Re: Assembly General Meeting Please do not let Crystal Palace Baltimore back in the league. They owe everyone possible to owe money on the Baltimore.. vendors, players, academy staff, office workers.. they were horrendous here really bad for the game.
Re: Assembly General Meeting Plenty of them do. In fact, I'm guessing the majority aren't any better. I'm not talking the NBA, NHL, MLB, NFL, or even MLS. I'm talking the majority of professional sports leagues in the U.S. - and there are a lot of them. And most of them are shoe-string, minor league operations. If it doesn't help sell tickets or sponsorships, it rarely gets done.
Re: Assembly General Meeting As I understand it (which could be wrong, I'm still getting leaks until this goes full-blown), Baltimore would have 2011 as a down year, hosting friendlies, camps, and such (i.e. things that don't cost much to put on but bring in revenue) to get their finances back on track, and they would be back in 2012. Assuming they don't turn into Atlanta ("We'll be back next year! I promise!!!"), I'm on board.
Re: Assembly General Meeting Looking like Tampa, Miami, Montreal, Carolina, Puerto Rico, Edmonton, St. Louis, and Minnesota.
Re: Assembly General Meeting Wow Atlanta instead of St Louis? Perhaps St Louis is added on later. http://bit.ly/bDnoOw
Re: Assembly General Meeting I just saw that Atlanta was in for 2011 as well on the NASL site. That is really amazing - I wonder who the money is behind Atlanta?
Re: Assembly General Meeting I wonder if the gentleman behind the WPS Atlanta Beat is involved. He played a big role in construction of the soccer specific stadium the team shares with the college.
Re: Assembly General Meeting So am I the only one that will believe the Atlanta news when I see a press release from an actual, active Atlanta team? I mean, I'm excited by the prospect and hope it comes together. But I'm also not holding my breath.
Re: Assembly General Meeting AC St.Louis Press Release: http://floodplainfooty.wordpress.co...s-release-regarding-nasl-bid-for-sanctioning/
Re: Assembly General Meeting So next season we might see 1. Impact, 2. Edmonton, 3. Railhawks, 4. Strikers, 5. Rowdies, 6. Silverbacks, 7. Islanders and 8. NSC as regular teams while numbers 9. St Louis, 10. Crystal Palace and 11. San Antonio could play exhibition games
Re: Assembly General Meeting St. Louis won't play exhibition games. Either they'll find the investor to keep the team as a full D2 team, or they'll fold.
Re: Assembly General Meeting No, you're not. I for one in ATL will believe it when I hear the result from their first game. As I said in another thread, I wonder if the 'Backs are just a placeholder to get sanctioning, while AC St. Louis gets their act together, and then they'll bow out. Jut speculation, but it makes me wonder.
Re: Assembly General Meeting He mentioned 1 million dollar, probably canadian dollar but nevertheless still a big amount of money
Re: Assembly General Meeting Actually, Brian recently changed the name of the site to IMSoccer News, but there hasn't been a url change yet. The newest article over there lists the teams as Atlanta Silverbacks, Carolina RailHawks, FC Edmonton, Miami FC, NSC Minnesota Stars, Montreal Impact, Puerto Rico Islanders and FC Tampa Bay. I understand the history of Atlanta, but I seriously doubt that USSF would let them stand as a placeholder to be swapped out for ACSTL. Besides, ACSTL aren't looking like they're in much better shape. That's good ol' Kartik for ya. Still, the site looked pretty good at launch--better than the hunk of crap that was mlssoccer.com for a good month.
Re: Assembly General Meeting With what players? Seriously? Who (that matters) is going to play exhibition games? Under what contract? We'll see San Antonio in 2012 featuring rookies and players currently under contract to other teams. AC St. Louis and CPB are both dead. There's nobody left to administer the games. The players on the 2010 rosters will all be retired or have moved on next year. There just aren't a bunch of D2 level players hanging out. And any nascent organization isn't going to waste the money to fly a bunch of out of work trialists in for a one-off (and, frankly, those trialists would probably prefer to spend their time trialing with an active team).
Re: Assembly General Meeting The Tampa Bay Rowdies promised us some friendly games during the summer of 2009 but finally decided to do nothing The FC Edmonton played some exhibition games with some local players and some dutch pro's on a summer job I have no idea what plans the San Antonio organisation has for next year, they might or might not follow Edmonton's example
Re: Assembly General Meeting Too expensive to bring in worthless players Really? Any players that'll actually be on the team and get playing time in 2011? I'm really curious. There just aren't players out there hanging around. And gathering them up for a meaningless exhibition that is unlikely to draw much in the way of paying fans, advertisers, and group sales just doesn't sound like it makes any financial sense whatsoever. Especially if you have to scrounge up equipment - and someone to actually manage it, get the numbering done, pay for a field, officials, and so on. A team would be better off sponsoring some local amateur tournament that already exists, getting the brand out their as cheaply as possible.
Re: Assembly General Meeting The Canadian dollar has been almost at parity with the US dollar for a few years now..
Re: Assembly General Meeting http://www.fcedmonton.com/content/exhibition-game-schedule-2010 They played 8 games including one against Portsmouth. According to Wikipedia they averaged 3500 fans per game. Not fantastic numbers but pretty respectable. On their home page they have photos of players visiting schools and it says they will continue to be out in the community over the offseason. That probably means those players are under contract for next year. Edmonton looks pretty damned legit to me.
Re: Assembly General Meeting Well color me impressed. But it begs the question as to what those players were doing last year. It's pretty weird to just take a year off in the middle of a playing career. Especially if you have any talent.