Is Kianz Froese Heading To Winnipeg?

UPDATE: It’s official: one day later, Froese joined Valour FC on a deal running through the 2025 CPL season with a club option for 2026.

With Canadian Premier League side Valour FC in need of goals, the club has teased a new signing inbound from Germany – and it could actually take shape in the form of a homecoming.

The Winnipeg-based side placed heavy emphasis on the new signing’s arrival from Deutschland, with the short teaser video below showcasing a German flag and a German sentence that roughly translates to ‘nice to see you again’.

It looks like the new signing could be Kianz Froese, a Cuban-Canadian attacking midfielder who has featured twice for the Canadian national team and has long flirted with a return to Canadian soil. In fact, we speculated he’d make a solid CPL arrival last summer.

While we’ve gone a bit mad in looking things over, the shoes in one of his social media posts looks like a plausible match to the ones seen above:

Froese has deep roots in Winnipeg, where he spent his formative years before his football career took flight out west through the Whitecaps FC Residency program. He eventually landed a homegrown player contract in BC and was part of the Canadian Championship-winning side in 2015 before heading to Germany by way of Fortuna Dusseldorf.

His first stint in Germany saw him feature regularly for Dusseldorf’s reserve side, and while there was speculation Froese was bound for Canada’s top flight in its inaugural season, he signed with German lower division side FC Saarbrucken that year instead. He’s been a regular feature in Germany’s lower divisions, featuring for lower division sides TSV Havelse and Wehen Wiesbaden – and even picked up some lower division titles – before entering free agency last May.

Winnipeg’s Canadian Premier League side currently rests in seventh place out of eight, showing some glimpses of promise hampered by a low-scoring offense and a leaky backline. Should Froese be coming home, the 29-year-old would enter as an exciting addition with a high technical level from his days in Europe – where players like Tobias Warschewski also tested their mettle.

Kianz’s two caps for the national team came in friendly matches against Ghana and the USA in 2015-2016, before which he had represented both Cuba and Canada at the youth level. Given that Pacific will have been on the hunt for some attack-minded talent, Valour will have done well if they’ve truly landed the midfielder.

The Valour FC teaser flashed June 18 at the end of the video, so it looks like fans won’t have to wait much longer to find out of the midseason addition is indeed Froese.