Quite the contrary, actually. McGuire has said that he was more than willing to remain in NASL, but that his hand was forced by Wilf's interest in an MLS club. Of course, it is impossible to say he never would have, but there really isn't any evidence that McGuire was interested in joining MLS prior to Wilf's bid. http://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/29/s...elds-an-mls-franchise-for-minnesota.html?_r=0 Although, from the link above, it seems that it wasn't necessarily Wilf's bid, but that MLS was looking to put a team in Minnesota and that piqued his interest. That would certainly meet the definition of "poaching", imho. Isn't it though? MLS did say prior to announcing the Atlanta expansion that there was a hole in the SouthEast that they wanted to fill.. As the largest city in the SE, Atlanta is an obvious target.
MLS did poach some NASL markets. They may not have gone out of their way to poach those markets, but they did poach them. MLS poaching those markets is not necessarily a bad thing. Yeah, it was bad for NASL and lower division soccer, but it wasn't bad for soccer. The problem the NASL had was setting their goals too high too quickly. Maybe once they became a solid second division league they could begin to think about going for D1. The rhetoric was bad PR, as soon as some fanboys heard it they ran with it to the extreme giving the NASL a bad name by association; going for the national TV deals even though their owners most likely could not afford it; trusting foreign investors too much; being too tied to a ideological business model; worrying more about USSF standards instead of just building a strong league; Cosmos overspending are what has led to the situation we are in currently. MLS poaching a few markets has very little to do with the current state of the NASL. I think if the NASL took a more aggressive stance on strengthening their core regions, the east, and accept D3 standards instead of D2 they would be in a healthier position. At that point instead of Ottawa and Tampa moving to USL maybe eastern USL teams are looking to switching to NASL. TL;DR - The NASL did this to themselves, not anything MLS did.
It def wasn't Wilf's bid as there were rumblings before it was out. Yes, he says he didn't "plan" on taking the club out of the NASL ... but he quickly got people together to put up significant money to buy in and finance a stadium .... that doesn't happen on a "*^(*^& it may as well be us" basis. Certainly more behind it than that. Yeah Don gave lip service he'd given before. He's stated several times that since Tampa/Miami were contracted that there was a huge swath of land/people that the league wasn't serving. It isn't like Blank's bid poofed into air right after the first, or second, or subsequent mentions. http://www.cbc.ca/sports/soccer/mls-set-to-expand-to-montreal-u-s-southeast-1.966720 <---- 2010 and Atlanta by name.
Why not? He is a rich man, most likely has many connections, and the idea of having an MLS team is a popular idea right now. Sometimes some people are just really good at getting things to happen.
And it's not like it came out of nowhere.. It started out with just the owner of the Twins, then the owners of the Timberwolves and the former Wild investor were added well after the fact..
I don't even blame the Cosmos "overspending." I think the change in strategy toward "We're aiming for D1!" threw everything off, mainly because it changes the risk factor behind the investments those owners were making and the league's own message became convoluted. Had they stuck with the plan of finding big markets outside MLS and simply making the best with what they had there's a good chance they become closer to D1 by default, but at least there is a relative balance in their competitive spending regarding rosters and facilities. (Because, let's be honest, apart from the Cosmos no one was going to attempt to sustain MLS level spending.) Further, in keeping with this approach they could better vet prospective owners and markets and possibly avoid the Rayo OKC type arrangements because, again, the business plan is established. Even if this meant dropping to D3 for a bit due to the USSF standards I feel they could've remained a healthy and attractive league. But then again I am a glass-half-full kind of guy.
Don't know if the bolded is entirely accurate. But I agree that a big part of NASL's downfall was the Cosmos and Peterson's belligerent attitude and insistence that they'd be D1 some day. It immediately put them at odds with MLS, USSF, and frankly reality. And on top of that when MLS came looking for a defacto minor league partner, it caused NASL to spit in their face and help their de facto rivals over at USL. Toss in Peterson's ideas of continuing to compete with MLS/USL by putting teams in cities which had one or both of those league's teams already rather than carving out his own territory... I mean the Cosmos spending themselves into insolvency didn't help matters, but it wasn't the main reason NASL is on the ropes.
Yes.. According to McGuire he was perfectly happy to stay in NASL until he found out that MLS was taking a look at Minnesota for possible expansion. MLS was taking a look at Minnesota for possible expansion because Wilf included in his sales pitch to the Minnesota legislature to get them to pay for the Vikings' new stadium that he would/could get an MLS team to play there. So depending on how you want to interpret that, McGuire's hand was either forced because if Wilf got an MLS club, that would likely have meant MNU would have gone out of business, or McGuire saw an opportunity, quickly got an ownership group together, and beat Wilf out.
Which isn't MLS's fault per se. Wilf is not the only NFL owner using MLS/soccer to help curry favor for public funding toward their NFL stadium. The Chargers owner in San Diego tried to do the same thing at first when pimping his stadium plan to the folks in San Diego. MLS was hinted as a possible use for the venue as was international soccer when they were trying to justify the ridiculous cost of the venue to voters (as was college football and Comic-Con). Nevermind the actual MLS effort in San Diego, SDSU football, Comic Con, and pretty much everything else they implied would use the new stadium wanted nothing to do with it.