Arizona Expansion Franchise

Where could they play without the fans burning to death in the stands?

 

yeah, if the schedule plays out through the summer, they would have to play night games like how ASU plays evening games especially during the first part of the season.

 

Evening kickoffs would be fine. My PDL team played all through the summer, even on days with daytime temperatures of 90-100 degrees, but by the evening it was a pleasant 70/75... nice balmy evenings under the lights. Not an issue.

A few years ago, my old PDL team played a Saturday afternoon game, 3pm kickoff, when the temp in the San Fernando Valley at kickoff was 106 degrees. They managed it, though...

 

A noon time kickoff would give them a hellish home field advantage especially when Edmonton shows up in 2011.

 

I have lived here since 1995. No time in the summer is it ever even high 80's by early evening. Heck, it is often still in the 90's when i am working night shift.

That might be like that in northern AZ in the mountain area but certainly not down here in the central valley anywhere near Phoenix.

 

Actually, it was against your guys that we had the 106 degree game. If you know Paul Aigbogun, ask him if he remembers what the field temp was

 

I say the NASL takes MLS's new approach of investing in areas of preexisting support or growth in support. This would mean is Arizona soccer fans could get a strong central fanbase to build around, the NASL would then come.

i.e. Plant the seeds where the lies fertile ground, avoid weed (Super Eurosnobs) filled areas and barren soil (soccer haters)

 

Thats the truth. It never gets below 90 unless its 4am. If a team wants to play here, they'll need something indoors. The only viable option is playing at UoP and paying ridiculous air conditioning bills to make it happen. Atmosphere = 0.

 

We are! We just haven't found anyone willing to take over development of our website. Kind of embarrassing I know.

Stu, I'M IN. PUT ME DOWN FOR A SEASON TICKET PACKAGE!!

 

Get a mac account, I think its like $100/year, with an email account, webpage storage, and other stuff. I made this in an hour: http://web.me.com/njndirish/Classis_Celtica/Home.html

 

$10 per seat? Sure, I'd commit to season tickets.

But honestly, it would be more of a donation. I'm not sure I would sit in 100+ weather in an outdoor stadium even if it were a night game.

 

I'm very curious to know more details.

I've visited the websites:
http://www.phoenixmonsoon.info/Home.html
http://www.monsoonmaniac.com/

but they lack details.

Who is the owner? Who is the coach? Where are the players coming from?

The websites imply that there is no stadium yet. I find that hard to believe that the USL or NASL would sanction a franchise without a contractual agreement with a stadium.

The websites imply that the stadium will be an outdoor stadium at first then the City of Phoenix will take over the dog track and build a stadium that will be the home of the Phoenix Monsoon. This is very surprising when they just sold the state capital building to raise revenue for the state.

Will this new stadium be an indoor, climate controlled, natural turf stadium? What will be the seating capacity?

The websites imply that it is a done deal. With only a year away, why is the USL/NASL not announcing this expansion team.

With Monsoon soccer starting in spring of 2011, it seems that this is a very short time to completely staff up.

Where can we get more details?

 

The AC St. Louis model? The one where the owner goes belly up in the first part of the season, and the team folds at season's end, throwing the fans under the bus?

Don't think so.

Agree with you, though, on going for a NASL team; they just need to wait until there enough western teams to make up a full division (Sacramento, PHX, Vegas, SD, maybe?).

 

dude! Not cool. The majority shareholders went belly up, but it had nothing to do with the team, they lost their money back in London. And, you can't say the team is folding at the end of the season. It might, but it's not definite. So building off the AC model is a wise decision. Predicting the future is another thing.

 

Dude, I hate to break it to you, but right now the "AC model" means basically going belly up not even halfway through the first season.

It's something I would try to avoid.

And I feel sorry for all the ACSTL fans out there, as well.

 

But again, it has nothing to do with their model. Imagine trusting two very wealthy brothers with your company and then all of a sudden they lose their money back home, and it was not because of the team. Reports actually say they were robbed, kind of a Madoff type thing. If that wouldn't have happened, everything with the team would be A-okay. why is this so hard to understand?

 

It doesn't matter why; what matters is that it's happening (and I do hope the team can find new ownership and survive). To start out with a lot of bravado, and then fall flat on your face, is what's not cool, whatever the reason.

Back to the original point, the idea of using a successful D-2 team as a gateway into MLS is not a bad idea, but shouldn't be the be-all, end-all. MLS teams formed "ex nihilo" seem to be doing well too.

 

They are all the same model in the sense of having a single organization with multiple teams in different levels (pro, women, youth, etc) and an academy, and (presumably) ambitions to get into MLS at some point. Traffic may not currently have multiple teams but this will change once their academy is set up; same applies to the Rowdies.

I don't know why one would call it the "AC St. Louis" model though, since Vancouver Whitecaps (and others) have been doing this for quite a while now.

The money side of the organization is a different matter; Vancouver and Montreal have billionaire ownership that St. Louis lacks. Profit or non-profit setup is really beside the point for most matters: either way you still have to balance the books and meet payroll. I imagine in the case of Montreal, non-profit status was helpful in a private-public partnership with the Quebec government.