One year ago, Grady McDonnell made perhaps the biggest decision of his career: as a 15-year-old, he opted to sign a contract with Vancouver FC, to play professional football for his hometown in the Canadian Premier League.

Twelve months and 17 first-team appearances later, McDonnell now finds himself in Belgium, having signed with Club Brugge for the second-largest transfer fee in CPL history, all before his 17th birthday.

Speaking to CanPL.ca from a hotel room in Bruges, it’s easy to see how thrilled the young midfielder is to be joining a European club with this kind of pedigree.

“I’m super excited. It’s a huge opportunity, I’m finally over in Europe,” McDonnell said. “The coolest thing for me is that the first team is right there, and they just played Juventus in the Champions League. It’s all right there at my fingertips, so I’ve just got to keep working and hopefully one day I could be stepping on that field against Juventus.”

Indeed, Club Brugge have been formidable on the biggest stage this year, with impressive UEFA Champions League results against the likes of Juve, Aston Villa and Sporting Lisbon, which saw them through to the knockout stages of the competition.

What excites McDonnell most about that, though, is how Brugge have done so well while maintaining a commitment to developing younger talent.

With an average age of 24.6, Club Brugge’s first-team squad of 25 features 10 players who came though their academy or reserve team (also known as Club NXT) — which is where McDonnell himself will be starting his journey with his new team. He pointed out that, in the club’s recent 0-0 Champions League draw against Juventus, their starting XI included three players aged 20 or younger, and five who had played for their academy or second team.

Plenty of talent has come through Brugge’s ranks in recent years; such names as Ivan Perišić, Loïs Openda and Canadian star Tajon Buchanan have played for their first team in the past 15 years.

Even Club Brugge’s manager, Nicky Hayen, was recently promoted from Club NXT, and will therefore have a good understanding of how to bring young players through the system.

Now, the onus is on McDonnell to make an impression in training and in matches in Belgium’s Challenger Pro League, the second-tier competition in which Club NXT play.

One advantage he’ll have is his professional experience from the 2024 season with Vancouver FC.

McDonnell opted to go pro in the CPL rather than playing more academy or youth-level soccer in the Vancouver Whitecaps system, and that choice has helped him grow from a raw talent into a more mature player. In the CPL, where he trained with and played against seasoned professionals — a couple of them as much as 20 years older than himself — he learned to think at their pace and make smarter decisions.

“Playing with all the experienced guys and learning from them, and playing at the high speed and high level, definitely helped me improve a lot,” he said. “I couldn’t really see this move happening without Vancouver FC, they helped a huge amount.”

Prior to his time with VFC, McDonnell was used to playing against opponents his own age, where he had a physical advantage over many of them. At the pro level, that was no longer true.

“I think [my game] got a lot more diverse,” he added. “Playing with people my age, I can get away with a bigger touch, or using my body, but obviously with fully grown men you can’t really get away with that. I have to work on the little things; I can’t always use my body or use my pace to beat a player, so I have to think and use other ways to beat them.”

Having now tasted the professional level, McDonnell is eager to keep progressing and push himself toward Brugge’s first team.

Simultaneously though, he’s got his eye on the international game.

Now that McDonnell is in Belgium, he won’t need to travel across the Atlantic — at least a 13-hour journey from Vancouver — to play for the Republic of Ireland. Over the past two years, he has become a pivotal figure in the Irish youth teams, with 26 caps now between the U-15, U-16 and U-17 teams, even wearing the captain’s armband occasionally.

The Irish U-17 team has an important few months approaching, where they’ll attempt to qualify for the 2025 UEFA European U-17 Championship in Albania. McDonnell helped them advance to the second round of qualifying back in early November, and focus will now shift to the international window in March. The Republic of Ireland are in Group A6 along with Belgium, Poland and Iceland, and they’ll need to finish first to guarantee themselves qualification for both the European Championship and the 2025 FIFA U-17 World Cup, which kicks off in Qatar next November.

For now though, McDonnell’s main priority is to get accustomed to living in a new country, and to integrate himself into his new team as quickly as possible.

“Now is the time to put my head down and work as hard as I can, do as much as I can to break into the first team — that’s the goal,” he said. “I know it’s going to be a long journey, it’s going to be a hard one too, but I’m ready for it. I’m ready to work hard every day and chase my dreams.”

If, one day, McDonnell does find himself stepping onto the pitch at the Jan Breydel Stadium, perhaps representing Club Brugge in the Champions League, he’ll be one of the great success stories of Canadian development.

And if he’s on the world’s biggest stages, don’t forget that his professional journey began at Willoughby Community Park.