Canadian Soccer League website back online, CSL response

Earlier this week, the website of the Canadian Soccer League went entirely offline and the domain became unavailable.

As of late yesterday afternoon, the Canadian Soccer League brought the site back online, though with a number of broken links, at a slightly altered address, canadiansoccerleague.ca

Stan Adamson, Director of Media and PR for the CSL, responded to my inquiries on the matter, laying out the plans for the future of the CSL online.

He stated that the Canadian Soccer Association (CSA) owns the canadiansoccerleague.com domain name and "terminated an agreement to share the domain with the CSL, something we were not prepared for." He noted that the CSL owns the canadiansoccerleague.ca domain name and that the website was being brought online with plans to launch a "new, brighter website for the new season."

He also briefly discussed the CSL's relationship with American Professional Soccer (APS) and the American Soccer League (ASL) stating that the "relationship with the ASL has progressed beyond an agreement to partner and a number of projects are being discussed for 2014, including what form the cross-border competition will take place."

The CSL and ASL are expected to make an announcement on the specifics of the partnership soon, but their new website already includes a poster describing "A Perfect Partnership" listing "Great Cross Border Competition", "Youth Player Development", and "World Class Marketing."

In terms of match officials, the CSL has been preparing a list of qualified officials, some of whom are OSA/CSA trained and are doing CSL matches under the circumstances of the CSL being a private league. Other officials received their qualifications and experience before coming to Canada and are currently working in other non-affiliated leagues according to Adamson.