Well, it may not happen. In an article in Wednesday's New York Times, Jack Bell sort of buries the lede with this little tidbit near the bottom of a story about how the Red Bulls front office is about to become a Cosmos alumni club:
As long as they're footing the bill for the Meadowlands instead of MLS, I could care less. Sucks for their fans though.
Not enough information to really make a judgement. Could they be thinking of building a SSS in the Meadowlands? Could they be thinking of Manhattan? Is this just a ploy to get more $$ out of Harrison? Or, are they pulling out of Harrison, but AEG goes on to build it and put in a 2nd NY area team? Until more info becomes available I'm not going to go crazy, but if they are really making the decision to go with Giants over a SSS, their fans are gonna riot.
Re: Hey, remember that stadium that they were going to build in beautiful Harrison, N So AEG starts up Empire FC (or whatever), sticks them in a shiny new complex in Harrison, and steals the old Metros fanbase. Sounds OK to me.
Re: Hey, remember that stadium that they were going to build in beautiful Harrison, N This is how I interpreted the statement also. Didn't Red Bull only buy 50 percent of the stadium with AEG owning the other 50 percent? Maybe they are letting AEG have the whole thing. I would imagine Harrison would not be too pleased with the stadium falling apart at this point either.
This smacks of very smart posturing (negotiating) from metrobull. Turn the NJSEA and Harrison against each other to maximize and squeeze the most out of each.. it's clear these people have verry deep pockets; the purchase price first reported as $25M, was then reported as $50M, and today i read (from jhutcherson's blog) that it was $100M. If you're the Harrison politicians (state and local level) you had to fight the thing for a long time to make yourself look good, and now you've got to land the thing to make yourself look good. If your NJSEA you are all of a sudden much nicer to metrobull for the rest of this season thinking you might have tenant that, attendance wise, would be on par with both the Giants and Jets (8-10 NFL dates @ 75000 vs. 16-20 MLS fixtures @ 50000). Upshot of all this is the distraction for Der Kaiser is going to heat up as "Red Bull Cosmos" hits the europress. Rumour of Ballack spurning Mourinho for metrobull by the end of this week. Ticos make out like bandits and pull a "WarnerCo surprise" over the hosts in the opener. Somewhere, somehow, you know that Chuckles Blazer has to be making money off all this. You just know it. -bs
MLS won't be backing out of the harrison option. If NYRB backs out, then the new NY team would play there. And MLS won't let the Red Bulls stay in Giants stadium, because it is impossible to make money there. It is a huge loss to the league; getting out of that stadium in 2008 would allow the league as a whole to make a profit. Either something else is getting done behind the scenes or this is just hearsay.
Re: Hey, remember that stadium that they were going to build in beautiful Harrison, N yeah - both of them but it does look ripe for another MLS team in the NYC area - which makes more sense than small cities with no soccer history