CF Montreal is a professional soccer team in Canada. CF stands for club de foot (football club). Soccer is called football in much of the world. The team competes in the Eastern Conference of Major League Soccer (MLS), the top soccer league in the United States and Canada. The team plays its home games at Stade (Stadium) Saputo in Montreal, Quebec.
The franchise dates back to 1993, when the team joined the American Professional Soccer League (APSL) as the Montreal Impact. In 1995, the APSL was renamed the A-League, which became the United Soccer League’s First Division (USL-1) in 2004. In 2008, Montreal won the Canadian Championship, Canada’s top professional tournament. The win earned the team entry into the CONCACAF Champions League. CONCACAF stands for Confederation of North, Central America, and Caribbean Association Football, and the league is an annual tournament among that region’s best professional clubs. The team lost in the Champions League quarterfinals. USL-1 folded in 2010, and the Impact was invited to join MLS that year.
Montreal played its first MLS match in 2012. The team first made the MLS Cup Playoffs in 2013, losing to the Houston Dynamo (now called the Houston Dynamo FC) in the opening round. The team won the Canadian Championship in 2013, 2014, 2019, and 2021. In 2015, Montreal reached the Champions League final, where it lost to Mexico’s Club de Fútbol (Football Club) América. That same year, the team signed its first major international star, Didier Drogba, a veteran striker from the west African country of Côte d’Ivoire. A striker is principally responsible for scoring. For a discussion of soccer positions and formations, see Soccer (Players and officials). In 2021, the team changed its name from the Montreal Impact to CF Montreal.
