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.
Québec official soccer team
The Québec official soccer team () is the official soccer team representing the Canadian province of Québec. The stated mission of the team is "...to allow Québec to be represented at the international level to share our language, our culture and heritage through soccer." Originally, the team was not sanctioned by the Quebec Soccer Federation as the federation was suspended by the Canadian Soccer Association in June 2013 for not allowing players wearing turbans for religious reasons to participate in matches. However, the team communicated with the federation and regularly communicated the progress of the project to build a relationship in preparation for being sanctioned in the future. In May 2014, it was announced that the team had officially become associated with the QSF and were working together to perhaps eventually become a member of CONCACAF and play against other national teams. Québec is not a member of FIFA or any confederation or subconfederation as they are wholly a part of Canada. However, Québec is an official member of the Confederation of Independent Football Associations (ConIFA), a global umbrella organization for national football teams outside FIFA. Usually in Québec, the majority of the population speak French, while English is the largest minority. Although the purpose of the team is said to be cultural, not political, the team is partially funded by the Saint-Jean-Baptiste Society and Parti Québécois, a Canadian political party that advocates the Québec sovereignty movement. The team was formed in 2013 and played its first match against a Tibet select team in the 2013 International Peoples, Cultures, and Tribes Tournament, an event hosted by Marseille as the 2013 European Capital of Culture, on 24 June 2013. Québec won the match 21–0. The team currently consists mostly of players from the Première Ligue de soccer du Québec and former Montreal Impact players. They are currently coached by former Canadian international Patrick Leduc.