Yo, check it. There's more news out of St. Louis about the timeline not just for their expansion meetings, but possibly for the overall MLS plan as well. 1) Expect the St. Louis announcement to happen at the MLS Cup. 2) Main investor Jeff Cooper believes the hard part is over, and will be able to get the new team finalized with little issue at this point 3) According to this article, St. Louis and a 16th team may be announced this year for the 2009 season, and a 17th and 18th team may be announced later to start for the 2010 season to keep the number of team even. If that's true, St. Louis, Philly, Seattle, and another city might all have a team by 2010 There's also a new SportsIllustrated report... http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/2007/soccer/09/11/bc.soc.courtingprosocce.ap/
What about the issues at CDCUSA? Will they be around or in LA in 2010? 18 seems like too much right now.
And which issues are those? Their attendance? They seem to made steps to improve that. Maybe I missed something, but I have seen anything indicating that the franchise was in danger or comments from the ownership indicating that.
Rosters. That means that most MLS teams will lose 4 fringe players from their rosters in just 2 years worth of expansion drafts. The draft will be spread out more thinly also. IMO to compensate for expansion the league has to increase the cap. We need to bring back the Scandinavian Americans and maybe even a couple of the Premiership/Bundesliga Americans. Some additional international spots also need to be created.
Sorry for the ignorance on the details, but has there been any effort to secure season ticket deposits?
This is certainly the concern. The good thing is that it is a big soccer world out there, so there are more than enough players (american and foreign) to support a bigger league. The only question is how you get them and you are correct. It's a simple matter of $$$$$.
Through the mouth???? My preferred drinking game would be a variant of "Chandaliers". When you hear an MLS brass say "60-90 days", you drink your beer. The last one finished w/ theirs has to drink a Big Gulp sized beer. It's a really efficient way to get FUBAR. You know... this would've been a lot funnier if somebody hadn't already responded to dave.
If MLS rosters were to be tweaked in the way the rumors have them considering it (new cap between 3.5 and 4.? mil, second DP, extra SI spot) then those changes should be enough to keep the talent level at least steady through a few rounds of expansion.
One thing to remember is that if they award the teams for 2009/10 tomorrow that they can start setting up their Academies today. That would hopefully lessen the need to have an expansion draft, since basically those teams would be participating in the SuperDraft from this year on. That may also be another way to lessen the blow of new teams. Why not let them participate in the SuperDraft and then loan/trade their players to USL/MLS squads in the mean time. So SLU makes selections this year, 2008 & 2009 before actually playing in 2009. They would then have at least 12 players hypothetically under contract for that season. (And congrats Saint Louis!!)
I really like this St. Louis Expansion. If Philly and Seattle are next, MLS will have done a great job adding some key markets. If these 3 markets are added, MLS will have a real league feel. More markets mean more TV money. Dont get me wrong, Rochester is a nice town. It is just not a big league town. MLS was wise to avoid it.
Who says they've avoided it? It may be team #18. May not, but it's still out there. If they get their park to MLS level and will pay the fee, why not? MLS hasn't gotten to the point where it's not accepting applications. They may real soon, but not yet.
Rochester's time has come and gone I'm afraid. MLS is in the big leagues now. New francishes will be in large metropolitan areas (or in the suburbs of them...). A 2nd NYC franchise is much more likely than Rochester at this point.
And please let us not forget that MLS scouting is truly abysmal. The cap is definitely an issue, but if anyone out there thinks MLS (and USL) have even come close to mining all the available domestic talent that can play first-division soccer (at current standards, too, not a watered-down level), he's frankly nuts. Raise the cap and raise scouting budgets across the teams accordingly and MLS won't have any sort of issue filling more than 18 rosters.
Rochester Rhinos didn't have enough to pay the $10 million expansion fee. I heard that they claimed single-entity turned them away from MLS but they obviously don't have any money to join MLS.
Are there any other cities that were close to joining MLS at the $10M level that are now kicking themselves when the league is at the $35M level? The owner of Rochester has to be kicking himself over not joining MLS when he had a shot. He'll never be able to come up with the cash and MLS will never just let a bunch of chumps into the league when they can charge $35M/squad. Too bad, they seemed to be soccer enthusiastic over there, but now it's just another minor-league team.
But it seems like they may get in with the success of Toronto. I guess they would still be sad to see that they have to pay $25M more than they would have. On an aside, how does MLS negotiate national TV deals in Canada. Does ESPN broadcast them there as well so their fee includes that?