Breaking news on the MLS expansion front. MLS, FC Barcelona and Marcelo Claure have "jointly agreed" that Miami is no longer a candidate for an expansion club. Jointly agreed is like telling people you and your girlfriend mutually agreed to break-up. In other words, it's a lie because she broke up with you. Miami joins Atlanta and Montreal in withdrawing their bids, leaving St. Louis, Vancouver, Portland, and Ottawa to fight it out for the two spots.
Portland's task force is set to recommend today a proposal to the city council that would call for the Paulson bid to chip in an additional $20M, plus a personal guarantee on the bonds for stadium improvements. I imagine the expansion fee might also be in play now with demand slowly drying up.
Tuesday, March 3, 2009
Quick Throw: Adios Miami
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8 comments:
A) Wow.
B) Pity that Montreal pulled its bid. As much as bid money, think MLS could use cities with built-in fan bases.
The Miami withdrawal initiated a discussion re: public funding of sports teams on my local NPR station today. Barca was mentioned, but was pronounced "Barka", naturally.
MLS should've anticipated the economy going down the crapper and accepted bids months ago. The only reason to stretch out the process is to make cities compete against each other -- it doesn't work if cities are dropping like flies!!
Between this and Becks, MLS now has about as much cred as the Arena Football League.
Somebody remind me again why expansion is a good idea for MLS?
@Spectator - I agree with you in general, but I don't think anyone really "believed" just how bad this would get. I'm an economics major, even if I don't use it daily, and I understood the pressures the international economy were under, but as pessimistic as I tend to be, I didn't expect 2009 to look like this clusterfuck we're all facing now...I knew we were in trouble, but what we're facing now is probably my "worst-case scenario" times 2 or 3...YMMV
well, that was fucking pathetic...2-0 Atlante. Adios, CCL, I guess the USL teams deserve my fandom...
@Andrew: How disappointing. I thought NPR and soccer fandom went hand in hand...along with latte drinking and other elitist activities.
@Sarah: Not coincidently, I heard the story while riding in a Volvo, driving to a coffee shop. I shit you not.
/so white I offend bleach (DS props)
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