I'm really curious as to FC St. Pauli's position on how to fix lower division professional soccer in the United States.
I guess new teams joining every league, every year, is technically instability. Sure. We will go with that.
Commisso has bought Fiorentina for $185M. Says he’s going to stay committed to the Cosmos, but I doubt it. I think this was his way of getting out of the American game.
So how did the panel discussion the other day go? I would imagine the Prawn News Network was live-tweeting it, right?
Commisso invested in the Cosmos with the certainty that he could elbow his way into MLS. I suspect it has begun to dawn on him that there simply is no path for the Cosmos to play first division soccer in the US.. None. Zero chance. He tried bullying, he tried bribing and hes tried the courts. He is now facing up to the reality, and owning a minor legue side holds no interest for his ego. I suspect you could buy the Cosmos pretty cheaply right now. Unfortunately, omly a fool would buy them at any price.
The entire allure of the NASL was that you could get into MLS for cheap. They were basically trying to pull a Trump-USFL. It's too bad that the Cosmos were not as brash as they could be. It would have been funny to see them offer to destroy the league in an attempt to join MLS.
Wait, he didn’t buy a Serie B club and then get them promoted? I thought that was how it worked in real leagues.
Looking at the Swiss ramble they didn’t seem to have much debt. Maybe 15m euros in losses per year. But not much upside and the usual problems of Italian soccer.
Having worked for them and knowing everything about their club, Fiorentina are not really a big club and are a complete mess. On the other hand, Italian soccer clubs in general though, are still a force to be reckoned with and shouldn't be discounted that much. Watching Rai Network from Italy this morning, Commisso is making a lot of noise but I have my doubts he will do much more than Della Valle or Cecchi -Gori did before him.
He better be careful with what he says. If he goes in talking all big and doesn't deliver the ultras will turn on him super fast. Fiorentina aren't the Cosmos you can't dick around and expect some Leeway.
Quakes GM Jesse Fioranelli's dad also got in trouble for some crooked dealings with Roma before the club was sold to Boston's James Pallotta. Not sure what happened there though. I'm pretty sure Jesse left Roma for San Jose because he will have never done anything substantial had he stayed. Giorgio Chinaglia was also found guilty of fraud when trying to buy Lazio. He passed away before anything happened but from what I recall he was about to be extradited to Italy for court hearings. I doubt he would have gone but that was the plan.
No one ever knows or counts how much Serie A, B & C clubs make or get under the table. There are a lot of wheeling's and dealings done behind the scenes and under the table that most of us in the USA would never hear, see or even begin to think about.
So, a bit more than FCC’s expansion fee, but cheaper than that fee plus the stadium costs. One might conclude that MLS’ business plan is pretty damn good.