MLS is the NHL then this league may be a Finnish or Swedish league. Ofcourse in the grand scheme of world soccer, the MLS itself is a minnow.
 

BigZ65

Registered User
Feb 2, 2010
12,355
5,319
Winnipeg
This league would be considered a tier 1 league, which is equivalent to MLS. USL (and the former NASL) were tier 2 leagues.

I would say it's closer to a CFL vs NFL comparison but the disparity is probably not as big. The MLS itself has a pretty big disparity in talent. You'll have the superstars from Europe coming over commanding $5+ million salaries playing along side guys making $60k. I would hazard to guess that the lower end talent of the MLS might be along the lines of what you see in this league. It's positioning itself to be superior to the old CSL.

In terms of hockey if the MLS is the NHL then this league may be a Finnish or Swedish league. Ofcourse in the grand scheme of world soccer, the MLS itself is a minnow.

Tier 1 in Canada so that they can play for the Canadian Championship with strict Canadian quota. Sort of like the CFL but with fewer imports.
 

DowntownBooster

Registered User
Jun 21, 2011
3,202
2,414
Winnipeg
Well what I read is that if Calgary Next finally and at long last gets Flames approval (which is should considering it's one the most business friendly deals proposed in a while) that they will play out of the 30K stadium that will be built around with the new arena for the Flames. I could be wrong on that though.

But playing out of a 25K stadium actually makes the exact same point. Hamilton, Calgary, Winnipeg, and maybe Edmonton will be playing at 25K+ stadiums hoping to attract 5K+ crowds, so probably half the teams in the league will be playing in vastly oversized stadiums.

Calgary's stadium at spruce Meadows will have a total seating capacity of ~5000, as will Clarke stadium in Edmonton. Only Winnipeg and Hamilton are expected to have 10k+ stadiums.

csk, thanks for correcting me on the seating capacity at Spruce Meadows. I was on a website (Top 10 Canadian sports venues) that listed the capacity of the facility at 25,000 so I assumed the additional 5,000 seats from the renovations would be included (i.e. total capacity to be 30,000). What I didn't realize was a separate stadium for soccer was to be added to the overall Spruce Meadows facilities. According to an article in the May 6, 2018 edition of the Calgary Herald, the soccer stadium is to seat 5,000 to 7,000. I guess we'll have to wait and see what the final capacity will actually be upon completion.

H C, in regards to the Calgary Next project, I don't think it will have any impact on Calvary FC as the team is owned and operated by Spruce Meadows Sports & Entertainment - a division of Sports Meadows Ltd. As a result, it appears doubtful (at least in the short term) the team would choose to play out of another facility owned by someone else since they will have their own newly constructed soccer-specific stadium featuring a world-class grass pitch.

:jets
 
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GaryPoppins

A broken clock is right twice in a day
Sep 10, 2016
2,419
3,136
Though not the biggest soccer fan, this should be great. Anything to spur and encourage development of young athletes is a win in my books. Price point seems inline with what goldeye's games are, so that's another win.
 

roccerfeller

jets bromantic
Sep 27, 2009
7,632
6,247
British Columbia
Why do some teams insist on adding "FC" to their names/logos? It comes across as such a hipster-doofus "soccer tradition wannabe" to me.

However, I find the name "Valour" highly original and highly meaningful.

It does seem funny considering the sport is called Soccer here, yet teams insist on having "FC" in their name. I had similar thoughts with Toronto FC of Los Angeles FC in MLS lol.

But if you consider it, it's not too outlandish:

I don't view it as a wannabe tradition personally, I view it simply as honouring the football name. Soccer is a popular sport in Canada, the most popular spot in terms of participation rate, but it really is the game of football. I mean, you play the game of kicking the ball with your feet haha. The name "football" originated from that fact hundreds and hundreds of years ago. So to that end, labeling a team "FC" is simply calling it like it is.

The thing is, soccer is not an incorrect term either...its not "wrong" to call football soccer. Soccer is more like another term...in fact the soccer word originated from britain as well, a product of it's time period. It was used as a term to distinguish football players from rugby players...rugby players ran the ball and tossed it with their hands (ruggers) and football players played with their feet (soccers, you'd "sock it over")

The reason the term soccer became the primary term in North America was solely to do with the American and Canadian football term being significantly more popular in local mindshare. So to distinguish this, Soccer became the popular term. American and Canadian football originated as Rugby derivatives, so they developed into football by name only.

TL;DR a Soccer team can still be called a Football Club or FC as soccer is an analogous term as opposed to an alternate term
 

Wolf357

Registered User
Jul 16, 2011
1,194
484
In what alternate dimension was that?
Nope they were...hard to believe but absolutely correct..they played before the internet so I can’t call up old attendances of games... but at a time The Thunder was drawing better than the Jets.. the games were very fun.. felt big league..
Then the league crashed.. and the attendance went down with the leagues fortunes..Katz finally abandoned the idea and went to try and get a AAA baseball team.. but that fizzled and we got The Goldeyes.. but for a brief period in time a basketball team in Winnipeg was getting as good if not better attendance than some NBA teams
It’s ok I knew when I posted that I would get an immediate response like yours...
 

DannyGallivan

Your world frightens and confuses me
Aug 25, 2017
7,563
10,114
Melonville
Nope they were...hard to believe but absolutely correct..they played before the internet so I can’t call up old attendances of games... but at a time The Thunder was drawing better than the Jets.. the games were very fun.. felt big league..
Then the league crashed.. and the attendance went down with the leagues fortunes..Katz finally abandoned the idea and went to try and get a AAA baseball team.. but that fizzled and we got The Goldeyes.. but for a brief period in time a basketball team in Winnipeg was getting as good if not better attendance than some NBA teams
It’s ok I knew when I posted that I would get an immediate response like yours...
I could have sworn I saw one game of theirs back in the day... it was either at the Convention Centre or the U of W.
 

Wolf357

Registered User
Jul 16, 2011
1,194
484
I could have sworn I saw one game of theirs back in the day... it was either at the Convention Centre or the U of W.
That was not the Thunder that would have been The Cyclone... The Thunder played at the old Winnipeg arena while The Cyclone played at the Convention Center
Similar time period The Thunders hay day was 1993 then the league folded...Cyclone played about 1995
Winnipeg Cyclone - Wikipedia
Winnipeg Thunder - Wikipedia
 

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