The Canadian Championship returns to Starlight Stadium
Illustration by Sage Blackwell.
There is a truth that all sports fans know: when it comes time to browse the stables and hitch our wagons to a team, there’s no better feeling than strapping the reins onto a dark horse. On July 10, as Victoria’s Pacific FC (PFC) lined up against the much larger and scarier Vancouver Whitecaps for the first leg of the Canadian Championship semi-finals, they had many hopeful Victorianites doing just that — rooting for the underdog.
The Canadian Championship is an annual contest spanning three divisions of Canadian soccer, the largest of its kind in the entire country. It is, however, a lopsided affair. Major League Soccer (MLS) clubs, who benefit from huge payrolls and can thus attract much more experienced players, dominate the tournament. In fact, despite the Canadian Championship including teams from the MLS, the Canadian Premier League (CPL), and several semi-professional leagues, the competition has never had a non-MLS champion, and only one non-MLS team has ever made the finals.
But that gap is finally beginning to close, and Pacific FC is one of the teams leading the charge.
Two years ago, the Victoria-based club was dubbed “the giant killers” after a thrilling 4-3 victory over the Whitecaps in the first round of the 2021 tournament. It was a win that nobody saw coming, and one that made real waves in the soccer community. In fact, just one day after the loss, the Whitecaps fired head coach Marc Dos Santos, with many believing the defeat to PFC was the final nail in his coffin.
Now, two years later, Langford’s Starlight Stadium sold out for the return of the much-anticipated “Ferryside Derby”. PFC fans, donning purple and teal, stormed the arena in droves. Every single one of them expected a fight. The current Whitecaps roster is much stronger than they were in 2021, and having won the Canadian Championship the last two seasons, you could practically see the glint of the Voyageurs Cup — the Canadian Championship’s grand prize — in their eyes.
The rematch did anything but disappoint. It was a cagey, back-and-forth fixture. Pacific FC — who have conceded the least amount of goals in the CPL this season — immediately employed their trademark tight defense to neutralize the Whitecaps high-powered attack. But by the second half, cracks were beginning to show. In the fifty-seventh minute, Whitecaps captain and star forward Ryan Gauld headed one into the corner of the net for the first goal of the game. It was a disheartening blow, and one that exemplified the difference in firepower between the two clubs — Gauld’s $2.5 million annual salary is more than double the entirety of PFC’s roster combined.
The Victoria club refused to back down, though, and responded to the goal by mounting several impressive attacks of their own. Substitute striker Ayman Sellouf, a product of the Netherlands in his second season with PFC, had a pair of prime scoring opportunities, but was denied both times by Whitecaps goalkeeper Isaac Boehmer. The Whitecaps would win the game by a score of 1-0, with Boehmer, who played for PFC in 2021, earning player of the match honours.
Despite the PFC loss, fans of the CPL should view this semi-final round as a major victory. Not only did Victoria’s team stand their ground against a team whose payroll is almost fifteen times their own, but on the other end of the country, a CPL team secured a stunning victory against an MLS club, as Hamilton Forge FC beat Toronto FC by a score of 2-1.
This is only the first leg of the semi-finals matchups. On August 27, both Pacific FC and Forge FC will kickoff against their Goliath opponents for the second leg, where the winner will eventually be decided by an aggregate score of the two matches. For fans of these smaller CPL sides, this means that it’s still anybody’s game. PFC will face their toughest test yet when they play the Whitecaps at home in BC Place, while in Ontario, Forge FC will look to hold on against a vengeful Toronto side who has won the Canadian Championship a record eight times.
Regardless of what happens in late August, there has never been a better time to be a Canadian soccer fan. The ever-narrowing gap between the MLS and CPL demonstrates a constantly growing pool of talent throughout the country. MLS teams are simply no longer large enough to carry all the good players, and lower league teams are reaping the rewards. PFC alone has fourteen players who formerly played for MLS teams or their academies.
On the international level, the Canadian men’s squad is currently in a fantastic run of form, having just earned fourth place in their Copa América debut. With Canada set to co-host the 2026 World Cup, all eyes will soon be on Canadian soccer, and for the first time in our country’s history, we’ll be ready to match their gaze.
