Roses FC Is the Name of Montreal's Northern Super League Team
Summary:
- Montreal’s Northern Super League franchise has announced its name.
- The women’s professional soccer franchise will be called Roses FC.
- The club unveiled its new logo on Tuesday night around an event space near the city’s Old Port.
“Nous sommes les Roses de Montréal. We are the Montréal Roses“, Montreal’s new women’s professional soccer franchise was proudly announced in a message on X on Tuesday.
The message that finally revealed the name of the club that will represent Montreal in the Northern Super League, the top flight of the Canadian soccer league system, was accompanied by a minute-long presentation video of the new logo and colour scheme.
The franchise also revealed the new logo during an event near Montreal’s Old Port.
“We Started Working on This Back in November”
It took the team almost a year to decide upon the name, as explained by Team president Annie Larouche who shared that the club began the brainstorming process “back in November”.
The president explained that the naming process involved working with two committees, one focused on branding and the second one serving as a diverse sounding board.
Team founders Isabelle Chevalier and Jean-François Crevier mentioned that they considered at least 40 names before selecting the final one. Larouche said
When the agencies came up with this name, it was just a perfect fit. It’s bilingual, it’s feminine, but it’s powerful. It’s roots and thorns. It was perfect with what we wanted to build.
As for the team’s crest that features a blue rose, with the words “ROSES” “MTL,” and “FC” in gold above it, it found inspiration in Montreal’s iconic “Farine Five Roses” sign, a well-known landmark on the Lachine Canal.
Star-Studded Presentation Event
Many iconic names in Quebec’s sports world attended the presentation event planned by the franchise. The list included hockey player Marie-Philip Poulin, Super Bowl winner Laurent Duvernay-Tardif, CF Montreal captain Samuel Piette, and Diana Matheson, one of the league’s co-founders.
Roses FC is the last of the Northern Super League’s founding teams to reveal its branding, joining the ranks of Vancouver Rise FC, Ottawa Rapid FC, Halifax Tides FC, Calgary Wild FC and AFC Toronto.
While the team has yet to announce its home venue for the inaugural 25-game season in April, Larouche indicated that an announcement will be made before the year ends.
The team is considering several locations around Montreal, including the Verdun Auditorium (3,795 seats), Place Bell (10,000 seats), and Bell Centre (21,000 seats) for the first season.
The Montreal Roses are also busy building their roster, preferably with local talent from Quebec and across Canada, with player signings expected to be announced soon.
The club’s new sporting director, Marinette Pichon, did not rule out the possibility of eventually recruiting top Canadian players like Evelyne Viens, who currently plays for AS Roma in Italy, Canadian center-back Vanessa Gilles, or Gabrielle Carle from the Washington Spirit in the NWSL.
Each team in the NSL is projected to have a $1.5-million salary cap for a roster of 20 to 25 players, with a minimum salary of $50,000.
Teams can have up to seven foreign players and one marquee player whose salary will only account for $75,000 against the cap.