Soccer is progressing at breakneck speed in Canada. It’s not a secret. The women’s national team won gold at the last Olympics in Tokyo, the men’s team qualified for the World Cup for the first time in 36 years and the cities of Toronto and Vancouver were confirmed , no later than Thursday, among the host cities for the 2026 World Cup.
When Julian de Guzmán thinks of this grandiose era which is just beginning for Canadian soccer, he has a broad smile.
The former glory of the national team, now 41 years old, does not have his soccer shoes on his feet. Dressed in a suit decorated with a pin in the colors of his brand new team, he is there to talk business, and more precisely Simcoe County Rovers Football Club which he launched this year in the League1 Ontarioa semi-professional circuit that corresponds to the third division of the Canadian soccer hierarchy.
If you look at the next four or five years in terms of investment in sport, I think it’s the perfect time to get startedhe said in an interview with Radio-Canada on the Georgian College soccer field in Barrie.
” Attention and support, it’s all there. We just have to keep growing the sport not just here [en Ontario]but across Canada. “
De Guzmán began to pursue the dream of owning his own team when he found himself in the last miles of his career in 2014. He wanted to put his stamp on a club, to do things the way he believed they should be done to to advance soccer where he grew up, in Ontario, and ultimately, across the country.
He first joined the Ottawa Fury in the North American Soccer League (NASL) as a coach and general manager when he hung up his cleats in 2017. Then he got involved in another equipped with League1the 1812 FC also in Barrie, before withdrawing to return to the charge with the Rovers F.C. this year, a team he finally has full control of.
It was a friend of mine, who is an agent, who told me that one day we could do this and do it our way. And, when I say ”our way”, it’s based on my experience as an overseas player.he says.
Because the philosophy of de Guzmán is mainly based on the sharing of knowledge. To help nurture the next generation of soccer players, but also of coaches and managers, he believes everyone needs to take advantage of the lessons he learned from his 20-year career which saw him play in some of the biggest championships in Europe, in France, Germany, Spain and Greece.
In this sense, he also invited four current members of the senior Canadian teams to join him and his business partners as co-owners of the Rovers F.C.. That’s how Atiba Hutchinson, Cyle Larin, Doneil Henry of the Canadian men’s team and Janine Beckie of the women’s team came to be the most unique group of owners in the country.
It is important to be able to count on their experience and bring it back to a team like Barrie and to the communities that need it in order to allow them, and these projects at the semi-professional or even professional level, to develop and achieve a more complete, more balanced soccer clubhe said.
I think if we want to become a real soccer country, we have to really develop and target the areas that need it the most. We could talk about Saint-Jean in the eastern part of the country, the Prairies as well. I think we need to target those areas.
Even when we look at Quebec and Ontario, there are still areas that are not exploited. We chose Barrie for that, because it’s a growing region. […] There are 10,000 kids playing soccer here and 70 different clubs, but that’s it. There was nothing else, no semi-professional club or professional club. That’s why I thought it was the perfect sector to target to apply our platformhe concludes.
Janine Beckie admits that it didn’t take her long to accept Julian de Guzmán’s offer.
His projections, what he wanted to do with the team, his overall proposition, I was greatly impressed with everything he presented to me. At the end of the day, we all want soccer to continue to grow in the country, so for me, to have a chance to be part of a unique project like this, I couldn’t refuse.she says in an interview by videoconference.
Simcoe County Rovers FC are in the early stages of an ambitious project. The owners don’t hide it: they hope that their men’s and women’s teams will join professional leagues in a few years, the Canadian Premier League for men and this league for which national team players campaign for women. .
We want to strike while the iron is hot, yes, that’s kind of the nature of business. It takes a bit of luck and seizing the opportunities that come our way for everything to work out and I think that’s what happens with Rovers F.C..
” We are the first of our kind to do something this big in Canada. Our expectations are very high and I think that has raised the bar for everyone in the country. “
Without taking advantage of facilities worthy of the great clubs of Europe, the players of the Rovers F.C. are still aware of the chance they have since they are very well supported by management given the level at which they evolve. Their trips are covered and they can receive massages and treatments, among other things, which is not necessarily the norm.
It was part of the idea of starting at the lowest level. We wanted to lay a solid foundation by finding good business partners and connecting with the community, says Julian de Guzmán. His team is also affiliated with several local academies as well.
It’s really special to play for a team like that who have plans to turn professional later. I talked about it with my teammates and they all said exactly that. There are a lot of videos, for example. It’s a really professional environmentexplains striker Soumaya Bouak.
We have never seen that here. We have never seen that in the league. justin [Earle] and me, we played at very high levels and the level of professionalism here is very high too so it’s excitingunderlines for his part the defender Ilelabola Avolonto.
Community response so far has been pretty good for matches of the League1. For each local game, a few hundred spectators fill the bleachers of the JC Massie field, for both the women’s and men’s teams.
Brandon Crombie, of the official supporters group of the Rovers F.C.the Barbarriens, was surprised by the size of the crowd when we visited Barrie for the team’s home season opener a few weeks ago.
You see it yourselveshe said, pointing to the crowd. We didn’t think we would ever see full bleachers for a soccer game in Barrie, but there you go! It’s incredible!
And the best part of it all is that this is just the beginning.
Sportingly, Rovers FC’s men’s and women’s teams are both fourth in their respective league standings, three and four points adrift. Winning the championship is both of their goals.
Source: Radio-Canada
