"It's super exciting" CanMNT assistant Mauro Biello on FC Supra du Québec

For Mauro Biello, the Montréal Supra represented an opportunity.

As a young player, despite representing Canada at the youth level, Biello didn't see a path to the professional game. At the time, there just weren't many options for Canadian players to pursue a career in the sport -- especially at home.

In 1987, however, the Canadian Soccer League was founded, and a year later, a team in his home city of Montréal launched. Biello remembers watching the league's game of the week on TV, called by the legendary Graham Leggat. "As a young kid playing soccer it meant a lot, and you started to dream about maybe one day becoming professional," Biello told CanPL.ca.

That dream became a reality in 1991 when Biello suited up for Supra, playing in their final two seasons of existence. That kicked off a ten-year professional career that saw him play almost 400 matches for the Montréal Impact and four times for Canada. Having since gone into coaching, he is now the assistant for the Canadian men's national team.

On Wednesday night, 34 years since he began his playing career, Biello stood on the stage at Complexe Multi-Sports de Laval to witness the rebirth of the Supra name. The Canadian Premier League announced FC Supra du Québec as their newest club, a significant moment for the sport in the province.

"For me, FC Supra, is where it all began," said Biello on Wednesday night. "To see it come back, it's great. It's great for young kids. It's great for the province, the country. Super happy for the CPL to get a team that they've been looking for. So it's great for soccer. It's super exciting."

FC Supra du Québec will be the first CPL club to play in the province. The announcement comes at an exciting time when Québec is proving to be a hotbed of talent within the Canadian soccer landscape.

Players like Max Crépeau, Moïse Bombito, Ismaël Koné, and Nathan Saliba have all become key contributors to the men's national team, while Evelyne Viens, Gabrielle Carle and Marie-Yasmine Alidou are doing the same on the women's team.

"It has been a lot of hard work behind the scenes," says Biello of what has led to the recent surge of emerging talent. "A lot of those grassroots coaches that have worked hard over the year have helped these players develop."

One such grassroots figure who has been putting in that crucial work over the past decade plus is Rocco Placentino. As the sporting director for CS Saint-Laurent, he played a role in the growth and development of many of the province's top players, including Bombito and Koné.

Biello and Placentino were teammates with the Montréal Impact back in the day, and for his part, Biello thinks Placentino is the perfect person to lead this project.

"I'm just really happy for him to be able to get this over the line," said Biello. "And now he's got a new project on his hands, and I'm sure he's going to work very hard to make it as successful as all the other endeavours that he's had in the past."

Now, Biello says, Placentino's club will provide exactly what the original Montréal Supra did all those years ago -- an opportunity to dream for the province's young players. Since its launch, the stated goal of the league has been to do just that, giving Canadian players a chance to play professionally in their home country. In fact, Biello's son, Alessandro, currently plays for the Halifax Wanderers on loan from CF Montréal. Now, with FC Supra du Québec's introduction, another incredibly talented pool of players will have their eyes opened to professional possibilities.

"It's a window of opportunity for a lot of young players," Biello told OneSoccer's Kristian Jack at Wednesday night's event. "When they're little, they could dream about playing, one day representing a team in the CPL. And I think that's the most important thing, is there's so many kids playing today, and now they have this opportunity to one day potentially play professionally, and I think that's great."