http://www.bigapplesoccer.com/teams/cosmos2.php?article_id=46669 Looks like there is some truth to the Cosmos buyout rumor. But the new owners are only intererested in the brand name, not NASL league play. They ultimate goal would be to buyout Red Bulls and rebrand it.
That's how I felt pre-announcement. I wasn't thrilled about about playing B teams. Its about competition and rivalry that gets me and the crowd going. I will miss loving to hate the Cosmos and Strikers. Those games took a lot out of me by the end but they where emotionally thrilling. knowing now that the ultimate goal is to get into MLS I care a little less since it would hopefully be a temporary situation. Of course nothing is 100% certain.
Well, in RBNY2's case, they had a very good regular season (just as RBNY's reserves had crushed the NPSL in 2014), but getting to the final is not always an indication that a team is the "best team." Playoffs (especially one-offs) are tricky things. BTW, after RBNY2, the USL teams with the highest point totals were Louisville, Cincinnati, Sacramento, Rochester, Rio Grande Valley and Charlotte. One of those is an MLS2 team. Some people overthink things. Many of them should STFU and stop looking for grander, universal meaning in their sportainment. I love the whole "not acceptable" thing. Jesus, people, it's a frigging soccer league. "Oh, I don't want to watch that group of players who may be on their way to contributing to a club in the first division. They are good players, but I feel icky watching them down here in the second division," said people who should simmer down.
Where does this Twitter fantasy come from? Have the NY Red Bulls ever said they wanted to sell? I'll believe it when I see it.
Remember the Cosmos were going to buy them a year or so ago and Garber denied it and Cosmofan was all, "He's lying" and blah blah blah. What do you figure the Red Bulls and Red Bull Arena would sell for, if expansion clubs go for $150M now? Precourt supposedly bought the Crew for a then-record $68M in 2013, three years after Montreal paid $40M to get in. What's a turnkey franchise in New York and its arena worth? $200M? $250M?
Hey, don't shoot the messenger. What are you liberal cable news media?! I'm not a Russian hacker telling the American people about Crooked Hillary's dirty e-mails.
Okay, so the current owners don't appear to be able to do that if they can't pay their staff. If the supposed group Michael Lewis says is negotiating for the Cosmos' carcass buys that, they'd then have to also buy RBNY IF RB was interested in selling, which is not in evidence. So you're talking $1.98 for the Cosmos' brand, $400M+ for RBNY and several million more to re-brand the club and the arena from red and blue. Not a lot of folks would do that.
\ Got to think somewhere around 600 mil for someone to buy out the RB's. It'll need to be pretty big for them to consider it, they have a good team on the cheap so I don't see them in any hurry to sell.
How do you figure a team in Leipzig compares to a team in New York in terms of a brand extension? Everyone has their price, obviously, but they're now 11 seasons into this thing. I have no idea if Red Bull's energy drink market share has gone up (which I would presume would be the point of the exercise, along with all the other promotional things they do) or not or what their metrics for success are. At least RBNY has had more success as a club than the MetroStars had. Isn't that what a fan wants? Or are they too hung up on a winning team being delivered to them in exactly the proper format?
This is getting annoying. Gulati should just sanctioned NASL down to D3 and tell them if they get their shit together they can try again for D2. But we all know if NASL drops in sanctioning it opens the door for all the teams to quit NASL on the cheap.(according to the 4-4-2 article) NASL doesn't meet the 12 team requirement, at this point. It also doesn't meet the 3 US time zone requirements either. Even with Deltas coming in, Rayo is essentially dead. And everyone knows it.
Doesn't sanctioning go to a vote, not just Gulati's whim? You know, like Garber doesn't pick when and where to expand just as it suits him? And, oh, my gosh. It's December 16, this has to be resolved TODAY!
It's not important for us fans to know "TODAY" ... but I'm sure players and agents and ticket sales reps would be able to move along with the job at hand if they knew what the outcome was!
From what I know from talking to the minority owner of ROKC, they are dead and buried. The Spanish overlords bugged out, leaving unpaid bills in their wake.
And the league has to vet the owners who have to be approved by the other owners. Plus, there are rules in place that pretty much tie the owners hands if they try to bail.
Are the NASL teams that much better? The USL and NASL players on average are older but not good enough for MLS. The B side players are younger but potentially good enough for MLS. From the Galaxy standpoint, you can be a pretty good player and not be able to beat out Keane, DosSanto or Zardes for a position. If you're not going to find a significantly lower quality of player acceptable, you're not going to find any second division in the US acceptable.
I actually think this is quite reasonable. The success of any league depends on the owners sticking together and financial incentives helps this happen. For all the NASL's talk of each owner being an entity to itself, they did understand this much.
Gulati postponed this already on the 5th. Said they'd give it 7-10 days. We're on day 11. Sorry, maybe I'm annoyed at time tables always switching. I guess i've been watching to damn much Beckham Miami news, hoping they'd either get it done or pass the ball to Sacramento. And I'm well aware that it's not just Gulati deciding this. But he's the figurehead. So if your the man in charge, you get yelled at when things aren't going smoothly. That's why he's paid the big bucks.
For most players, you figure you're going to play in 2017, right? Except for teams on the bubble (most of whom don't exactly seem to be rife with ticket sales reps to begin with, not to mention, you know, any employees at all), you would not be selling individual game tickets, nor would you have a schedule yet anyway. My point is this: this is complex shit, what they are trying to pull off here. Just like fans want to cut the attacking mid or fire the coach after two bad games, some seem to expect that all these things can be just sorted out on THEIR timetable, before they've reached THEIR level of annoyance, and not on the timetables of people who have shown they are hard-pressed to work together under the best of circumstances.
can't have a schedule until your league knows how many teams (and who) is going to be in it ... which is another reason the delay is working against teams.