Montreal Roses

The Montreal Roses had barely played a match when their fiercest rival was decided for them: a sold-out crowd of 14,518 turned out at BMO Field for the meeting with AFC Toronto, and what has since become the Northern Super League's most heated fixture was underway before either club had a season behind it. That first year, 2025, ended with the Roses among the league's top four, only for Toronto to close them out 6-1 on aggregate in the semifinals.

The club exists because the league does: both were built in 2023 as Canada's first professional women's soccer competition took shape, backed by Isabèle Chevalier, known to Quebec audiences from the French-Canadian version of Dragons' Den, and Jean-François Crevier. Sporting direction went to Marinette Pichon. On the field, the early identity ran through Tanya Boychuk, who scored the Roses' first-ever goal and shares the captaincy with defender Mégane Sauvé.

Stability off the pitch has taken longer to arrive. Robert Rositoiu, appointed head coach in 2024, was fired in August 2026 after the club went out in the first round of the W Canadian Championship to Simcoe County Rovers.

The blue-and-red kit was a deliberate break from Montreal's other clubs, its patterns designed by artist Niti Marcelle Mueth to speak to Quebec's mixed cultural heritage rather than to any one of them.