Soccer has passed hockey in popularity with players in Canada

FIFA made a fitting decision in awarding the 2015 women’s World Cup to Canada, because for over a decade it has been the national women’s program that has carried the colours.

And in many ways, that is representative of the strength and weakness of soccer in Canada at a time when it appears to be at a tipping point.

In two weeks, the Vancouver Whitecaps open their inaugural Major League Soccer season against Toronto FC. In June, Canada’s ninth-ranked women’s team will open the 2011 World Cup against Germany at the sold-out, 74,228-seat Olympiastadion in Berlin. Next year, the Montreal Impact will join the Whitecaps and TFC in the MLS. And in 2014, as a precursor to the largest women’s sports event one year later, the under-20 women’s World Cup will be held for the second time in Canada.

Marketing executives such as Sam Galet, vice-president of corporate partnerships for International Management Group (IMG) Canada, will tell you the registration numbers for soccer in Canada make it an easy sell as a grassroots buy; as what he calls an “entrée to talk to moms and dads.”

Don’t get him started about what would happen if the national men’s team stopped being shambolic. Don’t get him going about what would happen if Canada qualified for the men’s World Cup in Brazil in 2014. If only the Canadian Soccer Association could offer sponsors what, say, Hockey Canada can offer with the world junior tournament, never mind the Olympics: a guaranteed, high-profile, nationalistic experience on the international stage.

“That,” Galet said, “would tie it all together.”

The CSA will not release its 2010 registration figures until its annual general meeting in May, and says its 2009 figures are incomplete. But according to the 2008 registration figures, there were 740,073 youth players in Canada, and 873,032 players at all levels. “It will be over one million in the next two years,” Galet said, matter-of-factly.

By comparison, Hockey Canada estimates there will be a 1-per-cent drop in registration this season from 577,077 last season, and the organization has projections showing the number could be down to under 375,000 within 10 years. This is expected to be the second consecutive season in which hockey registration in Canada falls, from its peak of 584,679 in 2008-09.

We are not far off, in other words, from a time where as many girls and women are playing soccer in Canada as there are registered hockey players – men and women.

But you know all this, right? You just assume that, as Galet says: “When new Canadians come to Canada they look for two things: their nearest place of worship – their nearest mosque or church – and their local soccer club.”

You know hockey is ungodly expensive if it is part of your culture, let alone if you didn’t grow up with it. You know soccer has a foothold – but to what end?

Galet sees parallels with the explosion of football in the province of Quebec, spurred when the CFL returned to the province and revived the Montreal Alouettes – and especially when they became hot ticket at quaint McGill Stadium.

Professional teams provide what Galet calls a “pathway to play professionally.” Soccer lost players at the age of 13 or 14 when they went to high school because that pathway didn’t exist – but thanks to the MLS teams and the academies they have pledged to operate, that is no longer the case.