Inside story of Canada's new pro women's soccer league

During Women's History Month in March, theScore is publishing stories that illustrate how women in sports lead, inspire change, and navigate their careers.

Diana Matheson was never going to be done. The drive that defined her career, that led her to score the goal that clinched Olympic bronze in 2012 and to co-found a players' association to protect the Canada women's national team's interests, was unwavering after she retired in 2021.

It was time to start a professional women's league in Canada.

"It was a matter of, if we didn't start soon, we were going to miss this incredible window to build now. The market was going to get too big, we weren't going to be able to afford to get in," Matheson, who played 206 times for Canada, told theScore.

"I couldn't have lived with the regrets otherwise."

Even the teammates who knew her best feared forming a league could be a step too far when she first floated the idea. National team members had wished it into existence for years. International opponents couldn't believe Canada had no professional women's clubs. But still, nothing had happened.

"I remember she was like, 'Well, if no one else is going to do it, I'm going to do it.' And it's like, 'Yeah, sure, D,'" Canadian legend Christine Sinclair recalled of Matheson's plans immediately after calling it quits.

"And now she's gone and done that, and it's absolutely insane."

The Northern Super League (NSL), Matheson's brainchild, kicks off April 16.

The new Original Six

Canada couldn't rely on revenue streams that helped women's soccer progress in other countries, such as investment from historic men's clubs and rich federations. So Matheson and fellow co-founder Thomas Gilbert, whom she met at the Smith School of Business at Queen's University in Kingston, Ontario, in 2021, encouraged owners and sponsors to provide the dollars needed to get the show on the road. Huge companies have backed the league; in the first week of March alone, the NSL announced partnerships with Coca-Cola, Intact Insurance, and Toyota.

"She's an incredibly bright mind, and I think with her work ethic, it just creates such a powerful combination," Canada midfielder Quinn said of Matheson.

Changing Canada's soccer landscape

Advocacy association Canadian Women and Sport surveyed more than 2,000 Canadians aged 13-65 in late 2023 and found that two in three - a proportion that would represent 17 million people across the country - are fans of women's sports. That huge potential, in Canada and elsewhere, was evident as attendance records, huge merchandise sales, and unprecedented TV ratings were continuously logged throughout 2024.

"I think we've seen so much excitement around the PWHL, the NWSL, the WNBA, and leagues in Europe, and I think that Canadians are honestly itching for an opportunity to support women's professional athletes," Quinn said. "It's something that unfortunately, as Canadians, we haven't had the opportunity to do, and I think the time is now to be able to do that."

Quinn became the first Canadian to play for Duke's women's team in 2013 and went on to spend the majority of their professional career in the United States with the Washington Spirit and Seattle Reign of the NWSL. The 29-year-old, who is non-binary, is delighted to be back in Canada with Vancouver Rise FC, but acknowledged elements south of the border encouraged a return home.

"You play the best football when you're happy outside of football as well. For me, as an openly transgender person, I think it's also realizing that there's definitely some cities in America that would be more difficult to navigate versus others," they said, noting that living in Seattle was "less stressful" than their days at university in North Carolina.

"I would be lying if I didn't think what's happening in the United States played an aspect in my decision. But I've always told myself that I want to be back in Canada and settle down long term here. So, to be closer to family, to be back in Canada - it's so exciting for me."

Quinn, who won Olympic bronze in 2016 and gold in 2021, is excited to see how the NSL will affect the national team's fortunes. Canada's talent pool is small - especially compared with many of its rivals competing for honors in international soccer - and a lot of that was down to the lack of a professional league at home. Roster restrictions on foreign players in other countries further limit Canadian players' options in the professional game.

"There's so many athletes, so many incredible youth national team players who I played with, who went to college and didn't have opportunities as professional athletes after. That's a lost talent for Canada. So I think that this is going to be hugely different," Quinn said of the NSL's upcoming impact.

