In the leadup to Toronto hosting World Cup games in June 2026, we will be publishing stories about soccer in Toronto, culminating with our upcoming Spring issue that focuses on how the game plays out in our city. In our first article in the series, as winter winds down Alex Kharabian profiles Toronto’s semi-pro indoor soccer team as it wraps up a successful season.
Most Toronto soccer fans spend the winter watching matches on television. But if they venture to a converted rink in the city’s east end, they can see a version of the game being played live during the coldest months.
On a Sunday afternoon in February, the sound inside the arena at the Scarborough Soccer Centre is different from what most soccer fans expect. The ball does not simply roll across the turf. It loudly ricochets off the boards and rebounds into open space. Substitutions happen in quick bursts, with players hopping over the wall mid-play before sprinting back into the action. Spectators file in from the cold and sit just a few feet from the boards, close enough to hear players calling for passes. The pace is relentless.
“It’s just a fast paced, small-sided game,” says Amie Lin, who regularly attends matches. “It’s always so much more interesting and more fun to watch for spectators.”
The setting looks unusual at first. The Canadian Crusaders play arena soccer, a version of the sport that is played on artificial turf enclosed by boards. Those boards become part of the tactics. Players angle passes off the wall to escape pressure or create space behind defenders. The game moves quickly, with frequent substitutions and constant contact. Predictably for a Canadian team, the Crusaders use a converted hockey rink as their home field.
For Wahiz Rahimi, one of the team’s players, the format requires a different way of thinking about the sport. Rahimi grew up playing soccer in the Greater Toronto Area and developed through local youth systems before finding his way into indoor professional play. Like many arena players, he balances the indoor season with outdoor competition during the rest of the year.
“Imagine you’re playing in a hockey rink on turf,” he says. “It’s very different. It’s a lot more physical. You’ve got to think quicker.”
The results have been hard to ignore this season. The Crusaders are currently 10-0 and have already clinched a spot in the playoffs. When they travel south of the border to face American teams, Rahimi says the players are aware of what they represent.
“We’re pretty much representing Canada every game,” he explains. The Crusaders are the only Canadian team competing in Major League Indoor Soccer (MLIS). The semi-professional club plays their home games in Scarborough, with free admission for spectators.
Despite the level of competition inside the arena, the Crusaders are largely unknown in the city. Part of that obscurity comes from how fans are accustomed to experiencing the sport during the colder months. Soccer remains popular in Toronto during the winter, but mostly through screens. European leagues whose season goes through the winter months dominate viewing, while the local game effectively disappears from outdoor public spaces covered in snow, ice, or mud.
For fans hoping to watch the sport in person during winter, the options are limited. Luigi Di Serio, owner of the Crusaders, believes indoor soccer fills that gap. “It’s the only Toronto-based soccer you can watch live during the winter,” he says.
While professional outdoor leagues attract larger crowds and stronger media attention, arena soccer in Toronto has developed more quietly. Many spectators find the games through friends or local soccer connections instead of large marketing campaigns. The venues hosting the games feel closer to community rinks than professional stadiums. The result is a league that exists within the city but is almost never a part of the broader sports conversation.
In Scarborough, however, the Crusaders’ influence extends well beyond the arena.
Anton Skerritt sees that influence from a unique perspective. A former Olympic sprinter and professional soccer player who grew up in the area, Skerritt now works as a high school principal in the community. He has known John Williams, the head coach of the Crusaders, for years, dating back to their time as teammates.
Recently, Skerritt was speaking with one of his students, a soccer player who had been struggling with attendance at school. Hoping to make a point about discipline, he decided to call Williams and put the conversation on speakerphone.
Skerritt remembers asking him a simple question.
“I said, Johnny, if I recommend a player to you and I tell you he’s a really good player, lots of skill, this, that, the other; and if he comes to you and he doesn’t show up for your first three practices, he’s late, and then he’s absent for the fourth practice, what do you do?”
Williams responded immediately.
“I don’t want him.”
For Skerritt, this answer conveyed a lesson to the student that extended far past soccer.
“The discipline that he has to have to be successful in academics at school and the discipline that he needs to be a professional soccer player are one and the same,” he says.
The point was not about talent, it was about consistency. Showing up matters.
That standard resonates in Scarborough, where access to visible routes into professional sport can feel limited. The Crusaders offer one of the few places in the area where fans can experience that level of structure up close. For the players themselves, it offers an unconventional, yet feasible, path into high-level competition.
In a landscape where youth talent is usually spread out across a sea of clubs and semi-professional leagues, smaller-sided formats like arena soccer have quietly carved out space. They need fewer players than traditional outdoor teams and can adapt more easily to local conditions. They exist within the city’s density instead of sprawling beyond it.
Still, much of this unfolds without headlines. As the World Cup approaches, attention across the city is beginning to turn toward soccer, most of it focusing on star players and international competition. Away from that spotlight, another version of the sport has been carrying on through the winter months, largely out of view.
The Crusaders are not filling 40,000-seat venues or drawing attention from soccer fans across the globe. But on winter afternoons, when outdoor fields are empty and piles of snow are all we can see outside, the game is still being played. The boards still echo and families still gather in the stands.
When Toronto’s soccer culture moves indoors each winter, the Crusaders help keep it visible, sustaining the rhythm of the sport in a corner of the city that has long known the importance of building their own opportunities.
Photo courtesy of the Canadian Crusaders
