Maple Cup | For maple syrup supremacy!

There’s a soccer team in Montreal that’s having a colorful 2024, and it’s not the one you think. CS Saint-Laurent, a semi-pro club playing in Ligue1 Québec, is crossing the American border this Wednesday to play the Maple Cup against the Vermont Green in Burlington.

There is a lot of new information in this primer, we agree. Fear not, dear readers, we will review each of these elements.

Let’s start with the most unusual: what is the Maple Cup?

It is a trophy awarded to the winner of a unique friendly match, whose name recalls the maple syrup industries of Quebec and Vermont. Who makes the best syrup, who is better at football? The stakes are high, no doubt about it.

This Wednesday will see the very first edition of this cup, which pits the 2023 champion of the Quebec soccer league against the Burlington team. The Green plays in USL2, essentially the third American division, a level that is comparable to the Canadian and Quebec semi-pro.

This club, founded in 2022, is distinguished by its environmental mission and its values ​​rooted in social justice, which are at the heart of its decisions and activities. This is also, in large part, what explains a level of passionate support from its fans that does not exist anywhere else in the American USL2 circuit. We will return to this in an article published later this week.

The goal of the Maple Cup is to “showcase Quebec players,” Rocco Placentino, technical director of CS Saint-Laurent, tells us. For perpetuity, he would also like “each winner of Ligue 1, each year, to play this game” the following year.

When first told about it, last May, Placentino even said he wanted to “take it to another level.” “Why not play them here in August? Why not make an event out of it?”

Nothing has been announced to this effect yet.

“It’s really about increasing our visibility,” adds Nicholas Razzaghi, St-Lo’s head coach, during a telephone conversation with The Press the day before the game. Playing against a good team, creating a relationship with them and, at the same time, showing the quality of the players we have. Plus, one of our former players, Yann Toualy, is playing there. That’s good.”

“A pride for everyone”

Yann Toualy signed with the Green on June 4. After four games, the 24-year-old striker has already scored two goals.

“It’s a lot of emotions,” he told us on the phone Tuesday when asked about the idea of ​​facing his former team. [Saint-Laurent] is a club that gave me everything, it’s my first club. I spent a total of 10 years there.”

“Wesley [Wandje]the captain, we’ve been playing together since we were 15. We’ve always been on the same teams. For the first time, we’re going to play against each other. It’s going to be weird.”

Toualy wears the number 64 in Vermont, a reminder of the bus line that crosses Saint-Laurent to Cartierville. An area rich in football, according to the Quebecer.

“A lot of talent that comes from Montreal came out of there,” he assures. Moïse Bombito, Safwane [Mlah]these are guys who grew up there.”

Bombito, who is blossoming with the Colorado Rapids in MLS and with Jesse Marsch’s Canadian team, we are starting to get to know him well. Mlah, like striker Loïc Kwemi, are two Saint-Laurent players who have just found work in the Canadian Premier League (CPL), with Winnipeg’s Valour FC. A third from the club, Jefferson Alphonse, signed his long-awaited first professional contract with the Halifax Wanderers.

All these great people took advantage of the great platform obtained thanks to the sparkling 2024 of the club led by Placentino. In these pages, you have heard plenty about the great run of CS Saint-Laurent in the Canadian Championship, last May. It began by beating the Halifax Wanderers in the preliminary phase… which gave it a date with Toronto FC in the quarter-finals. A clash that ended with a combined score of 11-1, on aggregate goals. Notwithstanding the result, it is difficult to do better in terms of showcase.

Concretely, what did this work consist of?

“We were originally hoping that some of our players would sign [chez les pros, dans les dernières années]. But nobody signed. So we ended up with an incredible team! We won the league first [en 2023]. We had historic results. Afterwards, we prepared for the Canadian Championship. […] We found a way to beat Halifax. From there, all the doors opened.”

A “unique” craze

For the Green, Saint-Laurent represents one of the biggest challenges of their two-month season. Talk to Montrealer Daniel Pacella, an Impact Academy alumnus who has been playing in Burlington for four years, including a freshman year at the University of Vermont (UVM). As an aside, there is also a third Quebecer signed with the team south of the border: Nathan Siméon, a 24-year-old Montreal defenseman who notably spent time in Orlando City’s youth system.

“They’ll be one of the best teams we’ll face all year,” Pacella told us Tuesday. “We’ll take it seriously. The results they had in the Canadian Championship are good for us too, it helps us get a little more visibility in this game. We really want to win the Cup for the fans and for the owners, who gave a lot to make an event like this happen.”

The team plays its games at UVM’s Virtue Field, precisely. A 2,600-seat stadium that often sells out the Green. A fan craze that is “unique” in USL2, according to the 24-year-old midfielder.

“When we go to away games, you see it,” he said. “There’s nobody there. It’s crazy to have every game sold out here.”

Wednesday’s should be no exception: a full house is expected. Maple syrup supremacy is at stake, after all.

The game will be broadcast this Wednesday at 6 p.m. on the Vermont Green YouTube channel.