Well, I'd say that's not really her fault then. She probably didn't go in with the expectation that she'd take "a lead role". Sounds more like MLS moved the goalposts on her a bit relative to what she committed to initially. This is a person who has interests in a lot of things - business, politics, philanthropy. I don't think she wants to contribute large chunks of her time to a soccer franchise.
Exactly. She's not like a Mark Cuban or one of these other guys who takes lead roles and enjoys being involved in that team as a huge status thing. She most likely was involved with it seen as little more than an investment. So, oh well.
My assessment is that MLS's struggle to close the deal on the second expansion franchise points to deep rooted problems with the league. The owners of the other franchises are super concerned about the ability of potential new owners being good for the rapidly inflating expansion fees. That is where they see their payday. Fan support is a minor concern. A critical time for MLS and SUM, especially with the US MNT not in the World Cup. SUM's biggest profit maker is most likely the Mexico National Team. Should FEMEXFUT ever decide to stop playing its "home" friendlies in the US, perhaps as a national pride reaction forced by its citizenry to US government xenophobia, the whole business model might collapse. The emperor has clothes until he doesn't.
This is what I've been thinking as well. It's why I worry about teams like Atlanta (or probably more realistically, Minnesota) where the newer owners might start freaking out because they didn't go through more than a decade of eating losses and carrying on with business. Bringing new investors into the league is always volatile and MLS is betting big that it's going to pay off for them. It doesn't help when your commissioner actively lies to the public during interviews and fosters an adversarial relationship between teams, the cities they occupy, and their fans.
I feel bad for Sacramento soccer fans, but I can't say I feel bad for the owners of Sacramento Republic. If they are having this many problems putting a bid together, they would have been a disaster once they finally got to MLS.
I dunno about that. They sound about par with the teams like us in the bottom 25% of the league. After all, a passionate 1/4-billionaire owner.is no worse than a disinterested billionaire owner. I’ll bet what’s really happening is that potential investors are starting to question whether or not they really need to build a new soccer-specific stadium at $200-300M that only holds 20-25k fans when the most popular teams in the league are using NFL stadiums and getting 50-70k fans. The other thing is that, why invest in an MLS team that doesn’t have much broadcast revenue, if you could invest in a European team with better broadcast revenue? You would probably lose less money with the same potential upside, long-term. If you check out the Zappos’ guy’s blog about why he folded his USL team, he mentions that he looked into MLS, but he said the investment ballooned from about $100M to $300-400M because they required a new stadium.
There is no NFL stadium alternative in Sac. The college stadiums in the area are either smaller than the proposed MLS stadium or dilapidated or both.
Investing in foreign teams is a good point and there's quite a history of "American" money being used to buy it purchase stakes in more established leagues. You're right that MLS doesn't have the broadcasting revenue and they probably never will. That lack of available tv money is why the league is pushing so hard on expansion. It's the only way to get more money into the league as attendance has a hard limit on possible revenue.
Candlestick got a lot of charms alright, the "coming out to the parking lot and find your car sitting on bricks in place of wheels" kind of charms HAHHAHAHA. Actually I shouldn't be laughing, that happened to me twice at Candlestick *angry* I'll take the brutal monolith in the middle of office parks rather than a cramped stadium in the San Francisco ghetto every damn time. LOL
There are a lot of things wrong with both edifices. Candlestick was impossible to leave in a timely manner and was often cold, windy and foggy. Levi’s does look like a particularly unfriendly example of the brutalist school of design and is situated so that one half is frequently baking in the sun. Personally, I have a soft-spot for Brutalism - my wife and I met in 1978 in the Mosse Humanities building in Madison, WI during a class “History 305 - The rise of Barbarian Europe”
You know they are remodeling the Brutalism office building next to the Mayfield soccer fields in Palo Alto. The walls are gone right now. Reminds me a lot of the bombed out Peace Memorial building at Hiroshima.
You are an unreasonable and silly person. Your car was sitting on bricks twice? Yeah, suuure. Something tells me you weren’t even 18 when the last game at Candlestick took place.
They were different buddies cars. I knew better than to take my own car to Candlestick LOL. Their cars were old though (we're all broke students at the time) so the guys couldn't give 2 ish about locking lugs.
Giving my opinions is unreasonable and silly? Why don't you do us all a favor and go cry into a river next to that make-believe stadium of yours. You're a waste of time here, just like your crybaby team LOL
By the way - do you know if they’re going to replace the turf at Mayfield? That stuff is well beyond it’s ‘sell-by’ date - at least last time I was there in the spring. Perhaps the worst turf fields in the valley?
I’ve been injured. Haven’t been on the soccer field since feb. I thought they replaced the mayfield turf in the last year...
bsman, I play at Mayfield all the time, they replaced the Monsanto crap with the modern stuff. And I agree the old Mayfield turf had to be in installed during the first year of Astro turf...I've never seen a ball bounce so high after hitting the field...comical....hard as a rock...with most of the plastic worn off. They're now some of the best fields in the valley...haha. They also replaced El Camino...probably my fav field up in PA.
I reffed on the new El Camino surface last spring, and it is very nice! My current favorite turf field is field #2 at the Santa Clara Youth Soccer Park, but the new field at the Menlo School is really nice, too. It’s pretty amazing to me how much better the new turf fields are than those that were installed ten years ago.
I agree, I especially like the ground up cork filled turf fields. I play most of my Sunday games at Milpitas, San Jose and Willow Gen High...all new fields...good for the old bones.
Klimenta always looked good to me as a FB who was a very good overlapppng attacker. Could not figure why the Quakes never gave him a shot.