Atletico and Deportivo are the names of two big rivals of Barcelona at La Liga and A.C. (Milan) is a big European Rival. Those names are just not going to happen.
If the league is ever to be accepted by mainstream America, it must avoid using overseas club names. Real Salt Lake and Chivas USA are bad enough but Barca Miami would be the pits. Miami Millionaires FC?
Would you prefer names like the Orlando Sharks or DC United? Its Euro-posing or cuddly animals. You can't have it both ways.
If you think a Shark is a cuddly animal then I would prefer that, but perhaps you had in mind the Miami Moggies with the cheerleaders being the Stroked **************
It doesn't have to be a euro name. The best names mentioned so far are South American or Latin names. Deportivo Miami or Atletico Miami sound great. Even someone like me who doesn't speak a lick of spanish can embrace those names.
I could live with them. If you consider the city the team should be in a name like the 2 you mentioned would be a good fit. I do not like Barca Miami or any derivative like it, although I could live with FCB Miami. I like Miami Millionaires. It is good. I attended a game in the Orange Bowl ages ago between Tottenham Hotspur & a team from Columbia named Los Milionarios (please excuse my spelling... ..) from Bogota, IIRC. Miami Millionaires would fit the very, very Latin city of Miami quite well IMO.
Re: Miami Armada as team name. Why not suggest this in the team name thread? Anyway, I'm not too big a fan of "Armada". It doesn't really represent Miami or South Florida at all, as we were never a major naval hub for any country that controlled the area. That nickname is a bit too "Americanized" to be honest. I like the American style nicknames, but they have to be perfect for a soccer team. The only one that I think could work for this team would be Miami Fusion, because not only does it represent the mix of peoples and cultures as it was originally intended to, but now it would represent the mix of FCB and Marcelo Claure, Florida and Spain, etc.
Re: Miami Armada as team name. Don't want to spoil your enthusiasm, but I don't like it. We are not known as a military area. I think it's more of a supporters club name.
Ewww.. please don't bring up the most horrible, uninspired logo and uniform designs in the history of pro sports. I'd say it's Clay Bennet's punishment for stealing the Sonics from Seattle, but he's the one that gave the final OK on the designs probably. Notice the total lack of lightning bolts, storm clouds, or dark threatening colors in their identity. "Hey guys, we're gonna call the team the Thunder! So please go ahead and use the most generic image you can find and bright friendly colors!" ugh it's so bad lol.
Re: Miami Armada as team name. Not quite. The actual Armada that is remembered in history was Spain's attempt to invade England during the reign of Elisabeth I to remove her and put a Catholic king in her place. Thanks to some English seafaring daring and a rather fortunate storm they failed. Elisabeth remained. Protestantism survived. England began it's rise to becoming a world power and bedeviled Spain for the next 2 centuries. Florida played no part in this. Not even Spain's fortress & city of St Augustine influenced any of it. And, the Armada never came to the new world. It's one sortie was through the English Channel. Thanks for the idea. At least you presented something, which is more than I have done, but, sadly, it doesn't work.
Re: Miami Armada as team name. It isn't. The power plant FPL has at Turkey point works on fission, not fusion. The idea behind the fusion name was the blending or joining of the various people and cultures from the US, Latin America, the Caribbean and elsewhere into one by becoming fans of the team. Nice idea. It looked like it was beginning to work when the franchise went belly up. Hopefully, FCB can succeed where another failed. We'll see....
Miami Beach is on an island, Miami isn't. Many of the city's 1st residents were from The Bahamas. They are a small minority today. The thousands of Haitians, Jamaicans, Trinidadians, et al are from an island. Possibly this could be Miami's connection to "Islanders". Neither one seems to fit, by what seems to be your criteria, but Matadors has a nice Spanish ring to it - which could make the folks from Barca happy - along with the "M" starting each word. I think this naming process is going to be a bit more complex that we all thought it might be..