Major professional sports leagues in the United States and Canada
The Canadian Football League is the highest level of play in Canadian football. The league was organized in 1956 as a cooperative agreement between two regional leagues, the Big Four (which dated to 1907) and the WIFU (which was founded in 1936), and became independent from Football Canada in 1958. The league now consists of nine teams, all based in Canada. The Grey Cup is awarded annually to the champion every November and is the highest attended sporting event in the nation. The oldest extant teams, the Hamilton Tiger-Cats and the Toronto Argonauts, trace their origins to the late 1860s and early 1870s, which ranks them amongst the oldest professional sports teams of any kind still in existence on the continent. The CFL attempted an expansion into the United States in cities that had no NFL team between 1993 and 1995, though the expansion teams all either folded or relocated to Canadian cities.
2014 FIFA World Cup squads
League systems with 20 or more players represented are listed. England includes two Premier League clubs based in Wales, Swansea City and Cardiff City (five World Cup squad members play for these clubs); the United States includes three MLS clubs based in Canada, Toronto FC, Vancouver Whitecaps FC and Montreal Impact (three World Cup squad members play for these clubs); and France includes one Ligue 1 club based in Monaco, AS Monaco (four World Cup squad members play for this club). In all, World Cup squad members play for clubs in 54 different countries, and play in 51 different national leagues.