If the Chivas USA are in fact re-branded the LA Aztecs and do in fact end up moving to the LA Colosseum, I wonder if they will finally be signing someone big? It will take a lot of fans to fill up that place.
And it's not like that's the first time we've heard that either. They very well may end up at the Coliseum despite how odd it would seem. Which even with the Coliseum's deficiencies I think it would be an improvement if just to get Chivas out from under AEG and the Galaxy's thumb.
I remember attending a Raiders game in LA in 1994 at the LA Coliseum, the year before they moved back to Oakland and looked around the stadium thinking how empty it looked and there were probably only 35k in the stands. I recall thinking they could easily get this many in Oakland. In reality there were supposedly 58k seats sold but they moved the nevt year just the same
Yeah and I'm not sure how you effectively "reduce" the size of a big 90,000 seat single level bowl stadium like the Coliseum in a way similar to what Vancouver, Seattle, and even DC United do at their larger stadiums. Since there's no second level there's no clear delineation between the upper and lower levels like in those 3 cities that gives the stadium an illusion of being smaller. The LA Coliseum would more likely end up looking like an older, bigger, single level version of Gillette Stadium than anything else. Not really something to aspire to. And tarps wouldn't work too well since you'd need to cover 2/3 of the stadium to shrink it to an effective size. The ONLY reason I can see to GTFO of HDC for the Coliseum is that they're sick of the Galaxy and want to try and carve out their own niche near downtown.
One of the best names and logos EVER. I'd love it if the name and logo came back -- we've already got the exact color scheme.
The Coliseum could be another disaster waiting to happen -- huge bowl where it takes a huge crowd to even begin to register any noise -- and the fans are WAY too far away from the pitch. MLS needs to put the hammer down and say "you do this and you lose the franchise rights".
Yeah they were kind of dumb. They didn't really want much to do with the league and there were maybe only 2 players left over but there were plenty of coaches, GM's and owners who were associated with the NASL. I guess they thought the league failed and they didn't want to. By now though, it seem like 1996 was eons away.
I agree, but to be honest, not to replace FCD. I've grown to love them! I just don't see Garber being all that interested in an LA Aztecs... Maybe NASL, but with the LA market being somewhat diluted, who knows! Edit: diluted may not be the right word... but you know what i mean. saturated?
Well it is understandable. The NASL was a mixed bag at best historically and when it came to team names. Plus as you say it ultimately failed. Not sure I would start my new league by associating with failure either.
I personally don't think it was a failure. Yes the league folded but it also put the game of soccer on the map. The perception in 1996 was MLS wanted to think NASL did in fact fail as a league so they would be the number one and didn't want anything to do with the old league. Their motto back then was to work as a single entity , to have all competition be on the field and not the front office, to avoid huge big salary contracts for aging foreign superstars, avoid the mistakes of the old league and provide a place for young Americans to play. I have seen through the years however, many NASL like mistakes and it was even more prevalent in the earlier days of MLS. Interestingly, for such a failure of a league, we now have a league (the new) NASL trying to emulate that one and also franchises within MLS wanting to revert back to those original team names. As far as being a failure, not sure. I think it depends on how you look at it. If it wasn't for that league, none of us would be here right now. Therefore, the legacy that the NASL brought is invaluable to soccer in North America so IMHO, I don't think it was really a failure.
Well even if not surviving can be described as something other than failure, that was the perception among the general public, which was MLS's initial target audience. Lots of American soccer fans were stung by their team being ripped from them by the league's implosion, which had happened just 12 years before MLS's first season. Not reminding them of that was a no-brainer, from a marketing perspective. MLS has always been about staying around for the long haul, and giving those fans reason to believe that that pain wouldn't happen this time around; associating itself with the NASL sent the diametrically opposite message.
I know I was heart broken when the NASL folded. For those of us in the Bay Area, we still had the WSA/WSL Quakes and subsequently Dan Van Voorhis SF Bay Blackhawks. In reality I'm counting only 10 summers without top level soccer as watching and anticipating WC 1994 played at Stanford kind helped heal the loss. I know many of us in San Jose never related to the name Clash. When it first came out we didn't like either the colors or the logo and no one could ever relate to what they were about or meant. A scorpion? Goodsport knows more about the story of how they got the name but I think it had to do with the Clash of the Titans playing at Spartan Stadium and it was all invented by Nike. Many of us still said the Quakes as did the Latin/Mexican community calling them "Los Terremotos". I remember an interview wit then SJ GM Lynne Meterparel in August 1999 saying when you hear the name "Earthquakes" a few hundred times, you know something is wrong. The very next year the name was changed.
I think you can call it a failure since it did not survive. Just as MLS would have been called a failure if it went out of business. This is not being negative. Just being realistic. MLS did not want to repeat the mistakes the NASL made. So I can understand why they did not want to embrace any of its history at first. 17 years later, MLS now has its own history as North America's most successful soccer league. And the current NASL(which really has nothing to do with the old NASL) is a D2 league not emulating the old NASL. There are no aging stars running around in that league or high salary players. Basically it is trying to survive and produce a solid minor league D2 to complement MLS's major league D1.
Some time after leading the successful San José bid for one of the league's inaugural franchises, Dan Van Voorhis had to pull out due to messy ongoing divorce proceedings with his wife. The league then bought out Van Voorhis' franchise option (thus making San José one of three league-owned teams, along with Dallas and Tampa Bay) and named Peter Bridgwater as San José's President and GM. Bridgwater was then prepared to sell the rights to the "San Jose Earthquakes" name, logo, colors, etc. to the league when Nike stepped in and decided to name the team the "San Jose Clash" instead with scorpion logo and such (wanting the name to be "hip" and "kewl", Nike reportedly tested the Clash name, logo and colors with some skater-boy types who approved but likely never subsequently attended a game). Nike did indeed try to get cute with the team name by relating it to Spartan Stadium ("Spartan"... "Clash of the Titans"... get it? ). But I still wondered what a scorpion had to do with any of that until a year or two ago when another poster here pointed out this pic from the 1981 version of Clash of the Titans: Thankfully, Peter Bridgwater eventually did sell the rights to the "San Jose Earthquakes" team name, logo, colors, etc. to the league when he was promoted to the league office in New York in November 1998. An extensive survey of season-ticket holders throughout the 1999 season then led subsequent GM Lynne Meterparel through a series of events (that, oddly enough, also involved the Chicago Fire successfully defying Nike's demands for that team to instead have been named the Chicago Rhythm with a cobra logo) to rename the team the San Jose Earthquakes, but with a new logo designed by Sunnyvale graphic design artist Terry Smith (who also created the San Jose Sharks logo - both the previous and current versions - and the San Jose SaberCats logo, among other logos) and with the predominant color blue since, according to Meterparel, that was the overwhelmingly favorite color chosen in the survey. Correct, although the team name change officially occurred on October 27, 1999, a few days after the regular season ended. -G
That's a lot of connections to have to make for what to many in the 90's was a pretty obscure reference. Good movie though! lol
I never knew that until now but I never saw the movie either. Still love the old NASL logos and names though. Not sure if its nostalgia or its because they were kind of cool.....