Looks like we have our next expansion team: FC Cincinnati to make significant soccer announcement at May 29 event May 24, 2018, 12:49PM EDT MLSsoccer staff Rumor has it that Cincy will start playing next season (2019), ahead of Nashville and Miami (both slated to start in 2020).
St Louis is certainly deserving. Unfortunately, that has very little to do with the process. They city voted down the stadium plan, which pretty much killed their chances.
MLS. I get the stadium issue, but the expansion is reminding me of when the NHL went off the tracks. You end up with a bunch of franchises in nowheres-villes, for deals that were good at the time, but not so much in the longer run. SL is a place with soccer in it's bones, not some 2nd tier city that came up with an interest-list and a stadium plan.
There is an ongoing argument in the Crew to Austin thread in MLS N&A where some people are all "Y U hatin' on Austin, brah?" The thing is, Austin (and many other cities could be a good MLS market in the right circumstances. In that instance, the attitude is, sure, Austin can have a team, just like Nashville, Detroit, Sacramento or Moose Jaw Saskatchewan, as long as they have a good ownership group and a stadium plan, etc. Just don't steal an existing team. The thing about St. Louis is that, yes, they could be a good MLS market, but there is no owner and none of the other necessities, so end of story. The ownership makes all the difference in the world, much more so than the particular market. Take 2 original teams who started out in pretty much the exact same place. Owned by the same people as the local NFL team, playing in a way-too-big stadium with tarped off sections, regarded as an afterthought in their local market. Both teams had reasonable periods of success, but they never really gained a foothold in the local sports market. Then one of them got a new owner and by some sort of magic, they turned into a model of how to run a US soccer team on a more modest budget in a smaller market. The other team? They are still stagnant and as irrelevant as ever in their local market.
Each time I watch one of these expansion announcements I dream of the Revs getting a new stadium, along with a new brand name and new logo.
In my opinion MLS has yet to get an expansion decision wrong. Cincinnati has all the makings of another major success story, have you seen the interest and passion for their USL franchise? I expect Cincinnati to be similar to SKC, they'll have a big impact in a smaller mid-west market.
Yeah, but it's kind of hard to separate this decision from the ugliness that's happening with Columbus.
They are really different markets, even if they are in the same state. Sure, there probably are Crew fans in Cincinnati since they've been there longer, but this will be a distinct team and hopefully the Crew will stay where they are and it will develop into a great rivalry. This would be like Boston-Hartford, if the cities were a bit more comparable in size. Maybe more like Baltimore-DC or Tampa Bay-Orlando, fairly close by, but really, pretty distinct places.
That didn't take long... New York City FC name Domenec Torrent new head coach June 11, 2018, 12:35PM EDT Charles Boehm
Um, broken link, but I'm sure that whatever Seattle did, it was much, much, much better than anything anyone else could have done!
Hah! Pretty good, but I still think the Ken Burns style historical documentary that Portland did to mock Seattle was better. Why can't we do these kinds of things? Not like there isn't a lot of things to mock about some of our eastern rivals...
They tried it once. I seem to recall a video of Timber Joey being eaten by Slyde the Fox? If at first you don't succeed, give up...
Agreed. Expansion has been largely successful with Chicago being the question mark given their ownership/stadium situation. I think they got a few of the original teams wrong; expansion clubs have earned their spots.
I meant the most recent expansion decisions. Chivas USA was an unmitigated disaster. The Miami Fusion would have to be considered the same. Chicago was the right decision at the time. Their current ownership and stadium situations are awful, but that wasn't the case when the club was founded. They were actually an expansion success story, both on and off the field in the early 00s.
San Jose Earthquakes acquire Georgian center back Guram Kashia via TAM June 14, 2018, 12:44PM EDT Charles Boehm
Little-known fact: @OrlandoCitySC was offered Tata Martino in 2016. #FYI #MLS— Frank Dell'Apa (@frankdellapa) June 22, 2018