“There are great gestures that have been made by the club [for women’s soccer] in the last year,” said CF Montreal Soccer Culture Director Patrick Leduc on the sidelines of the BMO Panel organized by the team.
It’s true. The Impact repatriated the Women’s Excel Program (PEF), the national development center of Soccer Quebec, which brings together the best players in the province from 15 to 18 years old in May. He also accompanied the PEF players on a trip to Paris, where they crossed swords with Paris Saint-Germain, in particular.
However, even if the panelists and the actors present all wanted to underline the progress that women’s soccer has experienced in recent years, there is still a long way to go before achieving equity.
It is under this theme that this panel was organized: that of equity. Thursday evening, during the second edition of the said panel, the participants, the members of the club, the players of the PEF and their parents all arrived dressed to the nines despite the temperature to do a bit of networking and gorge themselves on beef tartare and of popcorn.
If we had almost forgotten that the lightning and tornado warnings delayed the start of the event somewhat, an Amber alert which sounded during the speech of Gabriel Gervais, president of the club, gently brought the crowd back to earth.
A question from Leduc summed up the essence of the discussions well, “Were the chances for female players equal to those of male players?” We have an academy that is over 10 years old but was restricted to boys until this year,” he noted, implying that was not the case before the transfer.
Now that a women’s component has been endorsed and a regional program for girls between the ages of 8 and 12 is in place, the first milestones have been laid.
At a time when the rest of the measures to advance women’s soccer are not clear or revealed, the fact remains that the Bleu-blanc-noir is a professional club. One of the missions could be to train the female role models whose need all the panelists mentioned. In short, a bit like they do on the male side with the Samuel Piette, Jonathan Sirois and Mathieu Choinière of this world.
“We want this void to be filled by Project 8. Whether this league was created or not, it was our duty to develop soccer from the grassroots to the professional side of the women. We absolutely wanted to set up this academy for the U-15 and U-17 to allow girls to access the national teams. We want to be a springboard. »
To be a springboard that you can use, you have to make sure that it allows you to take the big leap.
For PEF players to join this future Canadian professional league, which will see the light of day in April 2025 – or any other league – they must be properly equipped.
According to PEF forward Esther Brossard, it does.
It should however be noted that despite the change of parents, the players of the PEF still reside in Laval and not at the Center Nutrilait like their male counterparts.
“The Bois-de-Boulogne center is world-class,” argued Gervais before specifying that the Nutrilait Center is too small to accommodate all these beautiful people.
Once the players have completed their internship at CFM at 18, the club have no intention of washing their hands of it and leaving them to venture into the professional world on their own. At least, not according to them.
“We have contacts and we can open doors at the professional or university level. We could partner with a professional team even if we won’t get into that. We want to be a talent incubator for a professional team, which we want to see in Quebec. »
That’s great, because Brossard, goalscorer against PSG, said she was “confident” that the club will provide opportunities for girls like them who want to turn professional.
Time will tell if the Bleu-blanc-noir will be able to form new Garielle Carle and Bianca St-Georges.
“If we take away the last three results, we were very, very well positioned with a pretty good playoff spot at mid-season, despite the very difficult start to the season. I look at the atmosphere at Stade Saputo and it’s remarkable, we had three full houses, it’s a record for us at this point in the season. I’m extremely happy with the excitement and our supporters,” he explained. “From there to say that I am fully satisfied from the point of view of the results on the ground, no. We would have liked to win the Canadian Championship and we made it to the final. Now we are on a slightly more difficult path, but I believe a lot in our team and our staff. The recent acquisition of Mahala Opoku is really in line with the project we want to put in place, so I’m very excited for the rest of the season. The Leagues Cup is coming up, so there are only great things for the rest of the season. »
