Montreal Roses: End of January Review

Montreal has brought in some of the best players in the league with signings like Charlotte Bilbault, Alexandria Hess and Latifah Abdu. It’s their commitment to local depth signings that may come back to bite them. They’ve only got six stand out signings and the rest are relative unknowns, often coming out of U-Sports which isn’t generally considered as high a level as the leagues other teams are drawing from.

Stars:

Charlotte Bilbault - FR - CM - 34

Bilbault is a former French national team player who’s announcement set a bit of an example for what teams were going to be up against. Bilbault’s a graduate of France’s national Clairefontaine academy who’s spent her whole career in the French top flight. In the extremely valuable and totally meaningful EAFC player ratings she’s an 80, borderline playable in FUT! She’s played with the national team as recently as 2023 when she scored against scored against Denmark. I think I’ve made my point that Bilbault will be a threat to anyone in this league even as more teams have gone about bringing more players from the top of the global game.

Latifah Abdu - CAN - FW - 23

Abdu is an interesting player who has been trying to break into the national team picture, but has only received one call-up thus far. She had been playing in the french first division with Guingamp who are… not great, but its a high level league. Abdu should be a good threat coming in off the wing or through the centre. You can check her out in action in this replay of a game vs. Strasbourg, she’s playing right wing in red.

Alexandria Hess - US - FW - 28

Hess has spent the last three years with MSV Duisburg, first in the German second division than the last two years in the Frauenbunde. That’s a very strong level and, importantly, Hess has been a major part of the team in both of those seasons putting up over 1200 minutes each year. You can check her out in highlights vs Frankfurt, she (#20) doesn’t look great there, but hard to do so when your team is getting trucked 5-1.

Supporting Cast:

Tanya Boychuk - CAN - FW - 24

Another good Canadian striker threat, Boychuk arrives to Montreal from Vittsjo in Sweden. One thing Boychuk has going for her over someone like Abdu is Boychuk has put up strong goal numbers in Sweden, she’s a proven scorer at a level that’s probably a little better than what we should expect from NSL. Very few teams have found a way to bring in this type of player and it may be very significant over the season

Mégane Sauvé - CAN - DF - 28

Sauvé arrives in Montreal from Sporting Lisbon where she played 268 minutes last year, not a lot, but Sporting is one of Portugal’s big two. The year prior she’d featured much more prominently with Valaderes playing all but one of their games and apparently impresing Sporting. From a Montreal perspective this is a really nice pick up of a local player who will be an immediate contributor.

Gabrielle Lambert - CAN - GK - 30

Lambert’s been a bit overlooked, I thought it was a bit mean to announce her the same day as Bilbault, but she’s a top flight keeper. Since 2016 Lambert has played 46 games between the French and German first divisions. I expect she’ll be the Roses first choice and I think they’ve chosen well.

Ensemble:

Something notable about Montreal’s ensemble cast is that they’ve drawn much more from U-Sports than most other teams. The competition are mostly picking out of NCAA or low end european leagues. Montreal’s insistence on U-Sports is likely in part because french canadians are less likely to go to english only universities in the US. At a cursory level and as someone who doesn’t follow U-Sports that closely it is tempting to write this group off as weaker depth than most teams, but Rositou is precisely the type who has been watching this cohort in U-Sports and Pichon’s opinion on player quality is deserving of serious respect. For those reasons I assume this group will compare approximately equivalent to similar groups coming out of NCAA.

Noemi Paquin, one of their NCAA picks deserves a spotlight as a likely top quality depth piece in an already stacked offensive group.

Canadian youth internation Felicia Roy is also worth noting as one of the younger players in the league.

Lorie Thibault - CAN - MF - 22

Mara Bouchard - CAN - MF - 22

Stephanie Hill - CAN - DF - 22

Felicia Roy - CAN - MF - 18

Noemi Paquin - CAN - FW - 23

Jodi Smith - US - DF - 22

Anne-Marie Laroche - CAN - GK - 24

Claire Monyard - CAN - FW - 24