Conference ends with Garber stating "AEG is one of the best Sports and Entertainment groups in the world" Says it all really.
Bay area has lost another one… While I understand business is business, some apartment complex can bring more money to the investor when the stadium, it is hurtful anyway. Who cares about fans or the role models for the kids? I guess we have to just settle for the steroid pumped athletes in a better hotdog and beer selling sports………….
The timing of this, more than anything, screwed everything up. Of course, it could also be said that had the planned Quakes agenda for Dec. 13th occured one or two weeks earlier, the Quakes very well could've stayed in San Jose for 2006 although there still would've had to have been a public vote for the stadium. Either way, though, any detractors who claim that SSV was full of sh** are really full of sh** themselves. We really were that close... GO SAN JOSE EARTHQUAKES!!! -G
Yeah, absolutely. But to be honest as much as I love some of those guys our team has never been about individual players. We lost the best player to ever play in the league (based on how good he was while he was actually playing in MLS anyway--not saying LD was better than Valderrama, Djorkaeff, Matthaeus etc. in their primes although he certainly has potential to reach that level) and came back the next year to post the best regular season in MLS history. You heard it here first, my prediction is that John Doyle will be the first head coach of the expansion team, and as long as he continues the Yallop/Kinnear system it will be the same club we know and love, even if perhaps with mostly different players (hell, it's not exactly like we had a lot of returning starters this past year either!!). As for Dom I expect him to coach in Houston for a year then take over the national team.
Trust me guys this IS going to be a black eye for the MLS, a scandal & they will regret it. Let's all conclude our interest in MLS & support the Seals instead. Make sure this doesn't happen in the bay area again! it's shamefull!!! we are not kool enough to keep our pro soccer.
I think our fate was sealed when my 2003 MLS Champions shot glass broke in transit home this past spring
Don't let the door hit you on the way out... Thanks for the big 'FU' to the quakes and their fans, MLS and AEG. I hold grudges and this one is going to last a while.
come on SSV and Quake fans, get angry at the right people . . .the SJ City Government. You guys kicked a$$ in the city hall open forum, I know you can get this thing done and get yourself back on the MLS map in 2007. You may want to change your name though . . .San Jose Phoenix! I'm pulling for you guys.
I don't know if it's really a black eye. It's just a reality. In professional sports in this country, every sports league uses as their big nuclear bomb the threat of moving a team to get sweeter deals for themselves and make their business more profitable. By showing that they're willing to do it, they've shown communities everywhere that MLS is serious like everyother sports league and will bargain themselves better stadium deals in other cities as a result. It really sucks that we had to be the victim this time. Same thing happens in real world businesses as well.
Exactly. The two best-run sports leagues in the country are the NBA and NFL, the NBA just had a team move 2 years ago, the NFL moved one about 6-7 years ago and will in all likelihood move another after next season. It sucks but that's how it is.
You just noticed that now? There is a reason that MLS/AEG all the owners want concrete mortar and brick for each team. Control of money and physical structure. Permanance. There will be 8 by 2009. Less smoke and mirrors. This sucks, but to think a stadium could have come to together this quickly now was naive IMO. Votes, legal challenges, $$$ challenges, environmental reports, resident complaints etc. If this was where we stood two years ago we would have seen where this evolved. No chance this late in the game. Anyone who thought this was close really wasn't looking at this pragmatically (understandable of course). No matter what the rhetoric, to build a public structure like this, in that type of area (Cali) is extremely difficult to say the least. To have so many question marks while being gouged by Spartan in any business model is unacceptable. I really feel bad about this, but c'mon, this wasn't really close, no matter what anyone says. Only a white knoght who would have paid for everything would have been the answer right now. AEG already did it in NY and LA. Guess they had enough, especially from a team they never wanted. That is the very sad truth. It's the Misfit Soccer team with no white knight. I just can't see anyone building thestadium out there. Way too much involved. Damn.
The funny thing is I've spent almost as much of my life living in Houston (albeit temporarily) as in the Bay Area yet aside from the personell I no longer feel any connection to the franchise.
This League is too small & fragile for moves like that. Bad analogy. Imagine that it's like if the Fortyniners moved. BIG hole in the league, HISTORY up in smoke! the team George Best played in...the 2003 MLS Champs no longer around..."ah yes, they won the league twice in three years but are no longer around.." Makes them (MLS ) look shakey & like a fly-by-night rink-ee-dink outfit.. Freakin XFL!
The most telling sentence of this thread. The MLS universe is not as rosy as most would like to believe. In actuality, it's hanging only by a few threads (no pun intended).
MLS, even with this and the folding of the Florida teams, has been FAR more stable than either the NFL or NBA were in their early years. If you don't believe me read a history of one of those leagues some time...they were basically like today's AFL, MISL, NLL etc. in their early years with half the leagues' teams folding or moving or changing names every off-season. Granted that was a different time as there were no real big-time sports back then aside from college football and pro baseball but eventually they found stability and MLS will as well. And the Earthquakes will be back...third time's the charm.
Sorry, I understand that you are a fan, but these are the precise reason the team had to maove after 10 years. With new facilities coming on line, 8, possibly 9, and if lucky 10 by 2010, you can not have single entity and attract investors with a situation like this one. It is because the league is this young that they had to and can get away with this, Comparing this team with the 49ers is the stretch here. Hey, imagine if the Baltimore Colts were to move. What a whole in th eleague legacy, outrageuos. I don't want to get into fights here because I am upset too, but you are waaayyyy off on that line of reasoning.
Oh yeah. 10 years of losing money and then moving the team does not make it look fly by night. Especially without stadium or committed ownership. It's common sense.