Quinn was enthusiastic about helping young players in the United States and expected similar feelings in Vancouver, but their excitement has surged because of the added incentive of transforming Canada's sporting landscape. Between 68% and 100% of the six NSL teams' squads will be homegrown and some of those footballers will be entering the professional environment for the first time. Rather than grind overseas or even fade away from the sport, players can develop with regular playing time and potentially reach career milestones that previously seemed unobtainable.

"It brings like a whole new level of motivation for me seeing young Canadians come through and hoping that they're going to be the future of the Canadian national team," Quinn said.

Setbacks, and more setbacks

Ottawa Rapid midfielder Miranda Smith will be 29 when the inaugural NSL season kicks off. That isn't exactly young in professional soccer terms.

"I thought that there was a lot of hope for the younger generations, but I thought, I'm getting older, I don't think it's gonna happen," Smith told theScore about playing professionally in Canada.

Smith's diminishing hope was understandable considering her arduous journey thus far. She found the atmosphere toxic at the University of Memphis - "there was nothing that I could do really right for them" - and lost her love for the game. Then a coach at the University of Ottawa vowed to rekindle her passion and delivered on that promise during a fruitful playing spell in her hometown. Smith then went overseas to pursue her professional dream, but the pandemic lockdown hindered her spells with clubs in Finland and Iceland before a big move to top-tier French side Fleury was followed by a cruel run of misfortune.

"How much time do you have?" Smith asked.

Laryngitis, a concussion, bronchitis, a sinus infection, COVID, a sprained ankle on her birthday, a knee injury, and two torn ankle ligaments prevented her from making a single appearance as Fleury finished fourth - just one place below the route into Champions League qualifiers. It was a lost season of her career, and her attempts to get up to speed at semi-professional side Ottawa South United were seriously hindered when she broke her foot and later tore the plantar fascia along the sole of her foot.

"It's really hard to stay in a good head space," Smith shared about her wretched 20-month spell. "It motivated me more to come back and play because I don't want that to be my last memory in soccer."

Except there were more difficulties to overcome when she tested herself abroad again.

"My luck did not really turn around right away because when I got to Israel, I was there for five days and then the war started," Smith said. She played one match before Hamas and other militant groups attacked Israel in October 2023. She was "really shook" when the war erupted but, much to the alarm of her parents, returned to the country later in the 2023-24 campaign.

"I just want to play," was her message.

Things will be very different for Smith and her family this year. It should be a succession of firsts in her career, including the midfielder's first preseason with a professional club and the first time her parents will see her play as a pro.

"I've always felt like I feel more comfortable playing when I'm at home," she said. "There's so many external factors when you go somewhere else that can impact you as a person, which, in turn, can carry over onto the field. I know for me, in certain places, that was a huge thing."

Desiree Scott, winner of three Olympic medals including Canada's first gold in 2021, joined Ottawa Rapid FC in January, and Smith is hoping to strike up a strong partnership with the iconic midfielder. Though Scott might not know it, they've met before.

Smith and her teammates attended a Toronto FC match in their mid-teens when members of the Canadian women's team were introduced to the crowd. A few of the girls, including Smith, decided that tracking down their heroes was more important than watching the MLS side and eventually managed to get a picture with national team pair Scott and Christina Julien in the stands.

"To get to play with your role model is pretty exciting," Smith said of Scott. "All of us will have so much to learn from her."

Scott initially retired after playing the 2024 NWSL season with the Kansas City Current. Her arrival has possibly turned more heads than any other acquisition ahead of the NSL's first campaign - and Smith should appreciate some overdue luck in that she's playing with her rather than against her.

AFC Toronto playmaker Leah Pais, who's keeping her part-time job at a Hugo Boss store so her brother gets discounted clothes for his wedding, has visualized her skirmish with Scott. She's wary of the attributes that earned the 37-year-old her "Destroyer" nickname.

"Desiree Scott will for sure run me through the ground and I'm scared of that woman," Pais, who last played for Iceland's Throttur Reykjavik, told theScore. "But in a midfield battle, I know that I'll just have to be quicker on my toes, and my decision-making will have to be a lot quicker so that way she doesn't get the chance to come up near me."

And if Scott gets too close to the 23-year-old?

