The 2016 Première ligue de soccer du Québec season is the fifth season of play for the

Première ligue de soccer du Québec The Première ligue de soccer du Québec (PLSQ) is a semi-professional soccer league created in 2012. The Quebec Soccer Federation operates both men's and women's divisions at the pro-am tier of the Canadian soccer league system. The league is pa ...

; the highest level of soccer based in the

Canadian Canadians (french: Canadiens) are people identified with the country of Canada. This connection may be residential, legal, historical or cultural. For most Canadians, many (or all) of these connections exist and are collectively the source of ...

province of

Québec Quebec ( ; )According to the Government of Canada, Canadian government, ''Québec'' (with the acute accent) is the official name in Canadian French and ''Quebec'' (without the accent) is the province's official name in Canadian English is ...

and one of two Division 3 semi-professional soccer leagues in the

Canadian soccer pyramid The Canadian soccer league system, also called the Canadian soccer pyramid, is a term used in soccer to describe the structure of the league system in Canada. The governing body of soccer in the country is the Canadian Soccer Association (CSA), w ...

(the other being

League1 Ontario League1 Ontario (L1O) is a semi-professional men's soccer league in Ontario, Canada. The league began play in 2014 and is sanctioned by the Canadian Soccer Association and the Ontario Soccer Association as a pro-am league in the Canadian so ...

CS Mont-Royal Outremont Club Soccer Mont-Royal Outremont is a Canadian semi-professional soccer club based in the Montreal boroughs of Mount Royal and Outremont. Since 2013, the club has competed in the Première ligue de soccer du Québec. Their women's team has compet ...

was the defending champion from 2015 and won the title again this season.

Changes from 2015

The league will again feature seven teams, as in 2015. In December 2015, the league announced that FC L'Assomption-Lanaudière had dropped out of the league and that the club's regional soccer association, ARS Lanaudière, would field a new club in the PLSQ called FC Lanaudière. This club is meant to represent the whole

Lanaudière Lanaudière (, ) is one of the seventeen administrative regions of Quebec, Canada, situated immediately to the northeast of Montreal. It has a total population ( 2016 Census) of 494,796 inhabitants, an increase of 4.9% over the 2011 census. Geogr ...

region, and is supported by the association's 14 clubs, including L'Assomption-Lanaudière.

Teams

The following seven teams will take part in the 2016 season:

Standings

Each team plays 18 matches as part of the season; three against every other team in the league. There are no playoffs; the first-place team is crowned as league champion at the end of the season and faces the

league champion in the

Inter-Provincial Cup The Inter-Provincial Cup is a limited-overs cricket tournament in Ireland between the four leading cricketing provinces of Ireland. The tournament was held for the first time in 2013 across venues in both Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ir ...

Cup

The cup tournament is a separate contest from the rest of the season, in which all seven teams from the league take part, and is unrelated to the season standings. It is not a form of playoffs at the end of the season (as is typically seen in North American sports), but is a competition running in parallel to the regular season (similar to the

Canadian Championship The Canadian Championship (french: Championnat canadien) is an annual soccer tournament contested by premier Canadian professional teams. The winner is awarded the Voyageurs Cup and Canada's berth in the CONCACAF Champions League. It is contest ...

or the

FA Cup The Football Association Challenge Cup, more commonly known as the FA Cup, is an annual knockout football competition in men's domestic English football. First played during the 1871–72 season, it is the oldest national football competi ...

), albeit only for PLSQ teams. All matches are separate from the regular season, and are not reflected in the season standings. The 2016 PLSQ Cup will maintain the same format as the previous seasons, as a two-game aggregate knockout tournament with a single match final. As defending champion, Lakeshore SC will obtain a bye for the first round.

First round

FC Gatineau wins 5-2 on aggregate.
CS Mont-Royal Outremont wins 7-4 on aggregate.
AS Blainville wins 5-0 on aggregate.

Semifinals

FC Gatineau wins 4-2 on aggregate.
AS Blainville wins 5-3 on aggregate.

Final

Inter-Provincial Cup Championship

The Inter-Provincial Cup Championship was a two-legged home-and-away series between the league champions of League1 Ontario and the

– the only Division 3 men's semi-professional soccer leagues based fully within

Canada Canada is a country in North America. Its ten provinces and three territories extend from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean and northward into the Arctic Ocean, covering over , making it the world's second-largest country by tot ...

. ''CS Mont-Royal Outremont won 3–2 on aggregate''

Statistics

Top Goalscorers

Source

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Top Goalkeepers

Minimum 450 minutes played. Source

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Awards

Reserve Division

The league operated a reserve division.

References

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:2016 Premiere Ligue de soccer du Quebec season 2016 in Canadian soccer, Premiere Première ligue de soccer du Québec seasons