Winnipeg’s professional men’s soccer club, Valor FC, announced Friday that it has suspended operations.
The club, which plays in the Canadian Premier League, issued a statement thanking fans, players and staff.
The club says it will fulfill its contractual obligations to players and staff until the end of the year. Players under contract after the 2025 season will become free agents or return to their parent clubs, according to the release.
Fans who have credits on their ticket accounts will receive full refunds and the club will contact account holders with details and next steps, according to the statement.
“I had heard it and, unfortunately, I knew it was going to happen. I think it’s really disappointing,” said Rob Gale, Valor’s first head coach and general manager, who was relieved of his duties in September 2021.
“Yes, very disappointed with how everything has gone since I left the organization.”
The team was owned by the Winnipeg Football Club, which runs the Blue Bombers of the CFL. The organization treated Valor as “a tax write-off and an afterthought,” according to Gale.
Bombers president and CEO Wade Miller declined an interview request from CBC.
Gale said he and other Valor coaches created initiatives designed to build the relationship between the team and the city, such as working with local players to develop the youth soccer system in Winnipeg.
“I think the first year we had 11 Manitobans, so there was a real connection to the community,” he said, adding that seemed to work.
“We had a couple games with over 10,000 fans in that first year. And I think we averaged the most fans and had the least amount of debt in that first year.”
But coming out of the COVID-19 years, the team was abandoned by the Winnipeg Football Club, according to Gale.
“Unfortunately, what became very apparent to us is that many of our good ideas for the community and the development organization would be used for the Bombers’ student initiatives,” he said.
“And I think Valor then became an inconvenience rather than the project that it should have been, and what it could have been for our community.”
Gale said that after he and assistant coach Damian Rocke left the team, “there really was no connection or effort to attract new fans, market [the team]or bringing in Manitoba’s immigrant population, which is so vibrant and so supportive of soccer.
“Unfortunately, it has clearly been mismanaged and wasted.”
Jeremy Shields, a Valor fan since day 1 and a member of Red River Rising, the rabid Valor supporter group, said he’s still trying to process the news.
“It’s heartbreaking, kind of going back and forth between anger and frustration and sadness, and exchanging stories with people we would go to games with,” he said.
Kyle Gilson, another devoted follower, could only describe his initial feelings in a few words: “Betrayal, anger, sadness. Gutted.”
Like Gale, Shields said he never felt the WFC cared about Valor FC’s success.
“It felt like the bare minimum all the time… in terms of investing in personnel, training and even trying to recruit players,” he said.
“I felt like we were there to check a box, to say this stadium isn’t just for the Bombers, it’s for others. But it really felt like a second priority all the time.”
It took more than 25 years for Winnipeg to get another professional soccer club after the Canadian Football League folded and took the Winnipeg Fury with it in 1992.
Shields hopes it won’t take too long for the Canadian Premier League to fill the void in its circuit.
“I think if you want to be a national league you have to have some connection in the middle of the country. But right now it feels pretty sad, pretty desperate.”
Valor fans were passionate, but the WFC failed to take advantage of it, Gilson said.
“We have the support. It is the lack of understanding of the [soccer] culture around that support [by WFC]”, said.
Fans would attend the players’ training sessions, not just the games. They sang and chanted while the payers simply stretched, Gilson said.
“But as mismanagement set in, unfortunately the hardcore football fans just stopped caring.”
Valor’s shaky financial ground began soon after.
In 2022, the WFC reported a loss of $950,000 from operating the football team. The football club reported that Valor lost $1.25 million in 2023.
The Canadian Premier League has agreed to cover the club’s operating costs in 2024 with a loan, with a similar deal in place this season.
Valor finished sixth in the eight-team league last season, going 7-16-5.
“I gave four years of my life to that soccer club and organization, and everyone who knows me knows how much I wanted that to be successful. But I had no support or resources,” said Gale, now head coach of Portland Thorns FC.
“I have been successful elsewhere because I have the support of organizations and people who know how to properly run football clubs.”
Gale, who still considers Winnipeg his hometown, believes a professional soccer club would be a success in the city if it had the right owner.
“We’re in talks to try to bring a Northern Super League, hopefully, a team there on the women’s side, and I’d love to see someone come in and help, or I’d like to support, bring Valor back to what it could be,” she said.
Hector Vergara, executive director of the Manitoba Soccer Association, said he’s not willing to throw in the towel on professional soccer in Winnipeg.
Having a franchise helps grow the sport at the amateur level and develop players, coaches and referees in the system, he said.
But why To be successful, you need a suitable location. The Princess Auto stadium is ideal for 25,000 to 30,000 spectators, but soccer needs something that can seat 4,000 to 10,000 spectators, Vergara said.
He insists the Ralph Cantafio Soccer Complex on Waverley Street could serve that purpose with the right upgrades.
We will work with the football community to continue supporting any possibility of bringing in a professional entity. [back]”, said.
“We have ideas and a lot of passion for the game and we have a lot of constructive feedback we can provide to support the development of those facilities for a professional franchise.”
He declined to comment on how the WFC managed the football club.
“I have no inside knowledge of how they operated the equipment. All we know is that it didn’t work,” he said.
Winnipeg’s professional men’s soccer team, Valor FC, suspended operations Friday after seven seasons as one of the Canadian Premier League’s original franchises.
