CPL considering Winnipeg for league bubble

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This article was published 02/06/2021 (1588 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Professional soccer could be played in Winnipeg later this month.

The Free Press has confirmed with a source that the Canadian Premier League is strongly considering starting its season with all eight teams playing in a bubble in Winnipeg.

Teams would spend roughly four weeks in the Manitoba capital and play between four and eight games before returning to their respective markets for the rest of the season. The CPL intends to have a full 28-game schedule in 2021, but Canada’s third wave has forced it to look at spending at least a chunk of the season in a bubble.

Valour FC’s home is an attractive option as IG Field and the University of Manitoba campus boast arguably the best facilities in the league. However, if Winnipeg’s COVID-19 numbers don’t improve, it’s expected the CPL will move on to another market. St. John’s, N.L. is a potential backup option.

“It’s a great step tonight with the Jets having fans in the stands. Obviously with us being an outdoor arena instead of indoors, the fact they had 500, I’d love to see a few thousand in our 33,000 capacity here,” said Valour head coach and general manager Rob Gale on Wednesday.

“We just got to continue to do the right things. As a club, I think we’re almost about 85 per cent vaccinated now and that’s important within the group to make sure we’re not putting people at risk… We just got to build off of that and hopefully, we get confirmation soon on what the season looks like and what the schedule is. But importantly, the league has stated there’s going to be a full schedule this year. That for us is the most important thing. We’ll go wherever we can that’s safe to get started and get the season going because that’s what we all want to do. We’ll go to P.E.I. or wherever they tell us to go and hopefully at some stage we can be back in our home markets for sure.”

All the teams around the league have been training for weeks as they wait for an official announcement on the 2021 campaign.

In 2020, the league was forced to replace the season with a single-site tournament in Charlottetown, P.E.I., called The Island Games. The tournament ran from Aug. 13 to Sept. 19 and teams were only guaranteed seven matches.

The Free Press reached out to the CPL for comment but didn’t receive a reply by deadline.

taylor.allen@freepress.mb.caTwitter: @TaylorAllen31