Annie Larouche and Marinette Pichon were given the mandate to build the foundations of the Montreal team in the Super Ligue du Nord (SLN). Already, their objective is clear: to create an environment that is attractive to players and which will convince fans to join the adventure.
The Montreal team of the SLN, this new professional women’s soccer circuit which will begin its activities in 2025, announced Wednesday the appointment of Annie Larouche as president of the club, while the former glory of French soccer Marinette Pichon as will be the sports director.
In a press release, the co-founders of the team, Isabèle Chevalier and Jean-François Crevier, were delighted that the two women “are writing with [them] this page in the history of Quebec women’s sport, and contributing to the vision of the club establishing itself as a model of innovation in Canadian football through active community involvement.”
The main stakeholders, for their part, say they are determined to build an organization that will quickly succeed, both at the athletic level and in a highly restricted Montreal sports ecosystem.
“Obviously, we want a winning and competitive team on the field, but we want to give fans an incredible experience from the moment they set foot in the stadium. That they have fun and want to come back, and ensure the sustainability of the team,” explains Annie Larouche in an interview with La Presse.
“We want to build a competitive team in the first and second year, a nice homogeneous group. We want to make this team accessible to supporters and create a link with them,” adds Marinette Pichon, who until 2020 was the top scorer in the history of the French national team (81 goals in 112 caps), men and women mixed up.
There are numerous projects and the time frame to complete them is much shorter than it seems.
First, on a purely technical level, there will be around eight positions to fill, including that of head coach. Preferably, a woman would be appointed in this capacity.
It will then be necessary to find athletes to send onto the pitch, and to do this, a major national and international screening operation will be launched. “We will try to look for renowned players to build the team, with the required profiles in relation to the playing philosophy that we are going to put in place,” explains Marinette Pichon.
“We want to make them as efficient as possible on the field and support them off it,” she continues.
And where will these players go to train? Where will they play their local matches? The search to find ideal sites is already well underway, points out Annie Larouche.
“It’s a professional team where we want the girls to concentrate on what they have to do, on the game. It’s up to us to provide them with the needs and facilities of international quality so that they can flourish there. -in,” she argues.
Annie Larouche was approached from the beginning of the project aimed at establishing an SLN club in the metropolis. His hiring finally took place in May. President of the Montreal Alliance since last year, she was first named vice-president of team operations when it was founded in 2021, after spending 25 years with the Alouettes, in various positions.
She admits that the decision to leave the organization she helped build was heartbreaking. But the opportunity to “give women an equal chance” in professional soccer was too good for her to pass up.
“In my journey, I was there. We are making room for women and I am very proud of that,” she explains. It should be noted that she will remain with the Alliance until the end of the season, after the final tournament in August, before officially taking control of her new team.
“With the Alliance, I like to take the image that I started the fire in the hearth,” adds the president. I have the right team in place. Now you just have to throw a couple of logs from time to time. The base is solid, the supporters are incredible. They are in good hands. They will be able to continue the mission. »
She will now be stoking the embers of a soccer team, together with Marinette Pichon. And both hope to soon deliver a product that will ignite the crowd and the city.