"I'll go flying."

'We want to be a top-5 league'

The established pros from Canada and other countries, plus players such as Smith and Pais who played semi-pro in their homeland and in other countries' professional competitions, should ensure the Northern Super League's on-field quality is high from Day 1. But it needs to be seen.

Matheson grew frustrated with how the NWSL displayed its product during her time playing in the United States. "People were surprised when no one watched it," she said. She remembers the country's top women's league being awkwardly stowed away on cable network Lifetime or, even worse, practically hidden from view on a channel named "nwslofficial2" on live streaming service Twitch.

"I couldn't even find the product and I played in the league, so how do you expect to build a fan base like that?" Matheson said before citing the growth of viewerships once the NWSL moved to CBS and the Women's Super League in England was shown on BBC and Sky Sports.

Matheson also stresses the need for high broadcast quality to fit the on-pitch product.

"If you could find women's soccer over the past decade, odds were before the last three years, you'd find it and it maybe looked like a high school game or a college game," she said. "Even if you had the best players in the world on the field, what you were seeing devalued the product."

There's confidence behind the scenes that the product is going to be very strong. The minimum salary for players is a statement of intent itself at $50,000 CAD. For comparison, pay packets in Spain's top tier start at half that amount, and salaries in the PWHL, where the first puck dropped in January 2024, begin at $35,000 USD ($50,300 CAD). The minimum in the NWSL - which opened its 12th season Friday - is $48,500 USD ($69,700 CAD).

"We want to be a top-five league in the world," Matheson told theScore. "With the average salary, with the average attendance we're projecting, with the player pool, we think we're already in that conversation."

Matheson's optimism is infectious, but it might take time for the NSL to be truly considered among the best women's soccer leagues. There's a limit to how much Matheson, Sinclair, Quinn, Scott, former Canada goalkeepers Erin McLeod (Halifax Tides player) and Stephanie Labbe (Vancouver Rise sporting director), and other well-known figures associated with the NSL can entice gifted footballers to buy into the project. The league itself has no history or reputation to lean on; it only has a vision and promise.

"I would love for it to be a top standard from Day 1, but I think finding players who are ready to commit to a league that's unproven is difficult," Halifax Tides assistant coach Kennedi Kiarash said.

"There are top leagues that are proven, and that's where the best of the best are going right now."

And even if the individual quality is high from the first whistle, the teams won't hit their peaks until they gel over hundreds of training sessions.

"It takes time to create that chemistry and the identity that each team is going to want to have. That just doesn't happen over the course of one preseason," Vancouver Rise co-owner Sinclair said, noting it took five years for her former club, the NWSL's Portland Thorns, to really find itself.

The league can fulfill one of its primary objectives as it develops: Producing Canadian talent. Matheson attended the Women's Leagues Forum in January and said one presentation revealed the Canadian squad ranked outside the top 10 for total minutes played in professional club soccer ahead of the 2023 Women's World Cup. The NSL should remedy that. AFC Toronto's Emma Regan and Vancouver's Samantha Chang played for Canada in the Pinatar Cup in February.

Matheson wants the 2027 Women's World Cup to be a good measuring stick of how the NSL is helping the Canada women's national team.

"How many players are there playing in the NSL? We're hoping by that time, it's about a third of the roster," she said.

Playing for Canada isn't the only way for the trailblazing women of the NSL to inspire the next generation, though. Matches will be available on linear television and digital streaming platforms, and they will be in stadiums across the country - including venues such as BMO Field and BC Place for the home openers next month. It gives youngsters more chances than ever to watch women's soccer.

"It's just everything. It gives you the opportunity to think of a career or possibilities that you otherwise wouldn't have," Matheson said.

"I think it makes an impact on our culture for the young boys that are watching, too. They get to put on the TV in Canada now, and if it's pro sport on television, it's not necessarily men's pro sport. I think that can fundamentally shift societies and culture, and I love that part about it as well."

Matheson, an engine in midfield during her playing career, has co-founded a league that has the potential to transcend soccer. It can be a genuine driving force for change.